Amazon knows who your friends are

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There are known backscratching rings that have been gaming the reviews.
They needed to go. Ditto with the paid reviewers they've been suing.

Reviews exist for buyers, not vendors, so pruning anything suspicious is good business sense. The tinfoil hat crowd is of not enough consequence compared to the credibility of the reviews with the buyers. Losing a few hundred buyers is a small price to pay.

I totally agree with your assessment, and I will add this:

There's way too much incestuous cronyism involved, along with the back-slapping 'good ole boy [girl]' mentally going on when it comes to reviews posted on Amazon. It needed to stop, and Amazon has finally done something proactive about it.

I say, "Good for you, Amazon, and thank you for keeping an eye out on these bottom-breeding 'pay-me-and-I'll favorably-review-your-product' scammers.

And I will add this: "And Gramma just loves your new book."

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Really, why would anybody raise a fuss if their unpaid review gets rejected, for whatever reason? You're helping Amazon sell product!

Because if you take the time to write a review, it's annoying to have it rejected. I think that's a normal human reaction.

But I don't have a problem with Amazon trying to weed out suspect reviews.

[theducks]

Shills in the Audience?

Say it ain't so!

[gmw]

I quite admire Amazon for trying so hard to keep their review system as useful as possible. This is an ongoing battle that can really only be fought on the defensive: set something up, see what goes wrong, tune it, repeat.

But the approach described in the OP link raises a number of issues.


How are they establishing the relationships?

Obviously Amazon will be reluctant to reveal the details because that will just let the gamers find ways around it that much faster (you can be fairly sure ways will be found, eventually, anyway). But without knowledge of how they are doing it there is no way to assess its effectiveness.


How many fake reviews does their system actually detect? How many false positives and false negatives does it produce?

No way to guess. The social networking environment of the Internet is growing ever more incestuous, just because someone "friends" or "follows" someone else does not mean that they have a personal relationship, and a lack of following does not imply that they don't. We might assume that Amazon would only be using an algorithm if it gets it right most of the time. But what is "most"? 51%? 95%? And how would they even measure the effectiveness?


How are they dealing with the false positives?

The example in the OP link would seem to suggest the answer is: badly. But perhaps they have good reason in this case? Who knows but Amazon?

If a person goes to the effort of writing a review, and some people go into considerable detail, it is understandable that they would get upset to discover their effort has been wasted. If this algorithm goes too badly wrong then Amazon could damage their entire review system by discouraging people from submitting reviews.


And from an entirely disinterested perspective of security analysis, it would be interesting to find out how Amazon are doing this to discover what metadata is escaping the various social networks (assuming that is how they are doing it) that is allowing this sort of relationship to be calculated - because that has security implications much wider than Amazon's review system.

[kennyc]

The bottom line is that it is a private website, just like this one. The owner can do whatever they want to do provided they are willing to live with the results.

[Barcey]

The review system is basically harvesting people's goodwill for free and trying to derive business value out of it. Most people are going to share goodwill and some people are going to try to game the system for their own business value. To maintain the value of the reviews it makes sense to prune them. Taking a heavy handed approach like this overzealous customer service representative did, isn't in Amazon's best interest.

What I found annoying in the response was that they were saying that they harvested relationship information about the person and now that is Amazon's proprietary data and they won't disclose what it is. If a company is collecting personal information about me and not disclosing what it is, how they collected it or how they're using it that raises a big red flag. If they use it against me without explaining why it's another red flag. If they claim they can't disclose the information because it's now their proprietary information it's another red flag. Yes Amazon is a private company and people can choose to deal with them or not but it was a really heavy handed response to something as simple as pruning a review system.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by kennyc

The bottom line is that it is a private website, just like this one. The owner can do whatever they want to do provided they are willing to live with the results.

I am always amazed at the number of people who think they have the right to do or say what ever they want on private forums and game servers.
Apache

[kennyc]

Slightly on topic, at least on the topic of knowing info about your users:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theoprie...ond-the-limit/

[gmw]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Slightly on topic, at least on the topic of knowing info about your users:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theoprie...ond-the-limit/

I think that's very much on topic, because many the same considerations apply. A company collates this information (whether it's relationships or bank balances) and uses it for some seemingly innocuous, or even apparently beneficial, purpose. What many people fail to recognise is that in doing this they are disseminating the information further and further, and making it available for purposes we never envisaged when we gave that information originally.

And it's not going to stop. The databases are going to get bigger, the processors are going to get faster, and the software is going to get smarter, and we're all going to support it because we want all the conveniences this gives us. ... I'd feel a lot more comfortable about this if I felt that more people really understood what is going on, what we're getting ourselves into, but that's not going to happen either.

[DiapDealer]

All you can do is make your own decisions concerning your personal info and data collection. Others will do what they wish. I also think it's a bit of a mistake to assume that more people don't "really understand what is going on."

From the young(er) people I've talked to, most of them understand full well what's being done with their info. It's just not that important to them. They don't care. The convenience is worth more to them. Paradigm shifts happen all the time.

Might be good, might be bad, but I suspect it will ultimately end up somewhere in the middle like these things invariably do.

EDIT: Even being not young(er) myself, I find myself caring less and less what data mining is used for by sites I choose to engage with/utilize/do business with. When it suits me, I use the same login for multiple sites (easy for them/easy for me). When it doesn't, I create new logins. I'm not being tricked; I just don't care any more. My priorities have changed. I have a feeling there's quite a few people in that same boat.

[DuckieTigger]

On some reviews I wonder though where the line is that gets crossed. Out of the goodness of your heart you don't simply take the time and effort and write a multi paragraph essay as a customer review. For me the majority of books get rejected before I even glance at a review - no matter how good the review is (whether deserved or not) won't matter when the book already lost because the blurp was not interesting enough (to me).

Now if you truly put that much effort into a very nice detailed review that is honest (e.g. also points out flaws and not just all hail praise) - and it got rejected by Amazon there is a simple solution: send the review to the author and see if they might be interested into adding them as an editoral review.

How often do I see a perfectly well written review that says "I don't normally write reviews, but I had to with this". And I wonder why? And why bother mentioning it?

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

How often do I see a perfectly well written review that says "I don't normally write reviews, but I had to with this". And I wonder why? And why bother mentioning it?

I *very* seldom write reviews. I read for entertainment, but occasionally I read something that has a huge impact on me and I will write an Amazon review (maybe 5-6 over the many years I've been on Amazon). And I usually add "I don't normally write reviews" just because it's true and the particular book deserves my time to let folks know what I think.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

All you can do is make your own decisions concerning your personal info and data collection. Others will do what they wish. I also think it's a bit of a mistake to assume that more people don't "really understand what is going on."

From the young(er) people I've talked to, most of them understand full well what's being done with their info. It's just not that important to them. They don't care. The convenience is worth more to them. Paradigm shifts happen all the time.

Might be good, might be bad, but I suspect it will ultimately end up somewhere in the middle like these things invariably do.

EDIT: Even being not young(er) myself, I find myself caring less and less what data mining is used for by sites I choose to engage with/utilize/do business with. When it suits me, I use the same login for multiple sites (easy for them/easy for me). When it doesn't, I create new logins. I'm not being tricked; I just don't care any more. My priorities have changed. I have a feeling there's quite a few people in that same boat.

As your private information becomes more widely disseminated you will no longer concern yourself with the hacking of some particular company that you know you gave your information to. Why worry? The rest of the world already has the information anyway.

Yes, many people understand on a surface level that their private information isn't all that private any more. But most don't think about it beyond that. They don't think about what it may mean in the future. It's a bit like the old warning about tattoos - are you sure you want to live with that forever? ... And I'm not at all certain that the explanation is really that the convenience is worth more to them than their privacy. I think it has more to do with marketing and peer pressure and the current vogue. That companies make it difficult to retain privacy just makes it that much easier to go with the flow and scoff at the doubters.

But sure, short of various doomsday scenarios, things will sort themselves out. The hardships along the way will most likely be experienced by a quite small percentage of the people (measured against those that have benefited from the supposed advantages of the loss of privacy). In general, the world at large isn't particularly interested in the private doings of a particular individual, we're anonymous whether we want to be or not, and we take some comfort from that.

But exceptions do exist. I'm not just talking about the rich and famous, I'm talking about minor things like acrimonious divorces, arguments between neighbours, bullying at schools, and - of course - criminal use. On a percentage basis these are all minor. And none of them are new, though I expect there will be a few surprises along the way, but mostly there will just be new ways to wage old wars.


Side Note: "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter is a curious little excursion into the extreme end of loss of privacy and possible ways that society might react. (The last quarter of the book runs off with the fairies (as Baxter seems wont to do, at times), but everything before that was very well done.)

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

The downside of that is that many authors encourage regular readers to "friend" their reader pages....and having that author in your "friend" list doesn't mean you're unable to provide an honest review. It might make it harder, I admit, if you chat a lot of the author's blog or website or Facebook page. But it definitely doesn't mean a review was "bought and paid for".

Yup. It's a problem. We work hard to stay in touch with readers, encourage them to visit and comment on our blog, friend us on every social network we can find...anything so that the readers don't forget about us!

I had one review disappear a couple of weeks ago. I don't know which review or who left it. I don't even know if it was a good or bad review. But I can say that Amazon isn't as clever as they think (with this plan or the affiliate plan).

I know how important reviews can be and I often left them on Amazon. I am now a lot less likely to leave them. I really don't want Amazon following me around and checking out my facebook page (or any other page, really). I don't particularly want the NSA doing it either. I abhor the practice because it will be misused by someone at some point.

I can leave reviews at my blog for books that I want to talk about. I'll still leave a review at Amazon if I really loved a book and the poor book has only a few reviews because I do know how hard it is to be noticed, but I'm not thrilled about the whole mess.

I understand there is a problem with 'fake' reviews, but stalking reviewers behind the scenes and 'deciding' who is friends or leaving fake reviews doesn't sit well with me.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I *very* seldom write reviews. I read for entertainment, but occasionally I read something that has a huge impact on me and I will write an Amazon review (maybe 5-6 over the many years I've been on Amazon). And I usually add "I don't normally write reviews" just because it's true and the particular book deserves my time to let folks know what I think.

Thank you. So there is legit reasons to put that notice. Maybe I should stop putting up a red-flag when I see that. Usually if somethings sounds too nice to be true, it usually is.