Generally I'd say product reviews are one of those ideas like passwords that work but don't survive introduction to the general public and mass use. The problems of authenticity are obvious, but I've also noticed that people who rely on word of mouth from their friends and colleagues are generally happier. And why wouldn't they be? A colleague tells you this e.g. monitor is perfect for your line of work so you get it and find it also good. No fuss, nothing nerve wracking, no time wasted. Compared with reading through dozens of reviews that even when authentic raise good points that are maybe entirely irrelevant to you.
I try to buy stuff in shops now. It's more expensive only if my time spent on reading reviews is free. And these days it's not even more expensive to buy in real shops anyway.
In addition, reviews are a prime example of sub-optimal communication by us. A lot of people don't write reviews for others but for themselves and thus, many of them are just unhelpful to me.
"Great restaurant, food was lovely. price is OK!" - Well, what was great about the restaurant. What is an "OK" price? Is it 5€ or 30€? You didn't probably order the entire menu, so what did you order? What did you like about your order?
>people who rely on word of mouth from their friends and colleagues are generally happier.
The problem is that the vast majority of my non-grocery items are not purchased by my friends & colleagues so word-of-mouth information isn't available. E.g. I buy stuff like hi-end camera gear, woodworking tools, audio equipment. Even more common items like books don't work because my friends don't read the same type of books I do.
Even your example of a computer monitor doesn't work in my situation. About 15 years ago, I wanted a large 30" monitor but none of my friends had that so I have to research on my own. Likewise, they also can't depend on my experience with computer monitors because a big external 30" monitor is never something they'd need because they just use the builtin laptop screen.
A lot of times word-of-mouth works great for recommending local restaurants or grocery items such as the Costco brand of paper towels and olive oil being good buys. For all other items that your social circle doesn't buy, you have to research external information sources.
This is a big reason I think influencer marketing is picking up steam. Everyone knows that reviews and SEO can be gamed, with little to no consequence. If an influencer tells you something is good, at least their reputation is on the line. If they continually sell out, they kill the golden goose.
So, as dumb as it sounds, influencer reviews are higher signal to me than typical online reviews.
Just yesterday I had the itch to watch through Trigun.
I was floored when I realized that it was $40 on Amazon Video (streaming), but $22 if I purchase the DVD.
Amazon's costs are __LESS__ for the streaming media than for the company/people selling the physical DVD. Ridiculous doesn't even begin to properly describe that behavior.
If companies are charging premiums for services that cost them less to run, I'm damned well going to be buying in person more often.
I have a small side project (a Google Docs plugin) that makes a trickle of money. One of my competitors launched one day and somehow they had 10 5-star reviews already, but the gSuite marketplace said they had only 3 users. One of those users had the same name as the author, but wrote their review as if they'd just stumbled upon it that day. Another literally had the name "Fiverr User" on their Google account next to their review.
I think this has become so common that many people assume it's a necessity of doing business. Maybe it is. Since I don't depend on my project to survive, I choose not to do these things, or even to give discounts to incentivize reviews. Many platforms don't care at all, and don't even try to combat fake reviews.
EDIT: Another thing worth mentioning: the natural review rate for these plugins is really low. Maybe half a percent of users leave any kind of review, at least in my experience.
Comment the name of their plug-in here and maybe someone here will nicely ask the FTC to check for wrongdoing here that undercuts a more honest business.
Maybe a silly question, but is there a special way to report fake reviews, or is it just the normal site? [0] I was semi-scammed (they delivered what was promised, but the quality was awful) by a specialized goods dealer. A few years later, I see the business has attempted to whitewash its Google reviews with recent stellar feedback from obviously-fake people (e.g., "Matthew McConaughey"). I reported them to Google, but I see the reviews are still up as of this writing.
As a rule, I always check the four, three, and two star reviews since they have the least propensity for a scammer to create and waste time. 1 and 5 star reviews usually are an inane mix of "They're TERRIBLE" or "FANTASTIC" with no additional information, whereas the 2,3, and 4 star reviews will normally go into specifics that warranted the stars being removed. Not only that, but they are normally much fewer in number meaning that a sufficiently popular location with real reviewers will have enough 2, 3, and 4 star reviews to give me a relatively transparent view of the good and the bad that I can read quickly. Mixed into this analysis is to scan for made points rather than worry about the star rating.
Thanks. About 8 years too late to save my business... Scanner911. Killed by fake reviews on Apple's App Store. RIP
In reality vast swaths of the world economy are entirely fake, supported with fake reviews, or fake analyst stock calls.
It can be argued that much of the value in the technology space is entirely fake. Look at the current insane multiples.
My point is that all this lying is supercharged due to Fed printing money. And a sizable part of that problem was caused by a near 20 year war with Afghanistan & Iraq -- completely useless wars - as most are. With the world teetering into collapse due to climate change. And most "technologists" more interested in travel to Mars.
The real technology in this world is biological. Way beyond human understanding. So go and make some silly new technology. Get some VC money to pump it up into the land of nonsense valuation. Hurry up, get yours before the whole pile falls back into the gutter.
"completely useless war", this is true for people living in Afghanistan. From the military perspective ability to test equipment, tactics, soldier's skills in a very difficult territory, without risking too many casulties is invaluable. No other major army has similar combat experience.
Yes, Afgan war costed a lot, but people do the math in the wrong way. The same troops would have to be fed and trained at home too, equipment had to be maintained, etc. so this kind of fixed maintenance and training costs should be subtracted from the overall Afghanistan campaign costs.
A couple of days ago I realised that I started treating vast amounts of followers or positive reviews as a red flag.
This first happened as I was looking at a Blackmagicdesign product with staggeringly many 5-star reviews and seemingly zero <4-star ones. Sure, some of them are sincere, but what am I supposed to think if I know that even the best product in the world is bound to have poor feedback from bad units, mismatched expectations, courier mishaps, etc.?
Those manufacturer could be innocent; outlier where somehow everyone’s satisfied. Still, it’s an illustration of the erosion of trust in a world where buying fake reviews, followers, etc. has become the norm. Platforms, sellers—pretty much everyone profits from it, just not the end customer. For a business (seller, influencer, entertainer, etc.), it looks like if you don’t do it then your competitor will.
I believe many would give this a second thought if an authority has drawn a clear line saying “that’s illegal”. (I’m sure platforms have it in their ToS, but they are rarely read and the implicit consensus is that they’re, of course, enforced when it benefits the company.) Even if it’s difficult to prosecute each case, a few precedents and the understanding of the illegality could do wonders.
Indeed -- the real meat often is in two star reviews. One star is a knee jerk reaction, competitor buying fake review and more, usually useless. But two star typically means someone thought a bit before writing it. I found many genuine problems with products reading two star review -- and more than once, I decided to do buy because the problems were acceptable. This tactic works more often than not but I am worried what happens when this last bastion fails and two stars get flooded with fake BS.
There's a whole fraud economy that has emerged in the last decade or so. Its existence has done deep harm to social trust, in my opinion. It extends far beyond just fake reviews of course; it reaches deep into the corrupt business practices and politicians/governments around the world.
Good. Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Fine any company selling products with "warranty void if removed" stickers. Mass shut down fake sale websites that do not sell the product imaged. I want to see the ftc breaking down doors and deleting entire companies off the face of the earth for their illigal practices. I can dream of course.
A good friend of mine quit selling on Amazon because, as he put it "I didn't sign-up to compete with the Mafia".
Among the long list of issues he rattles off during a conversation are things like fake reviews on their products (the Mafia) as well as them paying teams to plant fake reviews on competitors products to have them tank in ranking.
The other one that was interesting was when an unknown Mafioso paid a team to click on competitors ads on Amazon. The net effect was that they consumed the daily budget by 6 AM and they went through the day without a single sale. In other words, the ROI went to zero on advertising.
Amazon denied it at first. He pressed on and provided details. After six months Amazon admitted they had determined this to be true. They refunded him some advertising money. They never restored the ranking he lost to the criminal.
Even worse, they absolutely refused to share any data with him (and presumably others). In other words, there was no way to seek legal remedies other than, potentially, filing a lawsuit against Amazon. Financial asymmetry aside, the biggest problem is that they keep very tight controls over the data. Which means you will have an almost impossible time proving anything unless you have the financial horsepower to hire an impressive team of attorneys to wage battle against an entire floor of Amazon attorneys. In other words, the little guy gets screwed, has to take it and shut up. Move on.
Fake reviews are so frustratingly common now. Hotels and restaurants are obviously buying fake reviews. Go look on basically any review site and so many reviews are from accounts with only 1-5 reviews leaving VERY generic and brief reviews. You can no longer trust Yelp, Google Reviews, or any of the other travel reviews. It sucks! There needs to be a website that forces some form of review verification. We need a new Yelp. Also, if you leave a negative review businesses will do everything they can to have it taken down. I stayed at a terrible hotel a few years back and even though my review was highly reviewed, they eventually took it down for some random reason. I no longer have any faith in online reviews on any website. Word of mouth is the only thing you can rely on.
Honestly fake reviews are to the point where naturally I’ll just google “$product_name Reddit” and get some more honest reviews than anything I find on Amazon. Yes there will be astroturfing, but you can also get into some more niche communities with more real feedback and discussion.
Random thought: before the Internet were reviews any better? I know there were/are quality reviews like Consumer Reports and such. But were there any crowdsourced reviews?
Are we worse off or are we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?
People either got their reviews from quality, trusted third parties like Consumer Reports, or they got reviews from friends.
It would be pretty expensive to bribe consumer reports, and it isn't as cost effective to pay someone to give fake recommendations to their friends as it is to pay for fake recommendations on a website. Although some companies do that; it is called multi level marketing.
>Random thought: before the Internet were reviews any better?
Before the internet, there were these things called "magazines". These magazines earned money by selling ads.
Advertisers sold products that were reviewed in the magazines they advertised in. And if a magazine's review was unfavorable to an advertisers product, that advertiser could reduce their ad spending.
Also, advertisers could "bribe" reviewers. Probably not with direct cash payments, but it was generally expected that a reviewer would be "gifted" the product reviewed.
> we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?
I think this places more blame on the consumer than is due. Sure people need to understand how to interpret data, but a lot of this is plain fraud. Fake reviews are fraud. They make a product seem better than it is. Its sorta like false advertising, in a way.
A lot of modern times uses automated systems, eg. maybe amazon top page might require 4+ stars, etc. This would normally be a positive feedback loop (good products get in front of more people, more reviews if good means stronger basis for being in front). With fake reviews, you're disrupting the systems we have for everyone, hurting other brands (if not directly through slander campaigns) and also acting fraudulently.
Some but very limited. Zagat was one for restaurants but they sold out to Google. I used to buy their books/do reviews in exchange for free books. Certainly imperfect but I liked their results pretty well probably because their reviewers lined up pretty well with my preferences--i.e. semi-serious survey.
And many quantitative things including TV ratings involved consumer surveys/polling.
Before the Internet? Other than advertisements, any information about a product came from word of mouth (family and friends) or from magazines like Consumer Reports. How would crowdsourced reviews even be generated or disseminated? The only way for large groups of people to talk to each other was in person.
I think the point is you didn't rely on reviews. Before the internet you went to the shop and you could actually touch the product, try on clothes, use sporting goods, see how this laptop feels and how fast it works. Now buying online you have to trust reviews to choose what to buy.
Aside word from mouth, certain magazines that you'd trust (or unsubscribe otherwise), the most prominent part was: the brand name.
Before moving to Taiwan (and then China) a lot of the goods were produced quite locally and not outsourced, so it was even possible to have a most so remote relationship to the factory/engineers responsible for a product.
The brand is still a thing, yet a lot of brands are owned by the same mega corporation and effectively produced/assembled in the same outsourced factory with unknown amount of suppliers.
Amazon is listed as one of the companies receiving the notice, though as the list says that's not evidence that they've done anything wrong. Google, Pepsi, and others who are unlikely to be involved in this are there too
FWIW I find useful info in many reviews on Amazon. It's still better than everything else I've seen out there. It sucks to have to spend so much time trying to find the nuggets of honest info, but they are there.... unlike most non-Amazon sites I have had the misfortune to use in the past.
On Amazon it's easy: if it's got hundreds of reviews, it's probably mostly fake reviews.
Even for those products if you spend some time you'll find some nuggets of useful information in there.
Contrast with some furniture site I went to some months ago, where there are only like 5 reviews per product and all of them are so completely fake. They assured me the desk was "very stable" which should have tipped me off already ... Later I noticed this "brand" is all over Amazon and each of their products has hundreds of positive reviews.. they are so easy to spot on Amazon... not so much on other sellers where they rebrand the product, have ten times less product info in the description, less photos etc.
Section 230 protects Amazon from this. They could still go after Amazon if they believe Amazon is negligent in fake user review controls. On paper I think Amazon probably does a lot, but probably not enough.
> “Advertisers will pay a price if they engage in these deceptive practices.”
> These include, but are not limited to: falsely claiming an endorsement by a third party; misrepresenting whether an endorser is an actual, current, or recent user; using an endorsement to make deceptive performance claims; failing to disclose an unexpected material connection with an endorser; and misrepresenting that the experience of endorsers represents consumers’ typical or ordinary experience.
Is the notice here you just can't advertise the fake reviews? Nothing on actually trying to curtail the fake reviews that show up on commerce sites?
Genuinely curious if commerce sites will need to start policing reviews.
Glad to see the FTC doing something. Sometimes I think the government itself gets too political so it's nice to hear about the government just providing services and protecting consumers.
Platforms that make a business out of scaled access to advertising services such as Facebook should be held liable by the FTC for all the knock offs and fraud there that they deliberately do nothing about.
Every single time a person submits an Intellectual Property infringement notice to one of these companies, those scumbags narrow the request down to the one "piece of content" that was flagged and allow related content that they know fully well are part of similarity clusters of images/videos/audio to go completely free.
As an artist, going to every single instance and trying to report it to those idiots to take it down is frustrating and a complete waste of my time. By the time someone gets around to it, the content has already reached 90% of lifetime possibility and makes little difference to be taken down, while a new version sprouts up for more redistribution.
Biggest problem for FTC is going to be attribution. Fake reviewers are a huge racket, who has figured out a number of ways to look like genuine reviewer while taking an incentive from the businesses for it actually is, a fake review.
Businesses do engage with genuine reviewers which makes it even harder to identify real from fake.
[+] [-] locallost|4 years ago|reply
I try to buy stuff in shops now. It's more expensive only if my time spent on reading reviews is free. And these days it's not even more expensive to buy in real shops anyway.
[+] [-] tchalla|4 years ago|reply
"Great restaurant, food was lovely. price is OK!" - Well, what was great about the restaurant. What is an "OK" price? Is it 5€ or 30€? You didn't probably order the entire menu, so what did you order? What did you like about your order?
[+] [-] jasode|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that the vast majority of my non-grocery items are not purchased by my friends & colleagues so word-of-mouth information isn't available. E.g. I buy stuff like hi-end camera gear, woodworking tools, audio equipment. Even more common items like books don't work because my friends don't read the same type of books I do.
Even your example of a computer monitor doesn't work in my situation. About 15 years ago, I wanted a large 30" monitor but none of my friends had that so I have to research on my own. Likewise, they also can't depend on my experience with computer monitors because a big external 30" monitor is never something they'd need because they just use the builtin laptop screen.
A lot of times word-of-mouth works great for recommending local restaurants or grocery items such as the Costco brand of paper towels and olive oil being good buys. For all other items that your social circle doesn't buy, you have to research external information sources.
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkerside|4 years ago|reply
So, as dumb as it sounds, influencer reviews are higher signal to me than typical online reviews.
[+] [-] geranim0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|4 years ago|reply
Plus, it's better for your local economy -- your friends and neighbors.
[+] [-] playpause|4 years ago|reply
What do you mean? Have I missed something?
[+] [-] Randosaurus|4 years ago|reply
I was floored when I realized that it was $40 on Amazon Video (streaming), but $22 if I purchase the DVD.
Amazon's costs are __LESS__ for the streaming media than for the company/people selling the physical DVD. Ridiculous doesn't even begin to properly describe that behavior.
If companies are charging premiums for services that cost them less to run, I'm damned well going to be buying in person more often.
[+] [-] tdeck|4 years ago|reply
I think this has become so common that many people assume it's a necessity of doing business. Maybe it is. Since I don't depend on my project to survive, I choose not to do these things, or even to give discounts to incentivize reviews. Many platforms don't care at all, and don't even try to combat fake reviews.
EDIT: Another thing worth mentioning: the natural review rate for these plugins is really low. Maybe half a percent of users leave any kind of review, at least in my experience.
[+] [-] webinvest|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgeburdell|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/submit-consumer-...
[+] [-] silisili|4 years ago|reply
Anymore I don't even worry about such scammers, I just get my money back and move on.
[+] [-] jeanvaljean2463|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] formvoltron|4 years ago|reply
In reality vast swaths of the world economy are entirely fake, supported with fake reviews, or fake analyst stock calls.
It can be argued that much of the value in the technology space is entirely fake. Look at the current insane multiples.
My point is that all this lying is supercharged due to Fed printing money. And a sizable part of that problem was caused by a near 20 year war with Afghanistan & Iraq -- completely useless wars - as most are. With the world teetering into collapse due to climate change. And most "technologists" more interested in travel to Mars.
The real technology in this world is biological. Way beyond human understanding. So go and make some silly new technology. Get some VC money to pump it up into the land of nonsense valuation. Hurry up, get yours before the whole pile falls back into the gutter.
[+] [-] keleftheriou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ausbah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piokoch|4 years ago|reply
Yes, Afgan war costed a lot, but people do the math in the wrong way. The same troops would have to be fed and trained at home too, equipment had to be maintained, etc. so this kind of fixed maintenance and training costs should be subtracted from the overall Afghanistan campaign costs.
[+] [-] strogonoff|4 years ago|reply
This first happened as I was looking at a Blackmagicdesign product with staggeringly many 5-star reviews and seemingly zero <4-star ones. Sure, some of them are sincere, but what am I supposed to think if I know that even the best product in the world is bound to have poor feedback from bad units, mismatched expectations, courier mishaps, etc.?
Those manufacturer could be innocent; outlier where somehow everyone’s satisfied. Still, it’s an illustration of the erosion of trust in a world where buying fake reviews, followers, etc. has become the norm. Platforms, sellers—pretty much everyone profits from it, just not the end customer. For a business (seller, influencer, entertainer, etc.), it looks like if you don’t do it then your competitor will.
I believe many would give this a second thought if an authority has drawn a clear line saying “that’s illegal”. (I’m sure platforms have it in their ToS, but they are rarely read and the implicit consensus is that they’re, of course, enforced when it benefits the company.) Even if it’s difficult to prosecute each case, a few precedents and the understanding of the illegality could do wonders.
[+] [-] chx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sundvor|4 years ago|reply
I wish I was joking, but: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/before-you-write-that...
Also leaving anything other than a 5 star review is basically criticizing the company and guaranteed to upset.
This is absolutely rubbish; an e.g. 3/5 should be the baseline for acceptable service, and 4/5 reserved for exceptional quality.
[+] [-] beebmam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devwastaken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|4 years ago|reply
Among the long list of issues he rattles off during a conversation are things like fake reviews on their products (the Mafia) as well as them paying teams to plant fake reviews on competitors products to have them tank in ranking.
The other one that was interesting was when an unknown Mafioso paid a team to click on competitors ads on Amazon. The net effect was that they consumed the daily budget by 6 AM and they went through the day without a single sale. In other words, the ROI went to zero on advertising.
Amazon denied it at first. He pressed on and provided details. After six months Amazon admitted they had determined this to be true. They refunded him some advertising money. They never restored the ranking he lost to the criminal.
Even worse, they absolutely refused to share any data with him (and presumably others). In other words, there was no way to seek legal remedies other than, potentially, filing a lawsuit against Amazon. Financial asymmetry aside, the biggest problem is that they keep very tight controls over the data. Which means you will have an almost impossible time proving anything unless you have the financial horsepower to hire an impressive team of attorneys to wage battle against an entire floor of Amazon attorneys. In other words, the little guy gets screwed, has to take it and shut up. Move on.
[+] [-] diogenescynic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thow-58d4e8b|4 years ago|reply
This filters out bots, fake reviews and low-effort negatives (product is ok, but shipping!)
What's left is man-made reviews that praise what is praiseworthy, and highlight the real drawbacks the products suffer from
[+] [-] skunkworker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|4 years ago|reply
Are we worse off or are we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?
[+] [-] cortesoft|4 years ago|reply
It would be pretty expensive to bribe consumer reports, and it isn't as cost effective to pay someone to give fake recommendations to their friends as it is to pay for fake recommendations on a website. Although some companies do that; it is called multi level marketing.
[+] [-] DaveExeter|4 years ago|reply
Before the internet, there were these things called "magazines". These magazines earned money by selling ads.
Advertisers sold products that were reviewed in the magazines they advertised in. And if a magazine's review was unfavorable to an advertisers product, that advertiser could reduce their ad spending.
Also, advertisers could "bribe" reviewers. Probably not with direct cash payments, but it was generally expected that a reviewer would be "gifted" the product reviewed.
So, this has always be a problem.
[+] [-] vineyardmike|4 years ago|reply
I think this places more blame on the consumer than is due. Sure people need to understand how to interpret data, but a lot of this is plain fraud. Fake reviews are fraud. They make a product seem better than it is. Its sorta like false advertising, in a way.
A lot of modern times uses automated systems, eg. maybe amazon top page might require 4+ stars, etc. This would normally be a positive feedback loop (good products get in front of more people, more reviews if good means stronger basis for being in front). With fake reviews, you're disrupting the systems we have for everyone, hurting other brands (if not directly through slander campaigns) and also acting fraudulently.
[+] [-] ghaff|4 years ago|reply
And many quantitative things including TV ratings involved consumer surveys/polling.
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zz865|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxs|4 years ago|reply
Before moving to Taiwan (and then China) a lot of the goods were produced quite locally and not outsourced, so it was even possible to have a most so remote relationship to the factory/engineers responsible for a product.
The brand is still a thing, yet a lot of brands are owned by the same mega corporation and effectively produced/assembled in the same outsourced factory with unknown amount of suppliers.
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CivBase|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_lead|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sour-taste|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/penalty-offense...
[+] [-] AltruisticGapHN|4 years ago|reply
On Amazon it's easy: if it's got hundreds of reviews, it's probably mostly fake reviews.
Even for those products if you spend some time you'll find some nuggets of useful information in there.
Contrast with some furniture site I went to some months ago, where there are only like 5 reviews per product and all of them are so completely fake. They assured me the desk was "very stable" which should have tipped me off already ... Later I noticed this "brand" is all over Amazon and each of their products has hundreds of positive reviews.. they are so easy to spot on Amazon... not so much on other sellers where they rebrand the product, have ten times less product info in the description, less photos etc.
[+] [-] whoisjuan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] i_like_apis|4 years ago|reply
Although it would be interesting if there were ever fake reviews on the Amazon branded products. (AFIK there aren't)
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmalik|4 years ago|reply
> These include, but are not limited to: falsely claiming an endorsement by a third party; misrepresenting whether an endorser is an actual, current, or recent user; using an endorsement to make deceptive performance claims; failing to disclose an unexpected material connection with an endorser; and misrepresenting that the experience of endorsers represents consumers’ typical or ordinary experience.
Is the notice here you just can't advertise the fake reviews? Nothing on actually trying to curtail the fake reviews that show up on commerce sites?
Genuinely curious if commerce sites will need to start policing reviews.
[+] [-] KingMachiavelli|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0des|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tkgally|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
[+] [-] DisjointedHunt|4 years ago|reply
Every single time a person submits an Intellectual Property infringement notice to one of these companies, those scumbags narrow the request down to the one "piece of content" that was flagged and allow related content that they know fully well are part of similarity clusters of images/videos/audio to go completely free.
As an artist, going to every single instance and trying to report it to those idiots to take it down is frustrating and a complete waste of my time. By the time someone gets around to it, the content has already reached 90% of lifetime possibility and makes little difference to be taken down, while a new version sprouts up for more redistribution.
[+] [-] praveen9920|4 years ago|reply
Businesses do engage with genuine reviewers which makes it even harder to identify real from fake.