There seems to be an accepted reality in online marketing: Writing fake, positive reviews for products is something everyone does. It’s the only way to be competitive.
Does this smell like bullshit to anyone else?
I’ve looked around the net for statistics on just how many online, on-site (i.e. sites like Amazon or Newegg) reviews are real, written by users who had no conflicts of interest. I can’t find anything. Are 10% of reviews planted by scoundrel “marketing” firms? 25%? 50%? Even more?
How could we even find out? Where do we start in this epic fight against evil? I have some ideas.
Language
You can guess, with 83% accuracy, whether the writer of a given text is male or female. Surely we can use a method like this to detect when people are raving a bit too much about a product, or recalling way too many details about their recent dining experience.
Men and women are mostly the same. Online shills are the lowest form of human life. They should stick out like a sore thumb.
Location
We can tell where reviews are coming from. If we have particularly prolific IP addresses pumping out reviews, can’t we weed them out? Joe P. Normal isn’t going to write 200 reviews a week for a select few products across multiple websites.
I’m sure that some of the major sites are doing this already, but once again I can’t find much information on it. This is something that should be publicized more. (And, please, if you have information you’d like to volunteer, comment!)
Fighting online shills is a noble cause. If you’re doing it, let the world know!
Shame
It’s no longer enough to simply delete shill reviews. We have to do something to discourage the practice in general.
My first suggestion is simple:
We can’t really bring the stocks back (right?), but the concept of public humiliation as punishment is still very real, especially in the realm of public relations and online marketing.
And there’s another problem here: These shills, as I’ve already noted, are some of the most despicable people alive. They’re shameless, leaving us with just one target: Their clients.
Even the most unscrupulous PR people around know that it usually pays to tell the truth. Why? Because if you lie and it gets out, it’s that much more damaging (and thus, expensive). We need to make it so there’s a high cost associated with shilling.
Let’s fight back
In a world that’s all a-twitter, the problem of shills is going to grow just as fast, or even faster, than the expanding sphere of social media. We need a system set in place to fight back and protect the integrity of online opinion.
What do you think?
