'Fakespot' Removed From Apple's App Store After Complaint From Amazon [Updated]

[Carlos_X_el_magnifco]

Reading “real” Amazon reviews is completely pointless anyway. Here’s a few examples:

“Haven’t opened it yet but box looks nice and I like pink. 5 stars.”

“I’m too stupid to read the instructions and now I feel insulted. 1 star.”

“I used it once for the wrong purpose and then I ate it. 3 and a half cookies.”

Add to those one I recently saw where a reviewer gave a pack of straws one star because they were 2/5” in diameter but he checked and they were way bigger, more than 1/3” in diameter. He also said the description shouldn’t include 10 mm as the metric equivalent of 2/5” since they aren’t the same at all and that’s not how you do metric conversion.

Im pretty sure on the latter case he wasn’t objecting to the 0.16 mm discrepancy, but rather that his notion of how conversions work was on par with his knowledge of how fractions work.

Amazingly, people voted his review as useful.

 

[Aoligei]

I'm tired of the cheap Chinese knock-off products that break shortly after purchase. The site is flooded with them, because Amazon brings them over by the boatload and delivers them to you next day. Not kidding - it is literally giant tankers bringing them over.

Amazon used to have the best prices on great products. Now it has the best prices, because the products are cheap.

I have spend over thousands of dollars over past few years. Never once I was disappointed by my purchase. They are all great for the price. You just have to do some research.

For example: The PCI-E NVME SSD I brought from Amazon, some random Chinese brand, 2 years now, still working perfectly on my Linux machine.

 

[michaelsviews]

Amazon should buy Fakespot, not ban it.

Why they'd just tweak it to make themselves look even better. Bezos and company imho could give a rats a$$ about complaints. They laugh at the consumer and watch there wealth grow.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

This would be a great web app. Hope they head that direction.

 

[definitive]

Good points

What do we do?
I'm at a loss

It makes me never want to buy anything - haha

as the saying on twitter goes, after someone complains about getting blocked for whatever reason: if you don't like it, simply make your own version of this product. in this case it's an online store the size of amazon.

 

[aidler]

Considering the strong reaction from Amazon they clearly see Fakespot as a threat and I'd say they (Fakespot) are correct most of the time in identifying fake reviews.

 

[Solomani]

Oh here we go again. Small company, skirting the TOS of both Amazon and Apple, gets shut-out by both Amazon and Apple.... so small company goes crybaby to a Federal court and sues both Amazon and Apple for their monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior and so small company hopes for a huge jackpot.

It's like a never-ending infinite loop of the same story.

 

[aidler]

I don’t know how accurate Fakespot is, but I do know that Amazon has every incentive to suppress and/or lie about it.

That's why you never look on the best reviews of a product. They have a very high likelihood of being fake. Look mainly at the bad reviews and try to get a picture of the product in question.

 

[acader]

Amazon has countless fake reviews. If they are really worried about Fakespot "stealing data", they should enforce the same on Google Play - remove the app on both stores. But Amazon decides to complain only to Apple. If Amazon is really concerned about the fake reviews of products, they should do more to prevent bots from bombarding the review process. Instead, they let the fake reviews continue. Why? Because it helps them (and their vendors) sell a lot more products based on the "5-stars".

While I don't know the specific data collection policy of Fakespot, I definitely support the type of service to detect fake reviews.

 

[w5jck]

I can see the reasoning behind taking the app off the app store. I agree with that.

What I can’t understand is why anyone would rely too much on user reviews on retail sites like Amazon. I see items given 1 star because the package was dinged by UPS. WTH, that has nothing to do with the product. I see 5 stars and lots of gushing because the product looks shiny and cool. That has nothing to do with functionality. I see way too many reviews that are obviously coerced by an exchange of money. In other words, I see more useless reviews than helpful reviews. It simply takes too long to filter out all the garbage to get to honest and helpful reviews. I have better luck finding useful reviews via internet searching.

 

[I7guy]

That's why you never look on the best reviews of a product. They have a very high likelihood of being fake. Look mainly at the bad reviews and try to get a picture of the product in question.

Bad reviews could be mis-representative as well. I discard 5 star and 1 star reviews and understand there are some product failures out there and ignore the sour-grapes reviews by those who have had product issues.

 

[Reluctant Adept]

The arms race between fake reviews and methods to detect them is, sadly, very complicated. I tried a number of tools including Fakespot and found that they would consistently identify what were clearly legitimate reviews as fake based on unknown criteria. I found it vastly more useful, if annoyingly time-consuming, to weed through the reviews myself.

The root problem here is there's every financial incentive to keep writing fake reviews and stay ahead of any technique to identify them. That's not an obviously solvable problem. Even if you could identify the fakes with 100% certainty, you might wind up creating a reverse incentive: write obviously fake reviews about your competitors' products so they get dinged for it by the detection techniques.

People are the problem. It's a mess.

 

[Rafterman]

This kind of store may exist in NY and hardly anywhere else. I am not even sure the store would be profitable on its own without their online operations.

Well, it is in NYC, the largest city in the US. There's a lot of film and TV prodcution and thousands of photographers based there.

 

[Yammabot]

I've think the same thing but how do they fix it?

Easy, verification department for all products and completely replace the open review system with a verification process limited to Amazon users and heavily penalize the fakers.

 

[Kabeyun]

I got nailed by a scammer that stole my credit card details and started ordering crap I didn’t want and sending it to me. It’s part of a scam to boost order number and be able to get “verified purchaser” reviews for crap. It was a spot of work to get it straightened out. Amazon’s got a real problem with these sorts of things and I don’t know how they’d solve it. I can imagine that they don’t want apps like this to highlight the problem.

Sure. Unwanted stuff starts showing up at your house and the first thing you do is log in to Amazon and leave a positive review. And it keeps showing up because you never report fraud or cancel the card. Riiiiiiight. We believe you. No, really.

 

[gavroche]

I got nailed by a scammer that stole my credit card details and started ordering crap I didn’t want and sending it to me. It’s part of a scam to boost order number and be able to get “verified purchaser” reviews for crap. It was a spot of work to get it straightened out. Amazon’s got a real problem with these sorts of things and I don’t know how they’d solve it. I can imagine that they don’t want apps like this to highlight the problem.

Hmm.. that’s a great excuse to tell my wife. Honey, I didn’t order all these gadgets… someone hacked my Amazon account and ordered them and had them sent to me…

 

[insoft.uk]

Amazon needs to be addressing this issue and do something to prevent the website version from working as this is a security issue as it’s open to being used by others to pretend to take one to Amazon website to purchase a certain item instead dose more.

 

[Cosmosent]

Based upon the Update, it certainly appears Apple Did the Right Thing, & that the dispute is strictly between Amazon & the App Dev.

 

[Jack Neill]

I assume all reviews on Amazon are trash, no need for an app..

 

[Rafagon]

Fakespot needs to update its website. It still has the "Download on the App Store" button which, of course, doesn't work anymore.

 

[cmaier]

tired of the fake reviews.

Agreed. Fake reviews, fake forum posts, etc. Terrible.

 

[SigEp265]

I get offers for free gift cards for writing 5 star reviews all the time LOL

 

[Unregistered 4U]

What I can’t understand is why anyone would rely too much on user reviews on retail sites like Amazon.

Because, for the average person looking for instant gratification, doing a DuckDuckGo or Google search is waay too hard and may end up bringing forward information that says they shouldn’t order. Better just to order, say the Amazon reviewers were fake, and then get a few thousand upvotes on the social media of your choice just by hating on something

 

[mw360]

Sure. Unwanted stuff starts showing up at your house and the first thing you do is log in to Amazon and leave a positive review. And it keeps showing up because you never report fraud or cancel the card. Riiiiiiight. We believe you. No, really.

What?! Obviously the scammer writes the review, not the victim.

 

[DonInHtown]

Bezos had one of his famous hissy fits.