Here’s a great new money-making opportunity: get paid for posting fake reviews! Since good reviews are so necessary to sell products at Amazon.com and elsewhere online, they have become a form of currency.
I have become increasingly suspicious of Amazon reviews, since they seem to skew either high or low, and I distrust the motivations of posters of both 5-star reviews and 1-star reviews. Many people I know simply discount the reviews at either end and only read the ones in the middle. For book reviews, at least, I have found the reviews at LibraryThing to be more honest and therefore more trustworthy. They also have one of the most diligent anti-spam communities I have ever seen, and woe to you if you’re an author trying to self-promote your book there but being less than honest about it.
Do you find yourself not trusting the reviews you see online?
Related articles
- Is There A Way To Curb Bogus Restaurant Reviews? (huffingtonpost.com)
- Spotting Fake Online Reviews – With Science! (forbes.com)
- Amazon customer reviews – can we trust them? (i-programmer.info)
shannon.turlington AT gmail.com 
