Is Goodreads not a review site but just a soapbox for readers? What kind of serious review site would allow reviews where the reviewer simply speculates whether they would like something or not? Seems strange Goodreads would allow these kinds of reviews, it completely undermines any credibility their ratings might have.
Does anyone take Amazon review scores seriously?
Feels similar to calorie tracking apps now. Having a database of food UPCs with nutritional data is actually useful. Then capitalism comes along and juices it for social media engagement until the site is riddled with junk features and paywalls
I guess there will always be market for a hobbies to make their own trackers.
But Amazon allows sellers to swap different products in under an existing listing so you don’t even know anymore if the review is for what you are buying. This allows sellers to cheat. It’s insanity.
It reminds me of the phone network. It’s so riddled with bad actors that entire generations now have been trained to never pick up the phone.
Why would a network operator allow caller ID to be so easily spoofed? For abusive callers to operate unrestricted? Even the audio quality of the calls seems to have gotten so bad in my parents rural backwater.
I don’t get it. Is engagement the only metric that matters?
Our protocols are descended from the postal system - the sender is a bit of text written on the wrapper.
Certifying that is out of the scope of delivering to the addressee. It would involve back and forth with an authority - e.g. showing someone your id before being allowed to post a letter.
Unintentionally a hilarious statement, straight outta sci-fi.
Likely a script that looks for the first x reviews and then starts generating fake ones, and some party that is just lazy. There's probably a market somewhere to short.
Ah yes, the illustrious omniprescient reviewer.
I've published a novelette a few months ago on a large website with user ratings (ahem, as a novice writer of smut whose nom-de-plume shall remain a carefully guarded secret). What is interesting is that in the first fortnight there were some people giving a bad rating because, ostensibly (and judging from some comments), they just don't like that specific type of story, whereas in the long tail the average rating climbs upwards as people find your story using tags and keywords, etc, and then judge only the writing and story itself, rather than its subgenre, setting, or premise.
I wonder if real books reviewed on Goodreads follow that pattern too. Those early reviews can have an outsized influence.
It was both a fun challenge (using vanilla JS to render) and has been fun to share with friends, Twitter mutuals etc.
Plus, people know it's MY reviews so if they like my suggestions/tweeting/poasting/etc, they know the review is from me and not some bot.
One way to look at what you've done is authenticated the source of your reviews. They're not anonymous people behind a fake username.
I'd really like to see a hierarchy of trust. Get some certs signed by a reputable bank who has seen you in person, high trust. Self-signed certs, much less trust. Completely anonymous, you get basically shadowbanned; people who want it can go looking for it.
The Internet is an information flood (and so much worse now that we have LLMs). Filtering it has always been the key challenge. We should be able to filter on source, while still allowing people to say whatever it is they want. We just don't have to read it.
Environments where reprisals are possible simply have different dysfunctionality from ones where they generally aren't. And you can see how catastrophic suddenly turning on reprisals is, known as "doxxing".
As an extreme example, (multiple) POTUS have gone on national TV and flat out lied to the US without consequence.
What's more, governance processes for the forum shouldn't be anonymous at all. I mean flagging, voting, moderator action etc.
That's arguably the most important conversation here. Most in need of illumination by public discussion.
But so often (in these social media forums) it is taken one step beyond pseudonymity to full anonymity. Hidden from all eyes.
Why? I never heard a good argument.
Also, there are social media sites with real name policies; in what way are they better?
Amazon reviews are unironically better, because you can see if somebody actually bought the book or not, and Amazon has very sophisticated anti-Astroturfing measures. (Good luck getting your friends and family to leave good reviews of your book -- they'll catch it and delete them.)
Goodreads is infested with marketing and publishing cliques and a lot of their reviews are fake or paid for. It has never been more over.
And yet they won't do anything about sellers who change their listing to a completely different product once it gets to the 4-5 star range. Can't tell you how many times I've been looking at some tool or gadget only to glance at the reviews and see people mentioning socks.
This is a significant factor, imo. Many great modern Russian artists are banned by the state. Meanwhile, the current imperialist Russian state is a group of sandcastle kickers running wild.
I look forward to a day when the Russian people, and the world, have a Russian government that works for things other than destruction.
But sometimes the comment section is just a bunch of people with axes to grind.
Same with Reddit and other places - seeing bunch of suspiciously positive "reviews" months before the book is even on sale.
One is there isn't a separate section for professional reviews (Polish movie/TV site Filmweb has that), so that right off the bat the first comment might be that someone doesn't like what the book is even about, it's a 1-star, liked by 15 people.
Two is they closed their API completely, so there's no way you can get any book info from their DB, not with limits and/or authorization, not if you pay, just not at all.
If the reviewer is consumer reports they for years were this independent reviews. (I've heard accusations they are no longer as independent - make your own decisions) They often don't know enough about the product to understand why long term the more expensive one might be better as opposed to just overpriced, so not perfect, but still better than buying everything yourself.
they have been doing this for decades. they fund themselves by selling a print magazine and paid online access. their reputation is so good that products that get good test results often use the result in their ads or print it on their packaging.
E.g. take reviews of business on Google, there's no link to actual purchases, but you get a star and a "Local guide level 4" or something if you do enough reviews. A family member runs a consulting business, he has a 2-star review, the only review. It's not made by a customer, just some random dude. What it looks like is that this dude just walked around reviewing business after business, based on look of their office perhaps. He's not customer of ANY of them. So now multiple business are trying to have these negative reviews removed, Google doesn't give a shit, so what are these reviews actually worth?
Most people who write reviews aren't exactly the most mentally stable people either. If you're not getting something in return, most people won't write a review, that just leave the nut jobs.
I see absolutely no way this incentive structure could be misused, after all, people wouldn't use bots to spam reviews out to hopefully farm upvotes, would they? Nope <:o)
https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam
tldr - the seller initiates the sale themselves for w/e it is they sell to a second account that they own registered to a random address. They then ship a near-worthless item to that address and use that secondary account to write a glowing review for their original account. You get something for free that would be a bargain at twice the price and they get a 5 star review on their account. The only victim is anyone who trusts the review system.
It depends on the contents and the number of them. If multiple/many negative reviews for something all mention a similar defect, you can be pretty sure it is an actual issue with the thing. It is then up to you to determine if the thing is still worth your time/money.
I will say that for some things the motivations of the reviewers are something to take into account especially. For book reviews on Goodreads I've found that animosity towards the author causes heavy overstating of the 'defects' of a book.
I've had multiple Amazon negative reviews vanish over the years. Often, it happens a few weeks after posting. I've heard it's people bribing Amazon reps to do so, under the auspices of "bad review". I've even occasionally noticed others on Amazon, in reviews, complaining that their last review went missing.
Really sad.
That's a wild claim!
I'd argue that most people don't review anything, unless they are somehow encouraged to do so. Sometimes they are motivated by anger, but those reviews are quickly taken down on many platforms, or they are based on completely unrealistic expectations, but then we're frequently back at being slightly unstable.
Okay that's bullshit. Let them duke it out!
rurban•2h ago
Same on IMDB, and even Rotten Tomatoes. There's a lot of money in movies. But books?
hobs•2h ago
rurban•2h ago
soco•1h ago
bluGill•35m ago
Online reviews don't have enough control over their reviewers and so it only takes a small number of unethical people to cause a big problem.
kevin_thibedeau•20m ago
snarf21•1h ago
bell-cot•1h ago
Generally less money, yes. But not all motives are financial. And there are loads of conflict, drama, and emotions in many parts of the writing world.
ableal•55m ago
kmfrk•38m ago
... But when you're an incumbent that's likely to be around for at least a quarter of a decade with a sizeable monopoly, later really is better than never.