Amazon Freaks Out About Sock Puppet Reviews And Deletes A Bunch Of Real Reviews
from the collateral-damage dept
For a while now, there has been a bit of a kerfuffle at Amazon over so called "sock puppet reviews" or reviews purchased by an author to help pad their books' rankings. We hadn't been covering any of it because, frankly, it was a non-story. There never was a threat to the publishing industry and it was always questionable how widespread the problem really was. Additionally, the idea that a writer would have to pay to get reviews was just a sign that those writers held no real confidence in their work.Unfortunately, Amazon took these complaints a little too seriously. It would seem that those complaining were loud enough that Amazon heard them and did a couple of things to tackle the non-issue. First it revised its rules for review writing. to make such purchased reviews against the rules. Then it removed a bunch of reviews seemingly at random. Joe Konrath shares his experience upon reading about this:
I've been buried in a book deadline for all of October, and haven't been paying much attention to anything else. When I finally took some time to catch up reading email, I noticed I had many authors (more than twenty) contacting me because their Amazon reviews were disappearing. Some were the ones they wrote. Some were for their books. One author told me that reviews her fans had written--fans that were completely unknown to her--had been deleted.Why did Amazon go nuts deleting reviews? Well, Konrath assumes, based on his responses from Amazon, that this was the result of a new automated sock puppet detection program. Apparently, it works in much the same way as Google's ContentID: flag anything and everything and see what sticks. Actually, no. This is way worse than ContentID. At least ContentID has some kind of -- admittedly weak -- notification, human review and appeals process. That is entirely absent from Amazon's deletion program, as Konrath explains in his letter to Amazon.
I took a look at the reviews I'd written, and saw more than fifty of them had been removed, namely reviews I did of my peers. I don't read reviews people give me, but I do keep track of numbers and averages, and I've also lost a fair amount of reviews.
My reviews followed all of Amazon's guidelines, and had received hundreds of helpful votes. They informed customers, and they helped sell books. They represented a significant time investment on my part, and they were honest and accurate and fully disclosed my relationships with the author I reviewed if I happened to know them. And these reviews were deleted without warning or explanation.Next, in his letter, he explains just why Amazon's actions were the wrong thing to do. Primarily because this action harmed more authors than sock puppet reviews ever did.
Obviously Amazon can do whatever it wants to on its site. It isn't up to me to dictate policy. It's your company, your rules, and I fully respect that. But I believe Jeff Bezos is very much about treating customers fairly, and I've heard it said many times that Amazon considers its authors to be valuable customers. So you should know that I'm just one of dozens of authors who are saddened by this, and those are just the ones who have emailed me.Admittedly, this act by Amazon was in response to a number of authors who complained about the problem. However, as I wrote above, it was a problem of egos, not actual harm to any specific authors or group of authors -- or as Konrath put it, an unjustified moral panic. Authors freaked out over news stories of people being paid to write reviews and it ballooned from there. And just like every other moral panic before it, this one did tons of unnecessary collateral damage.
The community you're trying hard to nurture is upset by your actions. They feel those actions are unwarranted and harmful.
Please express our disappointment in Amazon to anyone who needs hear it, and let them know I'll be blogging about it. People are seriously disappointed in how Amazon handled this. It was a knee-jerk, inappropriate reaction to a ridiculous case of unjustified moral panic, and a Big Fail.
So not only do a bunch of legitimate reviews just up and disappear, there is also further damage to Amazon and the authors it works with. Readers will be less likely to write thoughtful and meaningful reviews in the future. If your review that you spent an hour writing could just up and disappear, why bother? Is this really what Amazon and these authors want -- people less willing to review books they read? That would seem to be a far worse situation than an unconfirmed number of sock puppet reviews.
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Filed Under: books, reviews, sock puppets
Companies: amazon
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It may be a non-story to you, but as someone who reads Amazon reviews to try to get an idea of whether I'd like a book or not it is a story to me.
I rely on amazon reviews. I know they are subject to sock puppeting and shills, so I try to read them with that in mind. But I also want amazon to try to filter out fakes as much as possible. Not sure why you are so indifferent to this. And, no, I don't want to see any collateral damage to legit reviews--but right there is the issue. There are reviews that **are not legitimate**, and they should be removed.
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If that were true, neither sock-puppet reviews nor deleting legit reviews would matter. I haven't used their reviews of books much, but in general the reviews are a big reason I use Amazon as much as I do.
How do you decide whether to buy something without seeing it, if it hasn't been reviewed by a journalist or something like Consumer Reports? Or do you not do that?
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Really Enjoyed this one!
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My opinion
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They can't fire us. Slaves have to be sold.
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Sooo disappointed
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Re: Sooo disappointed
It's time to start the fights..."
Oops! He said sock Puppets, not sock Muppets!
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Seriously?! Well good riddance to those "reviewers" who see no value in their work beyond its running alongside a product. TRUE reviewers do it for the love of the craft and nothing else. For those who feel entitled to having their ten-minute taste test of a product shoved in front of millions of eyeballs: maybe having their reviews removed will make them craft better reviews, that are more likely to be "enjoyed" by Amazon's bots, and the world will unquestionably be a better place.
Saying that readers will be less likely to write thoughtful reviews is a matter of taste, of course. Who decides what is "thoughtful?" And do you have any evidence to back this claim up? I would prefer multiple questionable studies, produced by interested parties, and which have been roundly debunked by the rest of the blogosphere; those would be ideal. Oooh! Can you give me something from Oberholzer et al? Perhaps book reviewers should go into reviewing beer, in hopes of freebies?
How can you with an honest heart even make this claim of a doom and gloom future where fewer people review products? To wit: reviews have already been taken down by Amazon, BUT MORE REVIEWS THAN EVER IN HISTORY (EVERRR!!!) are being released every day.
And what makes legitimate reviews more valid than illegitimate ones? That's fairly anachronistic. You need to be far more post-post-modern (especially for a tech blogger). You have to aggregate the legit reviews with the illegitimate, and then listen for the reviews that aren't being made, man. It's all about the stars they're not giving.
And "what if your review that you spent an hour on disappears?" That's nonsense. Reviews can't "disappear." Text on a screen can, but not the review. It's only a collection of ideas. A review can't be contained, it's only a review when it's being shared with others. You're focusing on the perceived legitimacy of the medium, rather than the message itself.
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A++
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Well, Amazon is now big enough that it doesn't have to care:
Here's a good question, though: "If your review that you spent an hour writing could just up and disappear, why bother?" -- Well, don't! Real question is WHY are you aiding a giant corporation? It may be good for now but as you see will become increasily draconian as its power increases. You have been warned plenty by me at least, but seem unable to grasp the principle.
The supine groveling to a corporation here is much of the problem:
"Obviously Amazon can do whatever it wants to on its site. It isn't up to me to dictate policy. It's your company, your rules, and I fully respect that."
That's not true: corporations are subject to laws and even rules of common decency: they're permitted to exist, have no intrinsic rights. At the least, Amazon isn't free to refuse its service to anyone without good cause justified under common law. So just demand that Amazon do better: it or any corporation has no justification for existence at all when doesn't serve public interest so well as possible.
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Dumb...
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"it was a non-story"
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Re: "it was a non-story"
Do you really want to try to make the case that major media newpapers never prominently report on pointless non-stories?
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I doubt this. The TD angle of this sort of story is patently obvious. I think it's more likely because it's a story of almost no actual importance.
Even if true, such "damage" would be limited to Amazon World, though, and I have a hard time believing it would be significant damage.
What really damages a writer's reputation is crappy writing.
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Re: Re: "it was a non-story"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9515593/RJ-Ellory-detected-crime-write r-who-faked-his-own-glowing-reviews.html
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/09/sockp uppet-reviews-arent-just-unethicaltheyre-also-unconvincing/56499/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwch armananderson/2012/09/03/amazon-reviews-rj-ellory-apologises-for-fakery/
http://articles.latimes.co m/2012/sep/04/news/la-jc-the-furor-over-sock-puppet-amazon-book-reviews-20120904
http://techcrunch. com/2012/09/08/sock-puppet-spectacular-are-online-reviews-completely-worthless-or-only-mostly-worthl ess/
"Significant" is of course a matter of opinion, but it would be more honest of you to say you haven't given the matter much thought and you don't really care one way or the other.
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I have read the links you supplied, and think I know where we differ. Yes, in one sense, his reputation suffered, but it seems only in a fairly select circle. Not that this is totally unimportant, but it seems fairly minor to me in the larger scheme of things.
here, you are 2/3 right, though, and I offer my humble apology. Below a certain level of impact, "significant" is a subjective measure, and I don't really care about fake reviews one way or the other.
However, the issue of fake reviews is one I've thought a lot about in the past (not with Amazon, but the principle is identical).
The reason that I don't care about fake reviews is because reviews that people put on commerce sites are, in the final analysis, mostly worthless anyway, regardless of whether or not they are faked.
Reviews are only of value when the reviewer has tastes & needs that are similar to yours. When random people review something, there is no way to know if they have the required overlap.
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I can't compete against those who pay for reviews. If good reviews put one book ahead of another, then paying for reviews is no different than doping before a race like Lance Armstrong. It makes for an uneven playing field.
Unlike some, I don't have the money to pay for reviews, nor do I have an org or publishing house behind me. I need to excel on the quality of my writing alone.
So to the writer of this blog - if the Amazon algorithms translate stars into sales, then yes, it appears that the sock puppets can definitely hurt others.
I agree that Amazon needs to find a better way to deal with them, but appreciate that they are trying.
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Re: "it was a non-story"
Maybe I missed the rest of "sock-puppeting" authors? I'll admit I didn't go looking for any more outside the links you gave but reading them, the (lack of substantive) content suggests to me that they are as much as anything an excuse to use the term "sock-puppeting". One article even goes as far as to wonder whether it matters at all.Again I counted 2 maybe 3. Are there more I missed?Which is the subject of the piece is it not? How a handful of people's "moral outrage" produced a wildly out-of-proportion response from Amazon?Well I can't speak for Techdirt, but from my take on what they mostly write about "several authors" complaining about false reviews:
Has no real technical angle - it could just as easily have been a print review, unless you're going to try and say that an author has never for example paid off a journalist for a favourable review which would be very similar in effect.
Has no copyright angle
Has no patent angle
Has no IP legal angle
Has no business model angle - until, that is, Amazon affect their business model of customer reviews by taking action, which appears to have been written about.Ad homenims unnecessary, especially when a "glass houses and stones" argument could be made.
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It seems this is about more than just sock puppet reviews. Beyond paid reviews, the Amazon policy restricts directly competing products and third-party merchants. One has to wonder if Amazon is detecting writers as third-party merchants or promoters, if they have links to other authors on their sites or blogs. Or, has Amazon extended the competing products provision to cover not just negative reviews but 5-star glowing reviews from authors in collusion?
It's clear that Amazon is clamping down, and they have to, somehow, given that there are so many fake and gratuitous reviews. There is a fantastic community of independent authors and independent publishers. But when people buy fake reviews and fake twitter followers, and we receive their marketing messages day after day, and sometimes minute by minute, or even when there's an orgy of gratuitous mutual reviews, that's not a healthy community.
This reminds me of how bloggers changed the game for SEO by exchanging links faster than any websites had ever imagined to get to the top of Google SERPs. Now indie authors have been gaming Amazon to become "best-selling" authors with virtual reams of 5* reviews. Google keeps leveling the playing field for SEO, and Amazon will continue to rethink the playing field for authors.
But, there may be life beyond Amazon for indie books. At least let's hope so.
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one-star
If I were an author, I'd be much more concerned by books being down-rated for reasons irrelevant to the content than by books being up-rated because the writer needed to buy a good review.
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The guy's a troll. The fact that his reviews are being deleted... I couldn't care less.
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What about Dianetics?
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Reviews from other authors
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sock-puppet reviews
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What else are they going to do to destroy the independent author market?
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