Consumers place greater trust in websites “that display fraudulent reviews alongside nonfraudulent reviews,” according to a recent study. Columnist Davidlaz explains why he's not on board with this approach:
Perhaps it was inevitable that in this strange era of “alternative facts” and fake claims of “fake news,” someone would make the case for why bogus online reviews are a good thing.
“At first, we also thought it was crazy that people would want to see the dark side of the internet,” Li, one of the study’s authors, told me. I see how that works in theory. It’s nice to think that everyone is thoughtful and diligent enough to sift through all available information and come up with a well-informed decision.
“Sites should definitely be trying to prevent such content from being posted,” he said, adding that if phony reviews are going to remain online, they should be blurred “so that the content is unobservable.”Harikesh Nair, a marketing professor at Stanford University, said it’s not clear that flagging a review as fake but leaving it online serves as a deterrent to companies trying to game the system.
Rather, there appears to be a sense that since lots of others are doing it, what’s the harm in trying?“Review sites are in a tough situation when it comes to fake reviews,” said Cayce Myers, an associate professor of public relations at Virginia Tech. As an avid online shopper, my feeling is that blurred posts and public shaming wouldn’t particularly help my decision-making process.I’d rather trust reputable brands such as Google and Amazon to aggressively police their reviews using AI, algorithms or even actual human beings, and to swiftly remove any posts that don’t pass muster.
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