Everything has been corrupted.
Everything has been corrupted.
Yup. I was strapped to cash several years ago with my website and marketing business. One of my clients was getting hammered with negative reviews by a dirty competitor. He needed 5 star reviews because he couldn’t pay to have the bogus ones removed.
It cost me something like $300 to have a Serbian team who spoke great English make a bunch of individual accounts on yelp and Weedmaps and Google to go make about 1200 total reviews.
And that was doing it manually.
Yup. I was strapped to cash several years ago with my website and marketing business. One of my clients was getting hammered with negative reviews by a dirty competitor.
He needed 5 star reviews because he couldn’t pay to have the bogus ones removed.
It cost me something like $300 to have a Serbian team who spoke great English make a bunch of individual accounts on yelp and Weedmaps and Google to go make about 1200 total reviews.
And that was doing it manually.
Nothing new, but always interesting to see it in action. Since the masses have discovered reviews, I think we are stuck now in an arms race between review fakers and ways to detect and filter fake reviews. Unfortunately, the fakers have an advantage because unlike honest reviewers they get paid to do it all day.
Funnily enough, probably one of the best places to get non-shill reviews is sources that are right wing and deplatformed as a result (like poal, lol). Deplatforming by definition implies a lack of ad revenue, and if someone is openly racist online probably many of these companies will not want to associate their brand with them. There might be companies which don't mind the reputation, so they may still be shilled, but this in turn creates an alternate economy and negates the deplatforming, while expanding the market for companies catering to the right.
Nothing new, but always interesting to see it in action. Since the masses have discovered reviews, I think we are stuck now in an arms race between review fakers and ways to detect and filter fake reviews. Unfortunately, the fakers have an advantage because unlike honest reviewers they get paid to do it all day.
Funnily enough, probably one of the best places to get non-shill reviews is sources that are right wing and deplatformed as a result (like poal, lol). Deplatforming by definition implies a lack of ad revenue, and if someone is openly racist online probably many of these companies will not want to associate their brand with them. There might be companies which don't mind the reputation, so they may still be shilled, but this in turn creates an alternate economy and negates the deplatforming, while expanding the market for companies catering to the right.
I recall when Yelp started out, it was hard to find legit reviews because of the constant influx of fake reviews. Personally, I find 4 and 3 star reviews far more realistic and helpful, but it also depends on the establishment.
There's a great dive bar down the road from me that has a bunch of moderate reviews because people review it as if it's fine dining. I actually broke my rule of never reviewing anything to give it 5 stars because it has everything you'd want in a dive bar: cheap booze, great bar food, and smoking.
I recall when Yelp started out, it was hard to find legit reviews because of the constant influx of fake reviews. Personally, I find 4 and 3 star reviews far more realistic and helpful, but it also depends on the establishment.
There's a great dive bar down the road from me that has a bunch of moderate reviews because people review it as if it's fine dining. I actually broke my rule of never reviewing anything to give it 5 stars because it has everything you'd want in a dive bar: cheap booze, great bar food, and smoking.
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