Hacker News

points by arealaccount 2 days ago | 0 comments

Is this like Amazon where the reviewers are basically on a “get free stuff” list, and they are no longer selected once they leave a negative review?’

[–] tsxng 2 days ago

Probably part of it. A lot of reviewers get their units for free and it's easier to be happy with something you didn't pay for. We can't tell which reviews were sponsored, so we can't measure that directly.

[–] arjie 2 days ago

One unfortunate thing is that Amazon blocked all reviews that said "In exchange for an honest and unbiased review, I received ..." which was a good marker of product crapitude. It makes sense for Amazon to do that since it makes them look better but as a user I wish it hadn't happened - because of AI I can now review all the crap reviews easily. It would have been good to have known.

[–] arealaccount 2 days ago

“Sponsored” is an interesting word to use

[–] ssl-3 2 days ago

I've been on Amazon's "get free stuff" list for a few years. I review stuff honestly.

If the product is trash, I review it as such.

If it's good, it gets some notes about the good stuff and the parts that make it less-than-great.

If it's great (and I'm rather particular so most things fall short of "great"), then it's still gone over in detail.

If my opinion changes over time, either positively or negatively, then: I update the review.

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This is in-keeping with the program's terms of service, and nothing about those terms compels me to behave other-than-honestly. I'm not expecting to get kicked out of it anytime soon regardless of how many 1-star reviews I post.

[–] scheme271 2 days ago

Beyond that reviewers probably don't get as much time with the product so they're not likely to get the chance to see reliability issues. A new product isn't likely to break within a 1 month review period.