Amazon’s Embattled Reviews Make Another Change · 7:28pm Aug 16th, 2018
Amazon reviews are slowly becoming a digital battleground of the future. Or petering out as one, depending on you ask. However, whether it’s using Amazon reviews to “review bomb” folks whose politics other folks disagree with, or paying a click-farm in China to generate thousands of fake reviews, Amazon’s review system seems almost destined to be at the constant forefront of unscrupulous folks thinking “How can I use this to my advantage/other’s disadvantage?”
With that sort of activity going on (and the almost Hipster-ish dislike for Amazon now that they’ve managed to stand head and shoulders above their rivals), it really shouldn’t have been surprising to me when a long-time fan of my works contacted me to let me know that they were no longer able to post Amazon reviews, and thus they wouldn’t be able to add their review of my latest to Amazon’s page for such.
The reason? Well, Amazon has a new review policy: To leave a review, you have to be a customer in good standing. You can’t have been spamming the site with reviews that are clearly fake, participated in review-bombing, stuff like that. But there’s another new requirement now.
In order to remain “in good standing” you have to be an Amazon customer, having spent at least $50 with them in the last year.
We hate Amazon because it treats its workers shittily while continuing to dodge taxes and make ever more literal truckloads of money.
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What is this? Class consciousness?
How hipsterish of you!
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Which is weird, because they're the ones who do this to a lesser degree over everyone else, and yet ... they're cool to hate. 99% of all companies treat their employees horridly. That doesn't make it right, but at the same time, arguing Amazon is somehow evil over it while Apple literally has safety nets around their factories because of all the worker suicides and is totally fine seems hypocritical.
As for tax dodges, they don't dodge nearly as much as anyone else. In fact, during the Apple-Amazon court case, Amazon submitted to an audit and were found to be playing fair. Apple hid and has been since revealed to dodge trillions in taxes. And where Apple stockpiles its funds for its CEO and board members, Amazon has one of the lowest industry dividends, something the CEO has been slammed for, because they keep putting their profits back into the company, and not his pockets or shareholders.
They're not saints, no. But acting like they are the only bully around is blind to the extreme. There are far worse companies to work for or do business with.
I think the price gate is a bit high. But whenever I’m looking at a book, I go to multiple places to look at reviews. So, I suppose if I had to pick one, I’d say that I approve of the idea of this change. It’ll hopefully go through a little refining, though.
Huh. Might want to move that disclaimer to the front of the article.
That said, I find it to be an annoying change. I hope it leads to a steep drop in fake reviews, and leaving things as they were was clearly not the answer since people were able to trash each-other's livelihoods out of spite with no repercussions, but I don't like that it excludes people who have a gift copy and hadn't been active on Amazon. It's a complex problem.
Maybe if it were limited to people who own the product (whether by gift or by purchase), it would be good. That still leaves upvote-bombing as a viable tactic if people can give out unlimited free gifts, but it should limit 1-star bombing.
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Disclaimer?
EDIT: Oh, the disclaimer about side-railing into "Waluigi hates Amazon?" Eh, maybe. Usually I predict that my readers will at least read the whole article before commenting. Higher tier and all that.
I’ll admit, it was annoying when it happened, but I do see the reasoning behind it.
At the same time, it seems to me like a far more appropriate means of dealing with this is not to make potential reviewers spend so much money on Amazon, but instead to have actually bought the product they are reviewing. Which I did. And they know it. Heck, the page of the item I bought has a line informing me that I did. It would make far more sense to me to make that the criteria. It prevents people from just slamming anything they want willy-nilly without having seen it before, and even if they never even open the box (so to speak) they’re still being forced to pay the very person they’re blasting, thereby giving them a motivation to keep writing regardless. It almost makes the joke on them at that point.
But I’m sure there’s a legit reason to not go that route too, I just haven’t thought of it yet.
Oh, and since we’re on topic: You can has review!!
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Unfortunately, I do know why that alone isn't a quantifier anymore (they do state in the review tag whether the product was bought). A lot of less scrupulous sellers will either buy products for someone, calculate the cost in the review cost, use a sale to sell hundreds at a dollar apiece, etc. Or other methods. :pinkiesad: It's sad, but they found ways around it.
And review time! YAY!
Hmm... Sounds like ground work that will allow my business idea take foot. This may lead to a better thing.
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I was going to go for blatant disregard for the law. It takes a special kind of company to tell me to fuck off when I literally read them the law I have the technical expertise to authoritatively say they are breaking. Sure I could have easily won a court case against them, but the fact of the matter is that it just wasn't worth the trouble to go through with that for so little money because of the way the court system is rigged, and they know that's the case so they keep on getting away with blatantly illegal bullshit.
Of course, since Viking decided to start with the disingenuous assertions about us for disliking the company he's taking it up the ass from, I'll go ahead and return the favor by saying he's only accusing us of being "hipsters" to protect his own fragile ego from the reality of how shitty a company Amazon is.
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If you don't like it, go post on your own blog. Rather than going to every other blog that dares mention the name Amazon and posting the same story, again and again. Every. Single. Time.
You never provide details. You never actually get specific. Just anger noises any time you even see the word "Amazon." Regardless of the topic, you've got to hijack it for your personal crusade, without fail.
I mean, I could have said vegan. Or snowflake. It's pretty much the same pattern all the way through, though.
It's gotten old. I will gladly, in a thread about companies one no longer does business with, or on the downfallings of Tor, bring up why I'm not a fan of Tor. What I don't do is post in every single place that mentions them why I don't like them and run the whole story out each time.
This was not a thread for you to make rage noises about your issues with Amazon, as stated. This was a thread discussing the changes to the review standards, and the pros and cons of that change. I expected you would hijack it, and lo and behold, I was right. It wasn't disingenuous either, as you immediately proved there was a reason for the disclaimer. That's like someone requesting not to have politics at a Thanksgiving dinner, and someone slams their hand down and yells "Politics! Of course you wouldn't want us to talk about those! You just don't want to hear about the glories of [insert right/left president here]!" followed by a tirade as everyone else groans.
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First, I did give you a detailed explanation in one of my first posts on your blogs. Of course, it went against your cognitive bias because it was irrefutable proof that Amazon is a shitty company so you flushed it from your memory and act like I never explained myself, but I very much did. I've also given more detailed explanations about why I see things as problems when you refuse to acknowledge them on numerous occasions, so you are being very disingenuous here.
Second, I was actually planning on leaving this be in spite of the first disingenuous comment at the beginning of the post, but when I got to the big block at the end which was functionally a personal attack I decided I couldn't ignore it. If you want proof, note that I never actually discuss the content of your post here because I don't care. I responded to Super Trampoline who was also irritated at your attack and then took you on directly for your shit, but I don't care what ridiculous review policy Amazon has because I don't use their site and thus don't see their reviews.
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No, I remember reading through it. And I remember that you were vague enough that it sounded a lot like "I screwed up but can't admit it, so I'm going to be angry and irrational." And I nodded and moved on.
And then it comes up, over and over again. In fact, for this reply, I did a quick scan through. Any post that so much mentions Amazon? You're either passive-aggressively telling everyone not to deal with them because they hurt you so badly, or just ragging on them entirely.
Especially when it has no place in the current conversation, you still bring it up. And then this:
Yeah, you do that a lot. You hop in, make your case against Amazon, and leave. And you did it here to because you got stung by the fact that you do it so often you got called on it. You couldn't take the slightest bit of criticism at how aggressively you go after anyone and everyone who dares deal with Amazon, and you snapped back.
You are, ultimately, pushing for a block. You're both ignoring the requested rules of the blog and flaunting it, plus reaching the point where you're moving into angry tirade territory. I—and anyone else here—lose nothing if that happens. As you've pointed out, you will never buy one of my books, and have no plans to, and in fact actively encourage other readers not to. You already toe the line, and I don't have to let you post here. So you can either swallow your pride or continue burning your ship. One of the two.
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I'm not going to waste my time responding to the bulk of that, but there is one thing I want to address.
In point of fact, I was planning to buy your books. You made it inconvenient by only selling through a company I refuse to do business with, so my plan was to work around that by sending double the normal price via Patreon to cover your extra overhead from pulling down and sending e-books to me another way. There was a whole chain of stuff forcing me to wait to set up Patreon (and make a number of other online purchases) until either next week or the week after, so all things considered it's good this happened now instead of after I was financially committed.