Amazon user feedback used for censorship

Amazon user feedback used for censorship(marklynas.org)

55 points by bendotc 14 years ago | 24 comments

acangiano 14 years ago |

Running anynewbooks.com, this is only one of the abuses I routinely see happening on Amazon. Most of the other abuses are related to the review system. There are so many fake and spiteful reviews, that in many cases it's really hard to judge a book based on the reviews.

I absolutely love Amazon, but they need preventive measures against these forms of manipulation.

For example:

- Prevent people who haven't bought the book from Amazon to leave a review. People may still abuse the review system, but it will be less people, and they'll make the author and publisher slightly richer in the process.

- If you complain about a book not being as good as advertised, you need to provide proof. Explain in detail what is wrong with it, and provide photographic proof, a scan, or send the book back for inspection. Issue a refund by all means, but don't just trust them and pull the book from the shelves.

Right now, anyone could tank any new book published on Amazon with very little work on their part.

jdminhbg 14 years ago | |

Amazon doesn't require a purchase to leave a review, but it's worth noting that if have purchased it through Amazon, they'll tag your review with a little "Amazon Confirmed Purchase" badge.

Requiring a purchase through Amazon would drastically cut down on the number of reviews they would get; lots of people own lots of books and movies and albums they purchased before Amazon existed and can give good reviews of them. I don't think it's reasonable to expect Amazon to shut those reviews out.

acangiano 14 years ago | | |

I meant it as a change for new books coming out, not for, say, your favorite Pink Floyd album. Existing products/reviews should be, for better or for worse, left in place of course.

Klinky 14 years ago | |

I think a lot of businesses are going to be looking at the profit potential of each product. If a large amount of people are buying the book & asking for a refund, eventually the overhead costs of processing returns & refunds will make it not worth carrying it anymore. This could definitely be abused if someone orchestrated a large purchase & return campaign. I highly doubt merchandisers want to get into the business of arbitration over the merits of the merchandise with their customers. Although there are less customer service inclined companies that make a business out of selling bad merchandise & haggling with the customer about returns, but that's not Amazon's business. They will probably just follow the money & if something is controversial they're not going to take a hit on their profits to stand up for it.

tomp 14 years ago | | |

> This could definitely be abused if someone orchestrated a large purchase & return campaign

I don't think so. For a very popular book, the resources needed for this would be enormous, as there would be thousands of other, legitimate buyers.

For less popular books, noone would bother anyways.

epo 14 years ago | |

I think that requiring that you must have purchased the item before you can leave a review is key.

Of course giving a bully pulpit to people who can leave consequence-free complaints and negative feedback is key to Amazon's bogus sense of "community".

bugsy 14 years ago | | |

Hm, looking up a couple products I have recently bought, very few reviews for them say "Verified Purchase". Yet most of these reviews are helpful. The useless ones are ones that say things like "Received it quickly!" from purchasers confused that they are not buying from ebay.

So following your protocol would get rid of these useful reviews which benefit me and others.

In the case being discussed, the customers that returned it as "not as described" did in fact purchase it from amazon, otherwise they would not be able to return it to amazon. So they would still be included.

sliverstorm 14 years ago |

On the bright side, he can now legitimately market the book as "The book THEY don't want you to read"

bugsy 14 years ago |

OK, so 5 people returned the book as "not as described."

Here is a question. If you are returning a product to amazon because you don't like it, is the only way to get your shipping refunded and/or a refund at all to check the box that says "not as described"?

It sounds like some people bought the book and didn't like it so they returned it. If it's only 5 people it's not much of an organized conspiracy by "fanatics" as he suggests.

Perhaps the problem is with amazon's return policies, and perhaps they should not link "not as described" to cancellations with books from known publishers as they would be if it was sacks of golden coins sold by some independent vendor.

In a brick and mortar store, customers can evaluate more of a book than is possible on amazon. Therefore it would be reasonable for amazon to have a liberal refund policy.

nowarninglabel 14 years ago | |

I think this may be somewhat true. I've bought over 150 books now on Amazon, and have only returned 1. That 1 was a Packt Publishing book which had a fantastical description, but after I spent an hour leafing through it, it turned out they had literally copy and pasted 1/4 of the material from drupal.org. Thus, I returned it "not as described". However, this was prior to Kindle.

As to your last point, I would have agreed, until Kindle came out, in which case with most books I can now get a free preview, which is usually enough to evaluate if a book is worth purchasing.

eneveu 14 years ago |

Amazon user feedback may sometimes be useful, though.

Last week, while browsing the Amazon page for Zed Shaw's "Learn Python The Hard Way", I noticed that the only review was a 2-star review with a comment along the lines of "I haven't read it, but since it's free on the learnpythonthehardway website, don't bother buying it on Amazon!"* I thought this was just wrong to "review" a book like this. Reviews should at least address the content of a book...

I noticed the "0 out of 4 people found this review helpful", and promptly added another "unhelpful" vote. I also decided to "report" the review (first time I clicked this button). When I came back the next day, the review had been removed. I have no idea whether other people reported it too, or whether an Amazon employee manually checked the review. But it sure seems to be effective, and I think it was useful here.

*: I haven't kept a copy of the exact comment.

LiveTheDream 14 years ago |

I'm getting a "Forbidden: you don't have permission to access" error on this link.

serichsen 14 years ago |

I think that private companies need to establish due process just like governments, especially when they are among the market leaders in their field.

That means that they need to check accusations first, before they damage their customers.

dwilson718 14 years ago |

The author s looking for media hype and doesn't even have the facts. Put simply, he's playing the martyr card and making a scene just to boost his own sales.

telling people to tweet his page isnt so much a protest against amazon as it is a Marketing Campaign. (a handful of re/tweets isnt going to suddenly incite action on amazons part)

That aside, I dont think i'll be buying the book of someone who cries censorship (/wolf) when he himself doesnt even know whats going on.

Tichy 14 years ago |

I don't see how Amazon could possibly handle this better. Having somebody read every book before it goes on sale definitely wouldn't scale.

Perhaps they could offer to verify a book for a fee. Then again, the problem might not be widespread enough.

I think I would set up my web sites in the same way: as soon as users would push the red alert button for some item on my site, I would withdraw it from public circulation and mark it for reviewing. On the upside, once it is manually reviewed, it could not be flagged again. How else would you do it?

jamesbritt 14 years ago | |

How else would you do it?

Leave it in place until concrete evidence is presented.

Tichy 14 years ago | | |

Problem is some stuff might actually be illegal. If you host a baby forum and somebody posts kiddy porn, keeping it around for too long is a bad idea.

tomp 14 years ago |

That's the problem with monopolistic/dominant companies... They just don't care. Neither about their customers, neither about their business partners.

G+ vs. FB FTW!

wccrawford 14 years ago |

Sounds like paranoia to me. Amazon is following their policies. Nothing to see here.

robtoo 14 years ago | |

The complaint is not that Amazon are intentionally blocking certain controversial material, but that their policies are fundamentally flawed and easily-abused.

This also isn't the first time that one of Amazon's policies has been abused... http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/2009/04/12/amazon-under-fir...

ComputerGuru 14 years ago | |

I don't think it's paranoia, so much as it is someone lamenting a loss and looking for someone or something to blame. He's wants this to be a big deal, even if it isn't..

I'd say it's more about too big a sense of self-importance than anything else.