2 days ago, the UK government banned fake reviews and hidden fees but the extent to which the former is enforceable is laughable to say the least.

A £2 Billion problem?

Apparently, £2B+ every year is wasted by consumers in the UK due to fake reviews and on the surface this seems like a problem needing a fix. So, I decided to dig deep.

After analysing more than 1000 products on Amazon (UK) alone across tech, fashion, accessories, and home improvement categories, only 17% reviews came out to be real — despite various strategies it all boiled down to the sentiment of reviews. About 12% reviews were duplicated which skews the average rating (for the thought that only purchasers can add a review) and about 33% reviews were 1-star or 5-star (just an observation and not too much of analysis here).

But all this data didn’t seem great enough due to sheer lack of volume (and patience), so I took a nap. After the hard earned nap, it occurred to me that this law would make it difficult to leave negative reviews. Most online platforms nowadays have a review system for user reviews which does a bad a job at not approving useful negative reviews.

It hit me — its almost like how YouTube removed the dislike count to support content creators and some PR statements.

So, what could this mean for us consumers? Difficulty in giving negative feedback or getting free returns without giving a feedback (some ebay sellers add this note with your package) or just a pseudo level playing field for all businesses to optimise for quality than reviews?

I don’t know that yet, but enforcing something that is nearly impossible to enforce is surely a fun way to utilise resources — this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a law but there must be publicly available and understandable measures to keep checks.

Thought I'd share some points and hear some :))