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Belkin in "astroturfing" furore
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 19th January 2009
The job listings on Amazon's Mechanical Turk - posted by Belkin's Mike Bayard - ask for people to write false five-star reviews on Belkin products.
First spotted by The Daily Background – via Engadget – the evidence comes in the form of a posting on Amazon's Mechanical Turk site – which offers “artificial artificial intelligence,” allowing companies to pay small sums of money to hire individuals to perform mundane or repetitive tasks – from Belkin's Mike Bayard asking for people to “write a positive 5/5 review for [a] product on [a] website.”
The advert goes on to request that users wanting to get their hands a whole 65¢ US – that's a massive 44p at current exchange rates – write their review “as if you own the product and are using it” while giving the Belkin product “a 100% rating (as high as possible.)” Bayard even asks respondents to “mark any other negative reviews as “not helpful” when you post yours.”
While the phenomenon of companies paying people to create fake grass-roots support for their products or services – known as astroturfing – isn't new, this is the first time a company has been quite so blatant. Identified as a “business development representative at Belkin”, Bayard has created dozens of jobs on the Mechanical Turk site – all asking for people to create false reviews regarding products they neither own nor use.
Since the news of Belkin's shenanigans went public, Bayard – or someone higher up – has deleted all the jobs requests from the Mechanical Turk website – along with his profile on social networking site LinkedIn. Despite this clear admission that the company has been caught with its kimono open, Belkin has yet to come forward with an official statement regarding its activities.
Do you trust reviews on sites such as Amazon or Buy.com when purchasing products, or has this just confirmed what you've always long suspected? Should Belkin be allowed to get away with misleading its customers in this way? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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I'd much rather rely on reviews from trusted sources, such as bit or TR.
agreed.
Kind of ridiculous that a large manufacturer would try something like this though.
Fltering through the ones that are PEBKAC, I find the negative ones speak volumes more than the reviews praising it.
Unless it's from an impartial, professional reviewer/review site.
I sometimes looked for these reviews when browsing for various items that I hadn't seen reviewed elswhere, I'll be more suspicious in future.
Oh and I agree that a lot of the reviews do degenerate into a flame war between people calling each other retards, I just assumed it was more likely to be pre-pubescent teenies baiting each other. Trouble is you seem to get that everywhere now.
PS Shame on you Belkin, but even Sony were caught out posting fake reviews so would it be easier to ask if there are any companies that haven't done something similar?
I mean how stupid do you have to be to post that kind of job request on the internet? Pretty stupid.
In any case, as liratheal said, the negative ones are usually worth reading, if the website gives you an option to filter them. All well and good to say just use sites like bit-tech, but opting to buy, say, a 4870 from a website, you know the card is good from reviews but you don't know what the bundle includes, how many slots the cooler is going to take up etc.
Basically, they can be useful. I'd just advise reading the 5 star ones.
Proper tech review sites is where its at.
But seriously, I've found their stuff to be mostly okay. Everybody has to pay bills so nobody is truly neutral.