{"guid":"b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5","title":"Caveat Emptor:  Ratings and Reviews Can't Be Trusted","subtitle":null,"slug":"why2025-265-caveat-emptor-ratings-and-reviews-can-t-be-trusted","link":"https://program.why2025.org/why2025/talk/CJQD7U/","description":"It's hard for a platform to have meaningful, useful ratings/reviews without both \nsubstantially Knowing Your Customer, engineering to detect manipulated reviews,\nand responding in a nuanced way -- to increase a fraudster's costs, \nand not  just train them to hide better.  Lots of examples of diverse\nplatforms not doing a very good job of this.  (I'll also talk about how this \nknowledge sometimes leads platforms try to manipulate their own \ncustomers to maximize their sales).\n\nRatings and reviews, although almost universally relied on by consumers, are, like\nmuch other online info, often manipulated to increase sales, pump up merchant reputation \nbut are sometimes used malicious to slam a competitor).\n\nEven sites that only allow reviews from purchasers can be manipulated, particularly on platforms\nwhen low cost products are sold. Ebay harbors fraudulent sellers by combining buyer and \nseller reputation, and not weighting by sale price. (So a 5 star rating for a trivial purchase accrues equal reputation as a large value sale.)\n\nMany manipulations should be easily detectable by looking for some clear behavioral signatures, and then not training the adversaries by using adversary engineering rather than simply deactivating accounts. (I'll show you how to spot a lot of the red flags.)\n\nExamples ranging from pumped up restaurant listings (up to #1 in London), Amazon \nand Ebay's problems, a puppy sales site that had a rating system so bad by design \nthat they were sued by an animal rights org for facilitating fraud by puppy mills. \n(There are a lot of sick puppies out there...)\n\nLicensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","original_language":"eng","persons":["mark seiden"],"tags":["265","2025","why2025","Yearn for a better future","Andromeda","why2025-eng","Day 5"],"view_count":65,"promoted":false,"date":"2025-08-11T19:00:00.000+02:00","release_date":"2025-08-12T00:00:00.000+02:00","updated_at":"2025-12-08T05:30:02.647+01:00","length":3002,"duration":3002,"thumb_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/why2025/265-b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5.jpg","poster_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/why2025/265-b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5_preview.jpg","timeline_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/why2025/265-b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5.timeline.jpg","thumbnails_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/events/why2025/265-b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5.thumbnails.vtt","frontend_link":"https://media.ccc.de/v/why2025-265-caveat-emptor-ratings-and-reviews-can-t-be-trusted","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/b18cb30f-0fc6-5a0d-a027-184d87f0e7b5","conference_title":"What Hackers Yearn 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