Yelp is being investigated for their marketing practices including removing negative reviews for business customers who buy "enough" advertising with them. They call businesses and say that they can make sure the best reviews are sorted to the top and if someone refuses, then the reviews are reorganized the other way, with negative reviews sorted to the top, good reviews are no longer shown (and the average star rating is dynamically calculated so that goes down too.) Yelp also sends its employees out to review businesses either positively or negatively based on how much "advertising" the business has bought.
[I am not making that up. I read it in the newspaper. Someone might have been making it up, but there were RealName interviews with photographed business owners who described the experience.]
Yelp skews its results based on criteria that are not known to the reader. And they definitely remove negative reviews of their ad-buying business customers.
Amazon removes negative comments and reviews all the time. If someone complains, they go through and delete any comment or rating below 3 stars. I think it's a manual process, but a tirade on a 5 star review doesn't usually get deleted.
Currently I'm considering mixers and the horrible reviews of the KitchenAid brand mixers are almost all gone. There was review after review talking about motor burn-out, plastic gear boxes splintering, dripping motor oil spraying over the food bowl and KitchenAid's horrendous customer service. Really graphic descriptions. They're all gone. Just a few remnants where a 5 star review said, ~"I read that other people had problems, but mine is fabulous!"~
They pulled a bunch of reviews on a pro-baby book a few years ago because they got a slew of them all at once. But I know a lot of the people read the book before posting appalled comments. Amazon did not pull the bitchy and antagonistic reviews on a childfree oriented book even when the reviews said, "I haven't read this but...."
Amazon deleted my review of the drecky book by Naomi K* published by Bantam that was supposedly science fiction but was a thinly disguised screed against fantasy novels. It was a book about how Gesu was going to save people from the destruction caused by Guidas's use of magic. The main character was a lesbian who ran away and then slaughtered tens of thousands as the sub-general of an army that kills anyone with a trace of magic. She keeps saying she knows killing is wrong but it's the only thing that keeps her from wanting to fuck women. And she's not the actual leader because it's women's place to be subservient to men, even if the men are less successful generals. Really.
My review of it mentioned that it was a pro-Christian book with an agenda that runs counter to most science fiction themes. In about that kind of language. (Definitely no screed.) It's gone and most of the reviews are from people who say it's so nice to read a nice book from a genre they think is usually full of devil worship.
[Personally I no longer read books published by Bantam, or writers named Naomi anything.]
Travel sites are the worst. They have an undisclosed policy to always remove negative reviews. It's common practice everywhere.
I don't write "reviews" for fanfic stories either. No one wants any sort of comment unless it's a squee. I just don't see why they'd need me to participate in that. The author's note usually says only positive comments are welcome. So the author has a script in her head already and doesn't need me to write it. I'll just poorly transcribe the exaltations because my mind reading really sucks.
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Date: 2009-10-07 05:47 am (UTC)[I am not making that up. I read it in the newspaper. Someone might have been making it up, but there were RealName interviews with photographed business owners who described the experience.]
Yelp skews its results based on criteria that are not known to the reader. And they definitely remove negative reviews of their ad-buying business customers.
Amazon removes negative comments and reviews all the time. If someone complains, they go through and delete any comment or rating below 3 stars. I think it's a manual process, but a tirade on a 5 star review doesn't usually get deleted.
Currently I'm considering mixers and the horrible reviews of the KitchenAid brand mixers are almost all gone. There was review after review talking about motor burn-out, plastic gear boxes splintering, dripping motor oil spraying over the food bowl and KitchenAid's horrendous customer service. Really graphic descriptions. They're all gone. Just a few remnants where a 5 star review said, ~"I read that other people had problems, but mine is fabulous!"~
They pulled a bunch of reviews on a pro-baby book a few years ago because they got a slew of them all at once. But I know a lot of the people read the book before posting appalled comments. Amazon did not pull the bitchy and antagonistic reviews on a childfree oriented book even when the reviews said, "I haven't read this but...."
Amazon deleted my review of the drecky book by Naomi K* published by Bantam that was supposedly science fiction but was a thinly disguised screed against fantasy novels. It was a book about how Gesu was going to save people from the destruction caused by Guidas's use of magic. The main character was a lesbian who ran away and then slaughtered tens of thousands as the sub-general of an army that kills anyone with a trace of magic. She keeps saying she knows killing is wrong but it's the only thing that keeps her from wanting to fuck women. And she's not the actual leader because it's women's place to be subservient to men, even if the men are less successful generals. Really.
My review of it mentioned that it was a pro-Christian book with an agenda that runs counter to most science fiction themes. In about that kind of language. (Definitely no screed.) It's gone and most of the reviews are from people who say it's so nice to read a nice book from a genre they think is usually full of devil worship.
[Personally I no longer read books published by Bantam, or writers named Naomi anything.]
Travel sites are the worst. They have an undisclosed policy to always remove negative reviews. It's common practice everywhere.
I don't write "reviews" for fanfic stories either. No one wants any sort of comment unless it's a squee. I just don't see why they'd need me to participate in that. The author's note usually says only positive comments are welcome. So the author has a script in her head already and doesn't need me to write it. I'll just poorly transcribe the exaltations because my mind reading really sucks.