Amazon: Lost in the Ethical Jungle?

[panzerfaust]

In the discussion on a book “The Final Theory” AZ commented that “The claim is that the author has been demanding that Amazon remove any negative reviews (ratings of 1 or 2). Many people have claimed to have written negative reviews only to find them removed when they went back to check on them”

This really caught my attention, as I put a lot of value and credence in the independent reviews on Amazon. Also, I have been submitting reviews to Amazon as long as Amazon has had reviews, and have had only one not published - in which I pointed out fraud by a ‘company’ selling on Amazon. I could see why they might not have published that – though it was true, and the ‘company’ did disappear from Amazon sellers within a few weeks.

In any event, there are 90 reviews of the book on Amazon. Most are breathless with praise. However, there are, in fact, a few negative reviews. Given the quite remarkable claims made in the text, it passeth understanding (if not belief) why there are so few less-than-laudatory reviews.

So, wishing to test AZ’s hypothesis, I submitted a negative review.

It has not appeared. As noted, this makes only the second Amazon review that I have submitted in say what – nearly a decade – that has not been published.

It is possible that my review was considered too lame to publish. Certainly, it was not published for being offensive – I took pains to not be. It was just not laudatory.

More probable seems that AZ is correct: That, either because of avarice, or a personal relationship with the author, very few negative reviews of this book are being published by Amazon.

Amazon: Another of the, very few, companies that I have though well of, proves to have feet of clay. Or, at least, to put Mammon above all.

Has anyone else noticed censorship of reviews (of anything) by Amazon?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. The gravity of this situation has left me

speechless for the most part.... however, I find it funny that the neg reviews have been sequestered to the realm of non-existance. If this be the case, Amazon needs to clean up its act. If Arundhati Roy can have a negative review, so can Mark.

My review of your post is: ***** :)

[Selatius]

2. Maybe I should be surprised to see this, but for some reason I'm not.

Whenever there seems to be a conflict with the bottom line between that and something else, the bottom line has a nasty habit of winning unless it's the law it is conflicting with. In which case, the law either stops it, or a loophole is found, or the law is repealed through lobbying.

[SpiralHawk]

3. Amazon - come down with a severe case of republiconism?

Sure sounds like it. Only that which sells, sells, sells.

[Brazenly Liberal]

4. Be leery of trusting those reviews

Or ANY online reviews supposedly posted by customers.

I have friends, authors whose books are sold at Amazon, and it's a mess over there. People with a personal grudge or a competing book will post BS negative reviews. If they're really pissed off or really nuts, the same person will post multiple BS "reviews." The authors have some success at getting Amazon to delete these when they are demonstrably false, but the more artful saboteurs are more difficult to deal with. On the other side of the scale, friends, families agents and publishers will post glowing positive reviews regardless of the utter crappiness of the work.

It's a huge problem and one that's not readily solvable. The nature of the internet encourages it.

The way around it is to 1. compare "customer" reviews with those by professional reviewers. You're not looking for agreement as much as glaring discrepancies. 2. If you read a lot of reviews at Amazon (or anywhere) and rely on them, make note of the reviews that seem to match YOUR experience. If "sally in nova scotia" seems to see several books the same way you saw them, chances are it's relatively safe to take a chance on something else she recommends.

[papau]

5. I did not spend time on the reviews because geometric expansion being the explanation for gravity

did not seem to work in Chapters 1 to 3 - where I stopped.

I'm curious - did anyone ever present the idea in the comments in a way any DUer felt was adequate to be called predictive science?