The Fool’s-Gold Standard?

Written by Brook Schaaf

I was recently introduced (thanks, Dirk!) to the two co-founders of Fakespot, a browser extension with a particular function: its AI judges the likelihood that a given review on sites like Amazon is fake.

CEO and founder Saoud Khalifah spoke about the prevalence of this problem on the Techmeme Ride Home podcast. In a nutshell: sellers are highly motivated to create fake reviews to improve their conversions using bots, their agents, or buy from marketplaces, especially if the sellers offer counterfeit goods. Marketplaces have a difficult time policing this and, let’s be frank, also benefit from increased conversions.

According to Khalifah, Amazon’s recent lawsuit against 10,000 Facebook group admins (not against Facebook itself) won’t stop this problem because it can’t get to the anonymous users behind them, who can easily start new groups.

Hence, Fakespot as a solution. The extension provides an eye-opening perspective on things. Fakespot may also be a solution for you as an affiliate marketer because it is exploring monetization through affiliate links. Let’s bid them a warm welcome to our space.