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Amazon caught deleting negative reviews of Hillary's book, but not good reviews!

ModerationNow!

ModerationNow!

I identify as "non-Bidenary".
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Hillary loses the election, and refuses to take any responsibility for her loss, and as of now, she has literally come up with 42 different 'reasons' why she lost, none of which are her fault. So she writes her new book to explain to us "what happened"(the name of her book). After it went on sale at amazon, they began receiving reviews. They were mostly negative, but also a lot of glowing 5 star reviews. Her book had a 2 to 2.5 star review.

But then, suddenly, ALL of the 1 star reviews mysteriously disappeared! Many media outlets reported on this phenomenon, so finally amazon admitted to their shady behavior of arbitrarily removing ALL negative reviews, but leaving ALL 5 star reviews! Only, as is common when every other biased entity is busted, they denied bias, and claimed that ALL negative reviews were merely attempts at trolling, so to provide an "honest" assessment of her book, they had to delete them. Nevermind the facts that, 1. Review trolling happens in BOTH ends of 1 star and 5 star reviews, where people 'friendly' to the product or author will 'troll' the review section with super-positive reviews. Amazon did NOT delete them! 2. There is NO way that EVERY negative review can arbitrarily be claimed false! 3. Amazon DOES NOT delete negative 'troll-reviews' of conservative authors(or most non-political authors). So this is obviously preferential treatment carried out in a very dishonest and inconsistent manner!
Amazon Deletes One-Star Reviews of Hillary's New Book 'What Happened'


Amazon deletes 1-star reviews off Hillary Clinton's new book 'What Happened' | Miami Herald
 
ModerationNow! said:
Hillary loses the election, and refuses to take any responsibility for her loss, and as of now, she has literally come up with 42 different 'reasons' why she lost, none of which are her fault. So she writes her new book to explain to us "what happened"(the name of her book). After it went on sale at amazon, they began receiving reviews. They were mostly negative, but also a lot of glowing 5 star reviews. Her book had a 2 to 2.5 star review.

But then, suddenly, ALL of the 1 star reviews mysteriously disappeared! Many media outlets reported on this phenomenon, so finally amazon admitted to their shady behavior of arbitrarily removing ALL negative reviews, but leaving ALL 5 star reviews! Only, as is common when every other biased entity is busted, they denied bias, and claimed that ALL negative reviews were merely attempts at trolling, so to provide an "honest" assessment of her book, they had to delete them. Nevermind the facts that, 1. Review trolling happens in BOTH ends of 1 star and 5 star reviews, where people 'friendly' to the product or author will 'troll' the review section with super-positive reviews. Amazon did NOT delete them! 2. There is NO way that EVERY negative review can arbitrarily be claimed false! 3. Amazon DOES NOT delete negative 'troll-reviews' of conservative authors(or most non-political authors). So this is obviously preferential treatment carried out in a very dishonest and inconsistent manner!
Amazon Deletes One-Star Reviews of Hillary's New Book 'What Happened'


Amazon deletes 1-star reviews off Hillary Clinton's new book 'What Happened' | Miami Herald
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Wow. Is there Nothing outlets say that we can trust?
 
I am out of patience with Amazon.

BUST EM UP

:waiting:
 
nota bene said:
From the first 1500+ reviews, only 338 were from verified book-buyers. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...tar-reviews-of-hillary-clintons-what-happened
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In all fairness though amazon does allow reviews from unverified purchasers. Usually amazon puts verified purchaser on the review, however many people who review products for amazon do own the products but never bought them from amazon. Like for example reviewing a xyz brand television and calling it junk they bought off of walmart because they had a sale for near half the price of amazon, but is still the same product being reviewed.
 
Captain Adverse said:
What? Amazon only accepts reviews from people who bought the book from Amazon?
People can't have got it from a store, or borrowed it from someone who already had it?
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Why do they have to provide that service? If they can verify purchases, it boosts the review credibility, I think that's preferred personally.
I don't think Amazon needs to open up to any/all reviewers, they aren't hurting for purchasers. (assuming they don't already do that).
 
Mach said:
Why do they have to provide that service? If they can verify purchases, it boosts the review credibility, I think that's preferred personally.
I don't think Amazon needs to open up to any/all reviewers, they aren't hurting for purchasers. (assuming they don't already do that).
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Opening up to reviewers does help revenue, like let's say a product is junk but amazon has no reviews, but then that same product was sold for 6 months on best buy for 6 months prior, those best buy purchasers can write reviews, which may drop sales for the crappy product but boost sales on their better products which are also more expensive.
 
By Thursday, only 581 customer reviews remained, 95% of which were five-star. Amazon said on Thursday morning that “we remove customer reviews that violate our community guidelines”.
Click to expand...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...tar-reviews-of-hillary-clintons-what-happened

Well in all fairness there were only 581 "legitimate" purchasers at the time of the article...I am sure Hillary could afford to provide funds to have that many cronies and paid reviewers buy the book and give it a 5 without reading it. ;)
 
ModerationNow! said:
Hillary loses the election, and refuses to take any responsibility for her loss, and as of now, she has literally come up with 42 different 'reasons' why she lost, none of which are her fault. So she writes her new book to explain to us "what happened"(the name of her book). After it went on sale at amazon, they began receiving reviews. They were mostly negative, but also a lot of glowing 5 star reviews. Her book had a 2 to 2.5 star review.

But then, suddenly, ALL of the 1 star reviews mysteriously disappeared! Many media outlets reported on this phenomenon, so finally amazon admitted to their shady behavior of arbitrarily removing ALL negative reviews, but leaving ALL 5 star reviews! Only, as is common when every other biased entity is busted, they denied bias, and claimed that ALL negative reviews were merely attempts at trolling, so to provide an "honest" assessment of her book, they had to delete them. Nevermind the facts that, 1. Review trolling happens in BOTH ends of 1 star and 5 star reviews, where people 'friendly' to the product or author will 'troll' the review section with super-positive reviews. Amazon did NOT delete them! 2. There is NO way that EVERY negative review can arbitrarily be claimed false! 3. Amazon DOES NOT delete negative 'troll-reviews' of conservative authors(or most non-political authors). So this is obviously preferential treatment carried out in a very dishonest and inconsistent manner!
Amazon Deletes One-Star Reviews of Hillary's New Book 'What Happened'


Amazon deletes 1-star reviews off Hillary Clinton's new book 'What Happened' | Miami Herald
Click to expand...

I think in this case the negative reviews were from people who didn't even read the book. "Lock her up," is not an appropriate book review.

Amazon's statement:
We do however have mechanisms in place to ensure that the voices of many do not drown out the voices of a few and we remove customer reviews that violate our community guidelines.
Click to expand...
Translation. No one is reading the book, but trolls shouldn't give it or be allowed to give it a one star rating. Pretty simple.

If I wanted to give political hacks one star ratings for their books, and often I do, then I would read said book and point out their hypocrisy. It's only fair.
 
Captain Adverse said:
What? Amazon only accepts reviews from people who bought the book from Amazon?

People can't have got it from a store, or borrowed it from someone who already had it?
Click to expand...

Amazon update: Here's what happened to all the 1-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book

UPDATE Sept. 14, 2:24 p.m. PT: An Amazon spokesperson got back to us and said, "We never suppress reviews based on star rating or sentiment." Instead, triggers to detect a large amount of activity in a short amount of time were activated. Then Amazon goes in and suppresses all non-verified purchase reviews.

Without naming Hillary Clinton or politics, the spokesperson said, "Reviews are meant to help customers by providing real feedback on a product from other customers who have tried it. There are many other forums available across the Internet to discuss topics of interest outside of the products on Amazon."
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Source is a blog, so feel free to believe they received the above quote directly from Amazon spokesperson or don't. But over the years, I've seen this happen at Amazon for other controversial books that appear to be "troll bombed", so I believe it to be an accurate representation of their procedures.
 
If it's just pissed off "lock 'er ups" writing bad reviews, then that is no different than restaurants being given bad reviews by the competition. Best way to tell if it's a legitimate review? Check the spelling.

:)
 
Amazon is monitoring its own website for troll behavior? An outrage! Sounds like some serious suppression of free speech is going on! :2razz: :mrgreen:
 
So we are supposed to be upset because a bunch of random people wanted to use the review button as a way to vent about Clinton, but they weren't allowed? I don't understand what Amazon did wrong here.
 
DiAnna said:
Amazon update: Here's what happened to all the 1-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book



Source is a blog, so feel free to believe they received the above quote directly from Amazon spokesperson or don't. But over the years, I've seen this happen at Amazon for other controversial books that appear to be "troll bombed", so I believe it to be an accurate representation of their procedures.
Click to expand...

While I like the procedures, I dont like the implementation.

Amazon will always remove troll reviews against big guns like Hillary, but they dont do squat when independent authors get trolled by 1-stars.
 
The Gateway Pundit article is useless drivel without context or supporting evidence. The Miami Harold is better, and it links to the original Yahoo article which in turn seems to have the most facts and context. I strongly recommend passing on Gateway Pundit, and going to the original Yahoo article.

Apparently Amazon was finding a great many of the 1 star "reviews" were not reviewing the book at all, but rather were about other non-review items - usually political ideology involving hostilities from those that never read the book. So Amazon removed non-review comments. Most of those non-review comments were 1 star rates from non-Hillary (read: Trump) voters.

Here's an excerpt from Yahoo:

"Few of the one-star reviews remain on the website, but reports and screengrabs show that reviewers used the space to criticise the former First Lady and spread conspiracy theories about her and Bill Clinton."

Source: Yahoo: Amazon deletes one-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book

Quite honestly this seems to speak more to the nature of Trump voters, than to any criticism of Amazon.
 
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MrPeanut said:
So we are supposed to be upset because a bunch of random people wanted to use the review button as a way to vent about Clinton, but they weren't allowed? I don't understand what Amazon did wrong here.
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This is it, in a nutshell. Well done!

:thumbs:
 
PoS said:
While I like the procedures, I dont like the implementation.

Amazon will always remove troll reviews against big guns like Hillary, but they dont do squat when independent authors get trolled by 1-stars.
Click to expand...
Have you considered bringing it up, to their attention?
 
Chomsky said:
Have you considered bringing it up, to their attention?
Click to expand...

Of course. I along with many others have complained over the years. Amazon just gives a canned response from Dianna's quote above.
 
PoS said:
Of course. I along with many others have complained over the years. Amazon just gives a canned response from Dianna's quote above.
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O.K.

Then you got a fair beef.

I just had to ask ...
 
Has anyone here read the book?

Paranoia strikes deep, especially when a Clinton is involved.
 
ModerationNow! said:
Hillary loses the election, and refuses to take any responsibility for her loss, and as of now, she has literally come up with 42 different 'reasons' why she lost, none of which are her fault. So she writes her new book to explain to us "what happened"(the name of her book). After it went on sale at amazon, they began receiving reviews. They were mostly negative, but also a lot of glowing 5 star reviews. Her book had a 2 to 2.5 star review.

But then, suddenly, ALL of the 1 star reviews mysteriously disappeared! Many media outlets reported on this phenomenon, so finally amazon admitted to their shady behavior of arbitrarily removing ALL negative reviews, but leaving ALL 5 star reviews! Only, as is common when every other biased entity is busted, they denied bias, and claimed that ALL negative reviews were merely attempts at trolling, so to provide an "honest" assessment of her book, they had to delete them. Nevermind the facts that, 1. Review trolling happens in BOTH ends of 1 star and 5 star reviews, where people 'friendly' to the product or author will 'troll' the review section with super-positive reviews. Amazon did NOT delete them! 2. There is NO way that EVERY negative review can arbitrarily be claimed false! 3. Amazon DOES NOT delete negative 'troll-reviews' of conservative authors(or most non-political authors). So this is obviously preferential treatment carried out in a very dishonest and inconsistent manner!
Amazon Deletes One-Star Reviews of Hillary's New Book 'What Happened'


Amazon deletes 1-star reviews off Hillary Clinton's new book 'What Happened' | Miami Herald
Click to expand...

Yes it is a sign of some rather shady, and underhanded crap going on.
But its not against the law seeing as they have the right to do so on their own forum.

Unfortunately its something they are going to do, and continue to get away with.
 
ModerationNow! said:
Hillary loses the election, and refuses to take any responsibility for her loss, and as of now, she has literally come up with 42 different 'reasons' why she lost, none of which are her fault. So she writes her new book to explain to us "what happened"(the name of her book). After it went on sale at amazon, they began receiving reviews. They were mostly negative, but also a lot of glowing 5 star reviews. Her book had a 2 to 2.5 star review.

But then, suddenly, ALL of the 1 star reviews mysteriously disappeared! Many media outlets reported on this phenomenon, so finally amazon admitted to their shady behavior of arbitrarily removing ALL negative reviews, but leaving ALL 5 star reviews! Only, as is common when every other biased entity is busted, they denied bias, and claimed that ALL negative reviews were merely attempts at trolling, so to provide an "honest" assessment of her book, they had to delete them. Nevermind the facts that, 1. Review trolling happens in BOTH ends of 1 star and 5 star reviews, where people 'friendly' to the product or author will 'troll' the review section with super-positive reviews. Amazon did NOT delete them! 2. There is NO way that EVERY negative review can arbitrarily be claimed false! 3. Amazon DOES NOT delete negative 'troll-reviews' of conservative authors(or most non-political authors). So this is obviously preferential treatment carried out in a very dishonest and inconsistent manner!
Amazon Deletes One-Star Reviews of Hillary's New Book 'What Happened'


Amazon deletes 1-star reviews off Hillary Clinton's new book 'What Happened' | Miami Herald
Click to expand...

They probably feel sorry for her.
 
Oborosen said:
Yes it is a sign of some rather shady, and underhanded crap going on.
But its not against the law seeing as they have the right to do so on their own forum.

Unfortunately its something they are going to do, and continue to get away with.
Click to expand...

What are they getting away with? Removing reviews from people who did not purchase the book on their site - how is that wrong? The majority of shopping websites do not allow people to leave reviews on products not purchased from them!
 
straykatz said:
What are they getting away with? Removing reviews from people who did not purchase the book on their site - how is that wrong? The majority of shopping websites do not allow people to leave reviews on products not purchased from them!
Click to expand...

They did delete reviews from people who were unverified on the site, yes.
However that also means they are deleting reviews of people who actually purchased the book, read it, and did not like it. I am one of those people, though I purchased through a partnered book store, and not ebay.

It shows they are trying to impact how the book is being received, and how the reviews of the book are going. Though this isn't going to last long, as I imagine even the most prominent attempts to silence these reviews will be buried by the sheer weight of them all.

This is a tactic that plenty of business's do in order to influence their image with potential customers.
 
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