I guess Amazon recently made a change, and I think it might hurt their business a bit. When I am looking for something on Amazon, I look at the reviews - you used to be able to see all the reviews and even look at specific ratings (3 star or 1 star). You used to be able to search reviews to find any that mention a concern I had. But not anymore. You get to see a very small sample of reviews, along with their AI summary. If you click on “see more reviews” you see that small handful with this (in green)
I have to wait 5 days to see more reviews? Most of the things I buy are not things I have to have right now…But the thing about Amazon was that I could look at something, read some reviews about it and go ahead and buy it. With only a handful of reviews that I can read and process (and not their AI), I am less likely to buy, and by the time I get the email alerting me of the availability of more reviews, I may no longer be all that interested in it and not buy it at all.
It doesn’t matter, it happens on all of them. Say there are 1.000 reviews. They show 8 reviews and their AI summary. At the bottom is “see more reviews” if I click that, I get 8 more reviews and that message. One item I looked at was only 14 reviews. I saw 3 reviews (there were some in German), clicked on see more reviews, saw the same 3 reviews and the notice.
I googled the message and there was a reddit thread on it. Apparently Amazon has implemented some anti scraping app that stops what it thinks is AI or a bot scraping reviews. The weird thing is that I don’t use Amazon all that often, so I’m not sure why I would be flagged as a bot. The other weird thing is that because I tend to write a review of things I buy, I was invited by Amazon to be part of their ‘Vine’ program - I can just browse their “Vine” items and they’ll give it to me free…all I have to do is review it. So that want to reward me for writing what they won’t allow me to read.
Apparent censorship would be no surprise. I used to do a review on a fairlly regular basis, but then one day I did a review of some expensive scissors.
Nothing bad to say about the product which is excellent. Only commentary about hand size needed to effectively use the larger model. I even provided an illustration showing how to determine if hand size was big enough. That would be a hand stretched on a piano keyboard. Well the Commies (or the algorithm) did not like it and requested revision. To which I say F-U up yours! Not wasting my time any more!
I usually like to read some of the 1 and 2 ratings to see if the rating is due to a problem with the item. The low rating reasons I frequently see have something to do with shipping (and unrelated to the product) and some issue that was obviously made by a buyer who didn’t read and/or understand the product description or directions. I do see that Amazon sometimes groups ratings from a single seller who sells similar, but different, items, which really doesn’t help.
I like to look at the 2,3 & 4 ratings. I think a lot of the time 5 starts are “bought” reviews and as you said 1 star is usually something unrelated to the product. Before they flagged me as a bot, I would read several of those and search them (I can’t search reviews either). I get it..they don’t want “their” property stolen, but they need to figure out a better way - although I despise the ‘text me a code’ BS I would rather they do that so I an prove I’m not a bot.
I emailed them last night - they never responded but I just checked an now I am able to view and search all updates.. I never got an email from them telling me why I was flagged though.
