A comedy subculture has grown up around Amazon’s open, unverified review system, in which people compete to write the strangest, funniest fake reviews of the more unusual products sold on the site.
The funny fake review meme isn't restricted to Amazon, but is possible on any site using open, passive review collection: open systems allow anyone to write a review without verification that they own the product, and a passive system means the trend can easily go viral.
The recent launch of Samsung’s new generation of tablet computer has been overshadowed by accusations of astroturfing.
The controversy centres around video testimonials of the "true-life stories" of average people who test drove the Galaxy Tab tablet PC. The video reviews struck a lot of watchers as wooden and, with very little digging, it was soon discovered that the people in the video are actors, not the journalists or CEOs they’re claimed to be.
We’ve seen brands getting their staff to write fake positive reviews of their products. We’ve seen people slating their competitors in reviews. We’ve seen people outsourcing their review faking via Mechanical Turk or similar sites.
But David Friedman of Ironic Sans seems to have discovered an entirely new kind of astroturfing.