[zolloie]

I seem to be the only one who remembers this, but for a brief period of time, Amazon implemented the lower confidence bound approach (where you were sorting on the lower bound to the average, not the average itself).

I loved it, but I noticed that not too long after (maybe a year?) they removed it. My sense was that small businesses were complaining that the system was unfairly benefiting larger businesses. E.g., if you have a new product, using the lower bound or something similar is unfair because it penalizes you for being new, relative to established players.

Honestly, I can see that perspective too (which is missing from the linked piece), and am not really sure what to do about it. The linked piece comes at it from the perspective of consumer risk minimization, and not from the perspective of the producer, which Amazon also has to contend with.

The solution is probably to allow sorting by both.