[ashelmire]

This is far from an Amazon-specific problem. Glassdoor allows you to pay to remove bad reviews. So does Yelp. I bet G and others do too.

Of course, even easier than paying to remove bad ones is paying to add fake good reviews. Another issue is apps and such annoying you until you submit a review. Leave a bad one? Then they annoy you with more follow up, so you're pressured to leave a good review so they stop bothering you.

[ilikehurdles]

The vast majority of hidden yelp reviews I've seen are filtered out due to account age/connectedness (8 out of every 10 hidden reviewers I've seen on some restaurants had only one review or 0 friends on their account) or very low effort content. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also a date-based filter involved in the algorithm to detect brigades or coordinated efforts to attack a place. I'd like to see hard evidence of claims that Yelp actually provides review inflation.

It would also be very hard for organizations as big as Yelp or Google to provide this service while covering up evidence of its existence.