[nanliu]

There's third party services that performs reverse lookup of bad reviews to find the buyer identity and contact info. The whole purpose is to circumvent the Amazon customer contact process.

I left 1 star review for a product, and the seller tried continuously to solicit withdraw or revision of the review. I attempted to update the review calling out this behavior with screenshot of the email and Amazon wouldn't approve it. Ultimately, they replaced it with a product revision and immediately got another 20k reviews with near 5 star rating.

There's very little anonymity for buyers given all our digital crumbles. The entire digital economy's purpose is to track and identify you as a consumer. On top of this, how reviewers are paid via affiliates is the wrong incentive model. I'm not sure how this could be fixed, but I would be interested in a service that flipped the information asymmetry and gave me insight on the company selling the product and their trust worthiness. Company ownership would be icing on the cake since brands change hand so frequently (see example: https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/).

[fma]

There's a tool called fakespot which would analyze the reviews and give the product a grade. It has the right idea but I think these professional sellers have circumvented them...

Just like you, I also updated my review when I downgraded my star review. My first attempt was rejected by Amazon and I made my update more brief in order to pass their review process.

I wouldn't say Amazon is turning a blind eye to it - but actually helping the cause in order to get turnover of products. If it hurt their bottom line (just like bad publicity like this would) they'd stop it.