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by Distozion 1472 days ago
It probably is the end game for any review website. Your client usually dictates the business model to a degree.

At this point, TrustPilots business model is essentially reputation laundering.

If you pay them enough, they will use their mostly neutral reputation on the consumer side to launder your potentially shitty reputation to a more positive one. It's not like the average consumer knows any better and I would not be that surprised that having a positive score on TrustPilot is not the decision maker for a customer, but having a very bad one - is a disqualifying factor. Hence the reputation laundering scheme...
1 comments
r00fus 1472 days ago
Pretty depressing that all review sites are potential scams. Do you feel there's any way that regulation or oversight could improve this?
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mschuster91 1472 days ago
In Germany, we have the government-founded Foundation Warentest which has been known to provide high-quality and independent reviews for decades [1]; additionally our media such as the Heise publishing house (who have co-authored the industry agreement on how to run product reviews [2]) runs their own test series on products.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest

[2] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Verbraucherschutzmin...

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Distozion 1472 days ago
This is pretty much it. If the consumer is not paying for it in some ways (for example in the UK, consumers can pay Which?[1] to access their reviews) - the companies are.

If the companies are the ones footing the bill, I see no way to have a fair system where a few richer players couldn't exploit the system or the review company itself charge companies as much as they can just for leaving them alone and not rigging the reviews against them.

[1] https://join.which.co.uk/join/offers

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