[smwhreyebelong]

I think the community will auto-correct and weed out the reviewers who are not sincere. For example, if a user buys something based on Amazon reviews (of a Vine member, say), and discovers that the review was insincere, he/she will most likely go to Amazon and give a negative rating to the member/particular review, which will probably feed back into the Vine members reputation, which will in turn be used to determine eligibility for the Vine program.

Agreed that it'll take a while for the system to reach the critical mass, it is, nonetheless, a system that will work very well after it reaches the tipping point.

[anigbrowl]

Alternatively, users will notice sooner or later that Vine is less about trusted reviews than 'Actual customer testimonials!!1!' and ignore or even avoid such products. Now maybe it's just me and the mass of people are gullible morons after all, but these kind of initiatives have a poor history on the internet compared to tabloids and TV.

Or so I thought until I discovered the secret to making REAL money - and now I'm going to share it with YOU.

[Confusion]

he/she will most likely go to Amazon and give a negative rating to the member/particular review

I doubt that. Most people do not rate reviews and simply won't take the trouble of going back to the product page to rate a review.

[jbischke]

But this assumes that Amazon removes people from the Vine program if their reviews aren't voted helpful. I don't think that's a safe assumption and furthermore, it might even be the case that people are removed for a lot of negative reviews. After all, the companies are paying to have their products in Vine. If word gets around that Vine produces a lot of negative reviews then companies pull out of the program and Amazon loses a revenue stream.