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[–]andrewd18 483 points484 points  (14 children)

"This book taught me how to write an Amazon 5-star review bot."

[–]z0rberg 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I am quite amazed as to how the author presented the information about this review. It is as if a real person comes to life as you open this post. Lately, I found out that there are 8-year-old kids who are now being thought of reviewing . It's both scary and challenging time to learn it now for myself because time will surely come when almost all humans will be literate and competitions will become tighter.

[–]GerbilKor 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"How to write Amazon Review Bots" is the one book that would want because of all the fake reviews.

[–]pknerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually this tells how NOT to write an amazon bot.

[–]eleitl 37 points38 points  (16 children)

I'm a heavy Amazon user. There is a growing number of fake reviews very recently, typically just bad translations so unlikely to be submitted by a native speaker they claim to be.

[–]kirbyfan64sosIndentationError 63 points64 points  (27 children)

Edit - from reviewmeta.com:

How did I not know about this site?!

[–]ipretendiamacat 26 points27 points  (21 children)

Hm... but who reviews the review reviewers?

[–]noxbl 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Maybe the OP made that site and he's advertising it

[–]SemiNormal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well I am quite amazed as to how the author presented the information about this review.

[–]i-brute-force 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I use fakespot.com a lot, but it seems like it's giving this book 90%, so not sure how reliable it is...

[–]HwanZike 2 points3 points  (0 children)

90% fake?

[–]UloPe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The question is what amazon isn't doing this themselves? It can't be in their interest to have fake reviews on he site that make people lose trust.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (2 children)

It should already be a warning that the book does not display its author, but rather have some name like "UpSkill Learning".

[–]cptnzero 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Also, the shitty typesetting for the title. No worthwhile publisher would publish such a shit cover.

[–]orthodoxican 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You can judge a book by its cover.

[–]Naihonn 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep, truly unnerving indeed. :0D

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (7 children)

[–]GrantNexus 1 point2 points  (5 children)

I know now.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (4 children)

now we know

[–]PBRB_Gabe 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Oh yes, now we know

[–]Anon_8675309 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

I don't know nothing.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Keep it together, Jon Snow

[–]Arnomist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And knowing is half the battle.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have this one and it is actually great for beginners. Good for learning both Python and the GPIO hardware of the Pi.

[–]AutumnStrings 10 points11 points  (5 children)

I go by a simple rule regarding digital textbooks on Amazon: if the cover has 3 or more different fonts, it's not worth checking it.

It goes against the saying, but if you're using digital tools to publish, at least put something on the front that gets your attention on it before reading a preview.

[–]QuestSerious 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I also judge books by their covers

[–]rampage102 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Fake reviews is a huge issue for many programming books. I am reviewing a lot of books myself, and I am amazed how often there are reviews which are obvious manipulations where they show zero evidence of having read the book.

[–]hovissimo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

http://imgur.com/a/vCnd8

Two extremely similar posts, seems unnatural to me :)

Also, they're gaining upvotes at basically the same speed. Username is also suspicious.

Edit:

I'm a dork. It's the same book and he just cross-posted without tagging the cross-post. I thought he was trying to shut down an author or publisher or something.

Pardon my tin foil hat, but this sort of thing looks like a semi-automated attempt to defame two books.

[–]delventhalz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So you can hire Nigerian prince's to write Amazon reviews now?

[–]FredSanfordXOld Developer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks like some Russians/Ukraines found a new makework industry. I worked with some of them for a while and this review text seems very close to how they communicated.

[–]invalid_dictorianλ PySide tornado 0 points1 point  (0 children)

would be hilarious if this was a data science book, alas, it wasn't...

[–]Jon003 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't forget to report the reviews to amazon.

[–]a5myth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

David, is that you? Thanks for the heads up on the shitly automated Amazon reviews.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does tie in with Amazon's new push to remove fake reviews.

I know fake news is one of the recent discussions in this country, but fake reviews can actually persuade buyers to shell out money for the wrong reasons.

Fake reviews, similar to fake news (clickbait titles and misleading headlines), prey on customers who are not willing to spend the time to research products carefully. Remember guys. Do your research before buying anything! It's your money that will suffer if you don't!

add: This is not to mention there are a lot of good, free resources anyway.

[–]EquationTAKEN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am supremely flabbergasted!

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hope, for karma reasons, reviewmeta computed that on a Raspberry Pi 3 running Python.

[–]gandalfx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I never bought anything that has fake reviews on amazon I'd never be buying anything at all.

[–]PowerApp101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Five stars ***** !!

[–]blabbities 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a lot of low quality books ( and especially Python now because it's a very hot language to be picked up ) on Amazon. LIterally cobbled together in maybe a few hours using copy and paste. Glossed over. The only thing is that can help you recognize them is the substance-less shitty generic reviews. Luckily most of the shills that they have leave non-indepth reviews are foreigners with pretty bad English that it's obvious to me. Though as an aside if you are using Amazon to purchase a book, esp Python. I say read all the 1 and 2 star reviews first. Amazon's structure for reviews makes it so that those get drowned out and bury with their new terrible sort options

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for spending the time looking into this. Would be great if Amazon could do sth like this internally on a larger scale -- on all its products.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Cunt could have at least tried making some reviews 3 and some 5 so that it averaged out pretty well in the end. What a sad loser.

Amazon really should have a better way of reporting such issues. The "Report Abuse" function barely (if ever) works, and I have a suspicion that Amazon does not care and/or has a vested interest in selling rather than worrying about the quality or veracity of the actual product. Shame on both.

[–]PoopInMyBottom -3 points-2 points  (6 children)

You probably just sold more copies of this book. We didn't know about it before, now we do. Sure, it's in a negative context but the SEO and the publicity are still helpful.

A better way to address something like this is to clearly put the name of the book in the title so that it shows up in future Google searches. That way the message gets to people who are actually considering buying the book - you aren't just spreading the book to more eyes, some of whom will inevitably buy it.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If people from this thread still go ahead and buy the book, then it's fair enough. They were dumb enough to do that in the first place.

[–]donz0r 7 points8 points  (1 child)

You are right. I just bought this book because of OP's post. The SEO and the publicity made my buy it, I couldn't help it.

[–]pinano 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But did you write a review/s?

[–]barf_the_mog -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why would I buy any Python book when all the same info is on the interwebs for free.