Question

Describe astroturfing and its impacts on the reliability of online reviews .

Describe how you would determine if a review concerning a startup is legitimate or a fraud .

Feel free to make references.

Answer 1

Astroturfing:

Astroturfing is the informal term for campaigns or messages that appear to be naturally occurring, but are actually being defined by a company. Astroturfing hides the financial and business associations between the originating company and the message, potentially making corporate messaging more palatable to a public that might reject forthright propaganda.

The term "astroturfing" is a play on the term "grassroots movement," since the grass is fake. Astroturfing has been attempted by online businesses who present a product as being highly desired and sought out by a certain customer base via company-sponsored message board posts, blogs or articles when there is no evidence to support such an assertion.

Data mining expert Bing Liu (University of Illinois) estimated that one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. According to The New York Times, this has made it hard to tell the difference between "popular sentiment" and "manufactured public opinion". According to an article in the Journal of Business Ethics, astroturfing threatens the legitimacy of genuine grassroots movements. The authors argued that astroturfing that is "purposefully designed to fulfill corporate agendas manipulate public opinion and harm scientific research represents a serious lapse in ethical conduct.

To determine if a review concerning a startup is legitimate or fraud there are few techniques to check like if the profile images are recognized or if it is identified through the usage patterns of its accounts, by recognizing behavioral patterns.

We can also google about other information about that startup related to the review, check the startup's references, et cetera.