It depends on the contents and the number of them. If multiple/many negative reviews for something all mention a similar defect, you can be pretty sure it is an actual issue with the thing. It is then up to you to determine if the thing is still worth your time/money.

I will say that for some things the motivations of the reviewers are something to take into account especially. For book reviews on Goodreads I've found that animosity towards the author causes heavy overstating of the 'defects' of a book.

I've had multiple Amazon negative reviews vanish over the years. Often, it happens a few weeks after posting. I've heard it's people bribing Amazon reps to do so, under the auspices of "bad review". I've even occasionally noticed others on Amazon, in reviews, complaining that their last review went missing.

Really sad.

One way to look at what you've done is authenticated the source of your reviews. They're not anonymous people behind a fake username.

One is there isn't a separate section for professional reviews (Polish movie/TV site Filmweb has that), so that right off the bat the first comment might be that someone doesn't like what the book is even about, it's a 1-star, liked by 15 people.

Two is they closed their API completely, so there's no way you can get any book info from their DB, not with limits and/or authorization, not if you pay, just not at all.

... But when you're an incumbent that's likely to be around for at least a quarter of a decade with a sizeable monopoly, later really is better than never.

Generally less money, yes. But not all motives are financial. And there are loads of conflict, drama, and emotions in many parts of the writing world.

Likely a script that looks for the first x reviews and then starts generating fake ones, and some party that is just lazy. There's probably a market somewhere to short.

But Amazon allows sellers to swap different products in under an existing listing so you don’t even know anymore if the review is for what you are buying. This allows sellers to cheat. It’s insanity.

It reminds me of the phone network. It’s so riddled with bad actors that entire generations now have been trained to never pick up the phone.

Why would a network operator allow caller ID to be so easily spoofed? For abusive callers to operate unrestricted? Even the audio quality of the calls seems to have gotten so bad in my parents rural backwater.

I don’t get it. Is engagement the only metric that matters?

This is a significant factor, imo. Many great modern Russian artists are banned by the state. Meanwhile, the current imperialist Russian state is a group of sandcastle kickers running wild.

I look forward to a day when the Russian people, and the world, have a Russian government that works for things other than destruction.

Environments where reprisals are possible simply have different dysfunctionality from ones where they generally aren't. And you can see how catastrophic suddenly turning on reprisals is, known as "doxxing".

Also, there are social media sites with real name policies; in what way are they better?

I'd really like to see a hierarchy of trust. Get some certs signed by a reputable bank who has seen you in person, high trust. Self-signed certs, much less trust. Completely anonymous, you get basically shadowbanned; people who want it can go looking for it.

The Internet is an information flood (and so much worse now that we have LLMs). Filtering it has always been the key challenge. We should be able to filter on source, while still allowing people to say whatever it is they want. We just don't have to read it.

What's more, governance processes for the forum shouldn't be anonymous at all. I mean flagging, voting, moderator action etc.

That's arguably the most important conversation here. Most in need of illumination by public discussion.

But so often (in these social media forums) it is taken one step beyond pseudonymity to full anonymity. Hidden from all eyes.

Why? I never heard a good argument.