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Just found something... a bit concerning


visualstudios

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Was on facebook, and got the idea of searching for Fiverr Review.

What did I get? Tens of pages and private groups all with names like “fiverr review exchange”. Some of them have around 10k active members. I couldn’t see the private groups, and a lot of the descriptions weren’t in english. All the pages and groups seemed to be from a select few countries.

The pages are open and sell $5-$100 5 star reviews from “top canadian, uk german, american” accounts.
One of the pages boasted that recently one of their members had achieve TRS status, and that another “had started from scratch and was making 500€/month”.

There’s a massive ratings manipulation going on, and it seems to work at least sometimes. This affects almost exclusively low value orders, since they must be paying the Fiverr commission for placing those reviews, and that would get expensive fast.

Very conservative estimate - around 25k sellers (or people looking to be sellers) engaging in some kind of review trade/purchase, or at least interested in it.

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Almost every site, ecommerce platform, etc. that uses ratings for visibility or rank will have shadow groups like those - it sucks, but it’s like whack-a-mole…as soon as the platform in question nixes a wave of offenders/fake accounts, there’s another wave waiting just behind them.

People complain about photo ID requirements for platform sites, but it’s one of the only ways to stop this kind of thing from spreading. Make it a necessity that the user has to take a selfie holding their own ID from the Fiverr app to prevent photomanipulation (ala Uber’s random selfie requirements to be sure you’re not farming out your account to another driver) and I think you’d see a lot less of that.

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I suspect all that is fake or a scam but who knows. I would be surprised if that was real.

If one person agrees to buy a $5 gig from another to leave a 5 star review, they can do it at a cost of $3 (or around that, I’m not sure what the fees are in $5 gigs). I guarantee that are people paying 3 bucks a review.

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I’m sure a TRS isn’t going to be interested in getting more reviews 😄 I think the people who really do this might open a second or third account and load reviews onto their main account.

Yeah, they may be lying about that. Or, what happened was that he took those reviews early on to boost the profile, and then it was cruise control. Ofc once reaching TRS (or even level 1 or 2), they won’t keep buying reviews. Sounds perfectly doable in certain very mechanical, repetitive gigs. That initial boost is extremely important, and can take many months (or years, if you’re in a very crowded market).

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Yeah, they may be lying about that. Or, what happened was that he took those reviews early on to boost the profile, and then it was cruise control. Ofc once reaching TRS (or even level 1 or 2), they won’t keep buying reviews. Sounds perfectly doable in certain very mechanical, repetitive gigs. That initial boost is extremely important, and can take many months (or years, if you’re in a very crowded market).

I would bet money it’s one guy who made that page and is somehow getting money from it from new sellers. It just reads like that.

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I would bet money it’s one guy who made that page and is somehow getting money from it from new sellers. It just reads like that.

Probably. The question is if he’s scamming, or delivering the goods and how (the list of countries available to leave reviews did not match the country of any of those pages).

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No why would he? He wouldn’t really be doing it. He would have to spend money, do work.

The pages, maybe.

However, in the groups it’s different. It’s a community of 10k people in one of them. They aren’t all being tricked. They are actively exchanging info on how to game the system in any way. And they are definitely manipulating reviews in there. It’s closed for a reason. I would try to apply just to see but 1) I don’t want to associate my personal profile with that and 2) probably they wouldn’t accept me given my country, it would be suspicious.

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The pages, maybe.

However, in the groups it’s different. It’s a community of 10k people in one of them. They aren’t all being tricked. They are actively exchanging info on how to game the system in any way. And they are definitely manipulating reviews in there. It’s closed for a reason. I would try to apply just to see but 1) I don’t want to associate my personal profile with that and 2) probably they wouldn’t accept me given my country, it would be suspicious.

I don’t believe it at all. I’ve seen very elaborate sites that have what seem to be a hundred people all chatting or leaving messages. All fake, all the same person writing them.

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This is true, they find new sellers on Facebook with the username and profile picture, I was messaged on facebook by some shady person inviting me to some shady group called boost your fiverr account with reviews or something similar.
I rejected ofcourse but they likely contact tons of such new sellers who fit in their criteria to get commissions on per 5 star review they provide to the seller

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I don’t believe it at all. I’ve seen very elaborate sites that have what seem to be a hundred people all chatting or leaving messages. All fake, all the same person writing them.

No way. Look at this. 2k members in 30 days. A whole table of contents. Private, of course. Point 9 of what you get.

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Screenshot 2020-01-22 at 04.13.26964×2168 286 KB
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No way. Look at this. 2k members in 30 days. A whole table of contents. Private, of course. Point 9 of what you get.

So you think someone can’t write all that? Or why would you think it’s real. It reads like an advertisement where if you show interest they tell you a price. Then you get nothing.

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So you think someone can’t write all that? Or why would you think it’s real. It reads like an advertisement where if you show interest they tell you a price. Then you get nothing.

Because of the number of users and consistent activity. Are they scamming thousands of people that don’t go away? Can they consistently farm new users to scam? I’ve see fake accounts and groups, this doesn’t look like it. I’m not saying it’s all they do, but the fact that you can’t see the groups posts is telling. Usually you need to apply to write for this type of “let’s help eachother group”.

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Because of the number of users and consistent activity. Are they scamming thousands of people that don’t go away? Can they consistently farm new users to scam? I’ve see fake accounts and groups, this doesn’t look like it. I’m not saying it’s all they do, but the fact that you can’t see the groups posts is telling. Usually you need to apply to write for this type of “let’s help eachother group”.

I just don’t see why anyone would bother to make a facebook page like that unless they were charging money to people. Who knows what they do.

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I just don’t see why anyone would bother to make a facebook page like that unless they were charging money to people. Who knows what they do.

They swap reviews. That’s why they bother. Either that or sell reviews like the pages. Or, more likely, both. If the reviews they sell are a scam, I’m not sure. They may be. But I can also see that working, tbh.

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Because I don’t want to apply to those groups with my personal facebook.

I guess we’ll never know for sure then if they really do reviews or not. It seems like it would be a very easy matter to see who the actual fiverr users are who are exchanging reviews if anyone was interested enough.

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I guess we’ll never know for sure then if they really do reviews or not. It seems like it would be a very easy matter to see who the actual fiverr users are who are exchanging reviews if anyone was interested enough.

Well, of course we can’t know unless we buy one, and that ain’t happening. But I’m quite curious as to what goes on in those conversations.

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Well, of course we can’t know unless we buy one, and that ain’t happening. But I’m quite curious as to what goes on in those conversations.

I know there must be a million sellers on fiverr. I also know I won’t be purchasing anything on fiverr unless I can see the seller is legitimate and it won’t be someone with a bunch of fake reviews. So it’s not really of concern to me personally.

l’ve been on this forum long enough to see there are lots of people trying to game the system and they don’t get very far.

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I know there must be a million sellers on fiverr. I also know I won’t be purchasing anything on fiverr unless I can see the seller is legitimate and it won’t be someone with a bunch of fake reviews. So it’s not really of concern to me personally.

l’ve been on this forum long enough to see there are lots of people trying to game the system and they don’t get very far.

Actually curious about that first bit. Do you have numbers on the amount of sellers? Genuinely asking, I don’t have a clear picture.

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Actually curious about that first bit. Do you have numbers on the amount of sellers? Genuinely asking, I don’t have a clear picture.

I’ve read a few recent articles about fiverr that shared some huge numbers but I don’t recall the specifics.

There are 8000 new gigs being made every day for example.

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