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Fake review detection on online E-commerce platforms: a systematic literature review

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Abstract

The increasing popularity of online review systems motivates malevolent intent in competing sellers and service providers to manipulate consumers by fabricating product/service reviews. Immoral actors use Sybil accounts, bot farms, and purchase authentic accounts to promote products and vilify competitors. Facing the continuous advancement of review spamming techniques, the research community should step back, assess the approaches explored to date to combat fake reviews, and regroup to define new ones. This paper reviews the literature on Fake Review Detection (FRD) on online platforms. It covers both basic research and commercial solutions, and discusses the reasons behind the limited level of success that the current approaches and regulations have had in preventing damage due to deceptive reviews.

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Notes

  1. How Online Reviews Influence Sales. https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/online-reviews/index.html.

  2. Dirty dealing in the $175 billion Amazon Marketplace. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement.

  3. Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/.

  4. 5-star phonies: Inside the fake Amazon review complex. https://thehustle.co/amazon-fake-reviews.

  5. Fake reviews increasing among major retailers. https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_this_morning/video/3aql_Fh_pZ1x29R_uN7E4HOcsqqEWQad/increase-in-fake-reviews-hitting-walmart-amazon-and-other-retailers/.

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    Himangshu Paul & Alexander Nikolaev

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Appendix

Appendix

The FRD approaches reviewed in this paper are summarized in Tables 2 and 3. Table 2 organizes the modeling approaches. Table 3 covers the technical approaches for FRD. Table 1 recaps the used abbreviations and terms, for reader convenience.

Table 1 Definitions of the properties of Fake Review Detection approaches
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Table 2 Fake Review Detection papers organized by modeling approaches and datasets used
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Table 3 Fake Review Detection papers organized by technical approaches and tools
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Paul, H., Nikolaev, A. Fake review detection on online E-commerce platforms: a systematic literature review. Data Min Knowl Disc 35, 1830–1881 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10618-021-00772-6

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