Freebies

[supergee]

Amazon has just discovered that giving people free stuff in return for product reviews somehow leads to biased reviews unless of course it is done through Amazon’s own program.

Thanx to Metafilter

Comments

[johnpalmer]

To be fair, giving samples in return for reviews is often necessary. People aren't always willing to part with their hard-earned to find out *if* they like something.

I'd instead say that Amazon has learned that "let's assume honesty" doesn't scale. (Full disclosure: I work for Amazon Web Services.)