Let's fight fake reviews. How?

cypherpink

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Feb 3 19:52

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#887

my “anything goes“ listing has disappeared from the main page “Popular“ section, taken by “Riseup.net Email Invite Code“ selling listing. the listing has sudden spikes of 7-10 anonymous positive reviews a day last week — I somewhat carefully doubt so many people became suddenly interested in it.

perhaps i have underestimated that problem before it got on my lawn. i thought it's recognizable, when an empty fresh autoreg has 15 good reviews from empty fresh autoreg accounts, and nobody really believes those, thus ain't harmed. but squatting places on the main page is a strategy.

you see, i don’t even claim this riseup guy is definitely faking his reviews. i honestly don’t know, and am only somewhat doubting. that’s a problem as much — eg. many people in the trollbox propose my reviews might be fake — sometimes even I feel like that — while it’s genuenly some randoms registering disposable accounts to make one purchase and disappear.

now, i'm talking about my experience, but this is not about me — i’m not really harmed too bad by this anything goes listing disappearing, nor by the claims that my reviews are fake — but perhaps it's time to fuck around, before we fall into a competition trap, where the only way to not be beaten by a fake-reviewer is to fake reviews oneself. (not even mentioning that realistic review faking is technologically moderatly easy here.) is there a way?

here's some I have thought about:

• meta-data collection about registered accounts (country, useragent, etc) would help a lot at first, but it is somewhat easy to work around those, while regular users’ privacy will be harmed.

• moneromarket tried proposing paid reviews (literally! you pay 1$ for leaving a review), but nobody liked that, nor it’s productive.

• monitoring open data is another option — how, when, what type of reviews are left, to differ fake from real ones — but this is often too speculative, and might polarize the debates about how fake reviews really look like.

• inventing a close-sourced way nobody knows about might keep it ogranized well at first, but not forever, and easily might contribute into inequality. (tbh it's a government way to work — I rather prefer game theory.)

• one of the ideas i’ve proposed someday was weighting the reviews: shortly, your review matters the more, the more you’re reviewed. it would be fair enough to also give admins a privilege. main drawback in this is a radical change of how market works here, when not the count, but the quality of a review values.

please write what you think about those ideas, propose yours, and let's hope we all manage to keep this place clean.

Edited: Feb 3 19:58

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USAGI

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Feb 4 02:51

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#888

Maybe separate star ratings by people who donated at least $5 and a separate number for reviews by people who aren't donors or donated less than that. I think the concept of paying for a review works in the sense that scammers don't want to do anything that costs them money, however, by making it donation based you aren't paying per review and increasing your overall transaction cost, and you aren't forcing people to donate if they really couldn't care if people think their review is fake. If this system is made, then sellers could offer a discount for buyers who have fulfilled the donation requirement to encourage more buyers to donate.

I think donors even with small donations are more likely to use the website regularly and fairly too, since they have a stake in it.

I think the KYC approach can work so long as it is made optional. Like the verified accounts, maybe some users can volunteer to submit some kind of information to the admins to confirm that they are legit and distinct user from their buyers.

Judging by the Trollbox chat, traffic to this site has been gradually going down over the past year, so I think promoting the website is the most important thing. Most people aren't scammers so you can fix the pollution by dilution and getting more legit buyers and sellers to start using the site. Lots of Monero users I meet don't even know about XmrBazaar, so spreading the word is important.

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notbawdy

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Feb 4 04:00

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#889

Agree, faked reviews have also resulted in people falling to scams.

The XmrBazaar database contains metadata which can be used to determine if a user is legitimate, e.g. acct age, donation badge, post activity etc. Here's a suggestion to weight votes by a user's validity profile -- the same suggestion could equally apply to reviews:

https://xmrbazaar.com/forum/topic/116/

When a new user is easy as a few clicks it makes sense that established profiles are given more weight.

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AgoristShop

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Feb 4 11:18

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#891

XmrBazaar definitely needs to go open source. And the issue you’re raising can be fixed pretty easily by changing the algorithm that selects ‘popular’ listings—specifically, by excluding listings that get a high number of reviews in a very short time compared to more established listings.

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sepia

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Feb 4 13:33

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#892

Reply to post #887

I got two ideas regarding about this fake review problem.

1. Instead of paying to be able to make a review, both the seller and buyer must provide a matching transaction id from their monero transaction in order to gain access to review the product

2. Flag an account as "new user" when they just made an account. Thus a listing review will get more scrutiny when so many "new account" giving them a review.

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cypherpink

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Feb 4 14:39

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#893

USAGI, interesting idea about weighting by donations! I disagree that KYC is a good approach, since vast majority here won't want to give away their KYC to anyone, while fake KYC verifications are so affordable they're sometimes sold on this very market.

sepia, thank you for your comment! I disagree with your approaches, though, since one might use two fake XMR wallets to pay oneself, getting txid; and one can create accounts in advance, boosting oneself reviews after some time.

AgoristShop, I am not sure how open-sourcing will help much here. Your alghoritm change proposal is a good one, +1. Thank you for your post.

notbawdy, you are correct about Bazaar having already some meta-data. Thank you for linking another good relevant post!

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glamorous_oak

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Feb 4 19:55

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#894

i agree this is a issue but also pretty difficult to solve without some monetary or privacy drawback. even if you weighting reviews based on metadata it would only prevent the laziest of scammers, instead of spamming reviews in weeks they could do it in months, which might even be worse since they would be harder to spot. maybe a review fee could be justified if its very low in the single digit % of the order price that gets payed back after some time but even that might not be enough of a deterrent.

the review weighted review score could be added as an additional rating system.

Edited: Feb 4 19:56

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virg1ni4anx1ety430

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Feb 4 23:14

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#897

> @cypherpink: I disagree with your approaches since one might use two fake XMR wallets to pay oneself, getting txid
I were just about to say the same
You can easily pay yourself and abuse that system, so I think it will be counterproductive
But @sepia idea of giving newcomers a temporal "new user" badge is actually a good idea. It may help a lot when performing reviews analysis to identify system abuse

@AgoristShop I love that idea. I hope XmrBazaar consider making it Open Source. That will be revolutionary

@USAGI That concept of separate donors reviews from non-donors may actually work. But that, again, introduces the capitalist review race "where only wins who pays the more"
BUT, the @sepia idea of adding a "new user" badge combined with the previous may prevent this, because it does not matter how much you invested on creating new XmrBazaar accounts with a initial donation done, it will make even more clear that those accounts are fake if a "new user" badge is displayed next to its username
Of course, it's not free of failures and it stills having ways to evade this. Tough it adds complexity which discourages bad actors
Also KYC idea is bad, implementing it will literally kill the platform purpose. And KYC can always be circumvented, XmrBazaar listing have enough proofs of it lol So I guess it is out of discussion at this point

@glamorous_oak Nothing is free of failures. But if it helps on demotivate scammers from foul us I'm fine with it :)
I don't like reviews fee idea at all. But if it eventually enters on consideration, I suggest to share the fee between the seller and costumer, and not costumer only or seller only

Also, there's something all of you are forgetting: Captcha/PoW protected register (and reviews!). Because generally, bad actors tend to automate mass account creations whenever they can. And also nobody, nor scammers nor legit users, are likely to create that many accounts if it requires your PC (or your neurons) to be subjected that way. It may help tho

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virg1ni4anx1ety430

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Feb 4 23:17

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#898

I think it's worth pointing this other post as well: https://xmrbazaar.com/forum/topic/173/

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sepia

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Feb 5 11:06

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#900

cypherpink That is a good criticism about the usage of txid

virg1ni4anx1ety430 Furthermore, we can add a badge to a review for user that just made their review for the first time. This will make it more obvious when they spam new account.

It is possible to get around the first time review badge by making new account with new listing, but this will become more suspicious when a new account buy product from also a new account. In combination with Captcha when making a new account, I think it's pretty good mitigation without sacrificing the overall user privacy

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glamorous_oak

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Feb 5 15:12

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#901

Reply to post #900

i agree having a badge "new user" / "first review" would be a good first step

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pieq

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Feb 5 15:29

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#902

sepia I think most people here aren’t actually botting reviews, but simply manually creating alts. Adding a captcha is definitely a good idea, though.

I’m not a fan of a system where paying or donating gives your reviews more weight. People would rarely pay for that, and those who do would likely pay very small amounts - which ironically makes it easier for bots or alts to fake reputation by paying a small fee on many accounts.

Regarding metadata collection, it might have a small positive effect, but it would likely be more damaging to regular users, as mentioned by cypherpink. User-agent, country, and other identifiable information are easily faked, and users who disable JavaScript for security reasons would also run into issues.

AgoristShop +1 on open-sourcing XmrBazaar. People would contribute, and it’s generally better to know a platform is open source.
Changing the algorithm to automatically remove listings isn't feasible I think. as one could spam competitor listings to push them out of the popular section.

I think this points to a deeper issue: reviews might have too much impact. Ultimately, reviews should mainly determine a seller’s trustworthiness. That system works reasonably well, but it can never be 100%.
Maybe bonds should be emphasized slightly more.

Some ideas:

• Make it harder for new accounts to leave reviews without proof of a transaction or deal.

• Remove the ability for new accounts to leave anonymous reviews.

• Take reports more seriously. Fake reviews are usually easy to distinguish, and many members would report them. If confirmed, remove only the fake reviews rather than the entire listing to avoid sabotage. This can also be applied to votes.

• System that detects potentially faked listings and grants a small group of trusted users the ability to vote on whether they’re legitimate. Appropriate action could then be taken, which would also reduce the load on admins.

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xmr2cex

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Feb 5 16:06

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#903

A simpler way to handle this would be to remove comments and up votes all together. Not even sure why this is a thing. Is it meant to be a more social type feature? Not sure.
Anyway, it's damaging the same people bringing actual value to the platform, if everyone stopped selling this would be a wasteland.

Edited: Feb 6 13:53

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virg1ni4anx1ety430

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Feb 5 22:17

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#910

sepia
> Furthermore, we can add a badge to a review for user that just made their review for the first time
Good idea. That is more accurate on this particular case

pieq
> I’m not a fan of a system where paying or donating gives your reviews more weight. Ironically makes it easier for bots or alts to fake reputation by paying a small fee on many accounts.
I agree with that. As I've quoted:
> It introduces the capitalist review race "where only wins who pays the more"
It will ironically hurt the concept of fighting fake reviews because: why scammers do scam? Because they win money doing it ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Money that can be invested on fake reviews again, leading on a catastrophe

pieq's ideas are very interesting as well! I particularly want to point this one here:
> • Make it harder for new accounts to leave reviews without proof of a transaction or deal.
Here the idea of implementing a captcha or a PoW (or maybe both! Captcha then a PoW) may easily solve this. Because the requirement of solving a challenge before posting a review/comment demotivates people from exploiting this feature and impacting very little legitimate users
There are very good Captchas out there with pretty nice privacy policies like hCaptcha. There are fully Open Source captchas as well, a number of them are free-to-use. There are even JavaScript-free captchas!

xmr2cex That's not a bad idea actually. Removing the votes feature on items listing may solve the vote sabotage issue from the root. But I don't agree with removing the reviews/comments feature from the item's page. I think it's nice having a reference of what you will have to deal with the moment you choose to buy a item or pay for a service. Removing this feature will unnecessarily limit users communication about a particular product. Also, product reviews where key when detecting/reporting scams
> if everyone stopped selling this would a wasteland.
I prefer a XmrBazaar wasteland with less items on their listings over a XmrBazaar with tons of items and bigger number of scams

By the way, looks like everyone here agreed with the "new user"/"new review" and captcha ideas

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xmr2cex

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Feb 6 13:56

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#914

You have your point.
If moderation was more effective, reporting incentivized and the forum a bit more accessible in terms of making the user aware it exists (we didn't know this was a thing until someone pointed out its existence in the trollbox), the majority of scams wouldn't live for more than a split second.
Comments should stand, but votes are absolutely useless.

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cypherpink

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Feb 9 15:24

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#930

@USAGI, @notbawdy, @AgoristShop, @sepia, @glamorous_oak, @virg1ni4anx1ety430, @pieq, @xmr2cex,

It seems we have nothing to add. In this message, I will summarize the discussed points, trying to highlight their strengths and neutralize their weaknesses with possible solutions. In my next message, I will summarize the dialogue even more briefly, in one paragraph.

1) Change the "Popular" section (main page) algorithm

Idea: prevent lots with "spikes" in their reviews over a short period of time from reaching the top; introduce time windows/growth rate thresholds, time decay, etc.
Pros: hits the cheating; quick to implement.
Cons: competitors can be sabotaged by spamming them with reviews/votes so that the algorithm "mutes" them.
Solution: better to sanction suspicious reviews/votes (hiding them from calculations, marking them, etc) rather than the entire listing; manual verification worth it, specially when verification data open for everyone.

2) Weighting reviews by account "validity"

Idea: weight reviews depending on account age, activity, transaction/review history, admin status, etc.
Pros: reduces the power of "one-time" accounts; preserves privacy (if no extra data is collected).
Cons: does not completely eliminate cheating — aged accounts can be used for reviews; there is also a risk of creating inequality — oligopoly of old accounts.
Solution: two metrics can be displayed: "raw" and "weighted".

The option of weight by donor badges was discussed separately.

Pros: donors have "invested" and will be less likely to troll/sybil/etc.
Cons: smacks of pay-to-win; small donations to many alt accounts may even make cheating easier.
Solution: I think the cons are too serious to completely discard this option.

3) "Friction" against mass alts: CAPTCHA / PoW + newbie badges

Idea: CAPTCHA/PoW on registration and/or publication of reviews; "new user" and other tags
Pros: cheap & private protection against mass automation or manual attacks; badges immediately provide context to the reader and help with moderation/analytics.
Cons: manual alt accounts are still possible; CAPTCHA can be annoying/break JS-free scripts.
Solution: use JS-free/open source CAPTCHAs.

4) "Proof of transaction" via txid

Idea: access to reviews only upon presentation of matching txid from the seller and buyer.
Pros: makes cheating more expensive (transactions incur fees); links reviews to actual activity rather than "empty" regs.
Cons: easy to "buy from yourself" with two wallets; fees are less than 0,01$.
Solution: I think the cons are too serious to completely discard this option.

5) Moderation and reports more serious

Idea: make reports more visible and harmful.
Pros: fakes are easier visible to regular users, and reports increase the punishment for malicious behavior.
Cons: collusion and sabotage.
Solution: delete/exclude only fake reviews, without removing the entire lot; design a "small group of trusted individuals"/jury to vote on suspicious cases (???)

6) Open-sourcing

Idea: open source the code of Bazaar.
Pros: transparency, community contribution.
Cons: does not "cure" cheating on its own; malicious actors immediately see the anti-abuse logic and adapt to it; may include black swans in ethics.
Solution: no clue.

7) Removing votes/comments

One participant suggested a radical option of removing everything. Yet, overall consensus seem to have shifted to:
• leave comments/reviews (since overall they provide good protection against scams)
• remove or significantly reduce "upvotes" on lots

Edited: Feb 9 15:29

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cypherpink

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Feb 9 15:25

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#931

Very brief summary

1. CAPTCHA/PoW + rate limits on registration and publication of reviews/votes.
2. Tags like "new user", also for anonymous reviews
3. "Popular" algorithm change: limit the influence of new/anonymous accounts and spikes, excluding suspicious reviews from the calculation/marking them.
4. Strengthen reporting and moderation, possibly with a "trusted group" for initial verdicts.
5. Strongly review or remove completely upvotes as the most "attackable" signal.

If all users agree that this is a valid summary, I will send these theses to the programming part of the XMR Bazaar project.

Edited: Feb 9 15:36

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sepia

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Feb 10 09:46

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#934

Reply to post #931

I guess that's all.

About the removal of upvote i have mixed feeling about it, although it seems it done more harm than good. This is just from me but if there is people still want to have upvote feature and want to combat downvote attack from spam account there is solution to this although not bullet proof. New account that just created can be locked from the voting feature until their account has reach certain maturity, lets say a week.

If someone petty enough they can age their account but it can add delay to the attack which cost them time.

Edited: Feb 10 09:47

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systemnvr

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Feb 12 04:54

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#950

Hey everyone,

I've been following the discussion that @cypherpink started about the review farming problem - specifically the "Riseup.net Email Invite Code" listing that was getting 7-10 anonymous positive reviews a day from what appear to be throwaway accounts. It's a real problem, and the conversation that followed was one of the most productive threads I've seen on this forum.

What stood out to me is that this community already knows what the right solutions look like.

@virg1ni4anx1ety430 and @sepia proposed PoW and newbie badges. @AgoristShop and @USAGI talked about algorithmic weighting. @pieq made the critical point about removing individual fake reviews rather than nuking entire listings. @notbawdy pushed for dual metrics. @xmr2cex raised valid concerns about the upvote system being exploitable. The ideas are there - what's missing is someone to sit down and actually build it.

I'd like to be that person. I'm a software developer, and I'm proposing to design and build a comprehensive anti-sybil review system for XmrBazaar. If funded, this becomes my full-time priority until it ships.

The Problem (As I Understand It)
Right now, anyone can create an account and immediately leave reviews. There's effectively zero cost to spinning up 10, 50, or 100 accounts and flooding a listing with fake positive reviews. This creates three cascading problems:

Legitimate sellers get pushed out of Popular rankings by sellers willing to game the system
Buyers lose the ability to trust reviews, which is the entire point of having them
It creates a race to the bottom - as @cypherpink put it, the only way to compete with a fake-reviewer is to fake reviews yourself

The tricky part - and what makes this an interesting engineering challenge - is that the obvious solutions (KYC, metadata fingerprinting, IP tracking) are all non-starters. This is a Monero marketplace. Privacy isn't a feature, it's the foundation. Any solution has to make sybil attacks expensive without knowing or caring who anyone is.

What I'm Proposing to Build

A layered defense system. No single measure stops a determined attacker, but stacking friction makes attacks costly enough to not be worth the effort. Here's the breakdown:

1. Proof-of-Work on Key Actions
Every registration, review submission, and upvote requires solving a computational puzzle. Think hashcash - the same concept that inspired Bitcoin's mining, but applied to anti-spam.
First review of the day? Light puzzle, maybe 2-3 seconds of computation.
Fifth review today? Heavier. Tenth? You're waiting minutes.
Creating an account? Non-trivial PoW from the start.

This is pure math. No personal data collected, no fingerprinting, no tracking. It just makes bulk operations expensive. One person leaving one honest review barely notices. Someone trying to create 50 sock puppet accounts in an afternoon hits a wall.

I'd use RandomX (Monero's own PoW algorithm) where practical, it's ASIC-resistant, CPU-friendly, and thematically appropriate for this community.

2. Account Credibility Scoring
Not all reviews should carry equal weight. An account that's been active for 6 months with completed transactions is more credible than one created 20 minutes ago. The system assigns a credibility weight (0.0 to 1.0) based on:

Account age - time since registration
Activity history - forum posts, completed transactions, prior reviews
Donor status - users who've donated to XmrBazaar have skin in the game (this already exists with your badge system)

Review consistency - accounts that only ever review one seller are less credible than those with diverse activity
Critically, this would display two scores on every listing:
Raw score - the simple average of all reviews (full transparency)
Weighted score - adjusted by reviewer credibility
Buyers can decide for themselves which to trust. No information is hidden, just contextualized.

3. "New Reviewer" Badges
Simple, visible, effective. If an account is below a certain maturity threshold, their reviews get tagged with a badge - something like "First Review" or "New Account." This was suggested by multiple people in the thread and it's low-hanging fruit that immediately gives buyers context.
Not punitive. Not hidden. Just transparent. A new account leaving an honest review isn't penalized - their review still shows up, still counts. The buyer just gets additional context.

4. Anomaly Detection
An automated system that watches for suspicious patterns:
Velocity spikes - 10 new-account reviews on one listing in 24 hours is not organic
Timing clusters - reviews arriving at statistically improbable intervals
Rating distribution anomalies - a listing where 95% of reviews are 5-star from accounts with zero other activity
Single-target accounts - accounts that exist solely to review one listing
When anomalies are detected, the system flags for human review - it does not auto-remove. This is important. Auto-removal can be weaponized (flood a competitor with obviously fake reviews, wait for the system to nuke their listing). Flagging gives moderators the information they need to make the right call.

5. Moderation Dashboard
A purpose-built admin interface for handling flagged content:
View flagged review clusters with visual pattern analysis
Remove individual reviews (not entire listings - @pieq's point)
See account activity timelines at a glance
Moderation action log for accountability and transparency
Optional: trusted community members can participate in review disputes (jury system)

6. Rate Limiting & Gating
Configurable limits to slow down abuse:
Cap on reviews per day for accounts below a maturity threshold
Optional: require at least one completed transaction before reviewing (configurable, not mandatory)
Upvote privileges gated behind minimum account age
Graduated permissions - new accounts earn capabilities over time through legitimate use

What I'm NOT Proposing
Just as important as what's in the system:
No KYC or identity verification. Ever. Period.
No IP logging, browser fingerprinting, or device tracking. The system is behaviorally aware, not identity-aware.
No paid reviews or pay-to-play schemes. Shouldn't cost money to leave an honest review.
No automated removal of content. Humans make moderation decisions, algorithms surface patterns.
No trusted-user hierarchies that create power imbalances. Credibility scoring is transparent and algorithmic, not hand-picked.

Deliverables
If funded, here's what gets built:

Timeline & Milestones
I'm proposing to work on this full-time. Here's a realistic breakdown:

Phase 1 - Foundation (Weeks 1-3)
PoW module built and tested
Account credibility scoring engine
New reviewer badge system
Milestone: Core anti-sybil primitives working and demonstrable

Phase 2 - Intelligence (Weeks 4-6)
Anomaly detection engine
Rate limiting and gating logic
Integration with existing review/ranking system
Milestone: Full detection pipeline running against test data

Phase 3 - Moderation & Polish (Weeks 7-9)
Admin dashboard
Dual-score display on listings
Documentation and integration guide
Testing, hardening, edge cases
Milestone: Production-ready system, ready for deployment

Phase 4 - Deployment Support (Weeks 10-12)
Work directly with XmrBazaar team on integration
Monitor initial deployment, tune parameters
Address issues that emerge from real-world usage
Milestone: System live and stable in production

Funding
I'm looking for funding to cover 3 months of full-time development. I'm open to discussion on the exact amount and structure - whether that's through a community crowdfunding effort, direct sponsorship from XmrBazaar, the Monero CCS, or some combination.
I'm happy to structure payment around milestones so that funding is tied to demonstrated progress. If Phase 1 doesn't deliver, there's no obligation to fund Phase 2.
Payment in XMR preferred (obviously).

I'll provide regular progress updates — weekly posts in this forum or a dedicated thread — so the community can follow along, provide feedback, and course-correct if needed.

Why Me
I'm a developer who cares about privacy-preserving systems and believes that marketplaces like XmrBazaar serve an important purpose. The review farming problem is solvable without compromising the principles this platform was built on. It just needs someone to commit to building the solution properly.

I'm not proposing a quick hack. I'm proposing a well-engineered, modular system that makes sybil attacks progressively more expensive while keeping the experience seamless for honest users. Every component is open source, every design decision is transparent, and every trade-off is documented.

What I'm Asking For
Feedback on this proposal - Am I missing anything? Are there concerns I haven't addressed?
Support from the XmrBazaar team - I'll need access to understand the existing codebase and architecture for integration

Funding commitment - Whether through CCS, direct sponsorship, or community crowdfunding.
The discussion in this thread showed that the community understands the problem and has strong intuitions about the right solutions. I want to turn those intuitions into working software.

This is of course up to the XmrBazaar owners and devs but I just wanted to add my thoughts and offer.

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DumpSurveillance

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Feb 14 21:48

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#954

Reply to post #950

Your proposal is very nice one and very good in terms of how it can be implemented.
I'm up-voting and i really love this idea this how good sellers can really get real customers and their trust.
Other wise many new people gonna get into scams to see fake reviews.

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