Said It Here

How to tell if online reviews are fake or paid

AI-generated content and paid incentives allow fake feedback to be posted at scale, making standard star ratings unreliable. Because of this, travelers and diners struggle to trust any review site before deciding where to go.

Overview
People affected3 accounts across 2 forums
Workarounds found5 items attempted
Community agreement6 total upvotes

What the numbers show

Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count

  • People have been saying this in most months since September 2026.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

5 items+ Contribute

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Look at 4-star ratings rather than 5-star or 1-star ones
    Did this help you?
  2. 2
    Examine the wording and sentence structure of reviews with fewer ratings
    Did this help you?
  3. 3
    Completely ignore reviews and rely on personal judgment
    Did this help you?
  4. 4
    Not fully trusting review sites
    Did this help you?
  5. 5
    Relying on direct testing or alternative software vendors
    Did this help you?
Tried another approach not listed above?+ Share your workaround ↑

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/shopify2 people · November 2026

“AI probably makes it easy to do this kind of stuff at scale, so can I even trust any review sites anymore?”source ↗

Coffee_Pages · r/shopify · 4 upvotes

“I never fully trust any review sites, or even online reviews in general.”source ↗

Next-Nobody-745 · r/shopify · 2 upvotes
r/travel1 person · September 2026

“Sometimes reviews can be fake or paid. What do you usually check before choosing a place?”source ↗

Quiet_Committee5531 · r/travel

Where this came up

r/shopifyr/traveldecision makinge-commercereviewstravelvendor selection

People with this problem also raised