Amazon is restricting users from publishing reviews of the new book of former FBI director James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership unless the reviewer purchased the book through the retailer
The deadline noted the problem, noting that the restriction is in effect for the Kindle and Kindle editions, and that some low-rated revisions could also have been eliminated. A review on the Audible audiobook platform, which is owned by Amazon, complains that the user's previous review was also removed. We contacted Amazon and Audible to comment, and we will update this publication if we receive a response. Barnes and Noble does not seem to have such restrictions for their reviews, and their reviews include a number of anonymous one- and five-star reviews.
This is not the first time Amazon has restricted reviews for high-profile books: the company erased a series of reviews of a star from Hillary Clinton's book What Happened and Michael Wolfe's book Fire and Fury: inside Trump White House after its publication, under the suspicion that they were published by opponents. The Amazon Community Guidelines state that it will restrict reviews of purchases not made by Amazon for products when the company detects "an unusually high number of revisions for a product published in a short period of time."
That policy makes sense, given that high profile books for controversial figures can become the target of opponents or supporters who wish to affect the overall rating of the book. The classification games are something that happens from time to time. Earlier this year, a Facebook group called "Down With Disney & # 39; s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys" claimed that it was behind the low ratings of Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes and planned to conduct a similar review – the bombing campaign before it was closed by Facebook, while in 2015, the novel from Star Wars by Chuck Wendig became the target of Negative reviews on Amazon.
Amazon's grand showcase means that it would be difficult under any circumstances to examine each and every one of the revisions that enter to ensure that it complies with the Community Guidelines. Consequently, there are some basic restrictions to control abuse: the site prohibits users from contributing false or misleading evaluations, while publishers and authors can not buy reviews to play with the system. In fact, Amazon's identification as a verified buyer is a useful verification of the system's game attempts: allowing the company to filter high-profile book reviews in some cases, while preventing users from publishing more than five purchases not verified per week. But that restriction can be annoying for someone who has bought the book from a source that is not from Amazon, but wants to contribute to the greatest number of criticisms on Amazon. In all likelihood, they'll just have to wait until the fervor goes off before they can post their thoughts.
