Imiss the days of the early web when most things online felt legit—back before the proliferation of bots and generative AI. The modern web has drastically changed, and it feels like “fake” content now outnumbers genuine content. You can’t trust anything anymore, especially when it comes to reviews on product sites.

Whether you’re on Amazon, Yelp, Google, or some brand’s first-party online shop, you need a skeptical eye when reading reviews. Companies have been known to filter out negative reviews, pay for positive reviews, and manipulate how reviews are shown. The problem has gotten so bad that the FTC began cracking down on fake reviews last year .

As someone who’s been burned by fake reviews in the past, I’ve learned to identify some of the suspicious red flags inauthentic reviews of

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