Part I

Online company reviews are high stakes.

Top reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Google can get thousands of impressions each month and are major drivers of brand perception.

Employers know this. And when I come across multiple 5 star reviews left with no cons, or a Pulitzer worthy essay from a former intern, I become suspicious.

These reviews start to resemble 30 under 30 lists: so artificially constructed that you begin to question their credibility in the first place.

The scrutiny around company reviews is well documented; some companies file lawsuits worth over a million dollars to reveal anonymous reviewers that complain about their jobs.

Whilst it’s the flashy lawsuits that make the headlines, there also exists an underground economy of company reviews operating quietly every single day.

In this underground economy, some companies pay over $150 to freelancers to try and get a negative review removed. If they want “better” results, they go to the plethora of Online Reputation Management services (ORMs) in the United States that can charge retainers worth thousands of dollars.

The supply of positive reviews exists too. My research led me to find companies, including a prominent Y-Combinator backed startup, that solicit fake positive reviews from online freelancers to improve their rating.

Many of these mercenary fake reviewers, often based in South East Asia, make a full time living doing this, netting over $2,000 per month.

Some of these run such sophisticated operations that they’ve even created their own pricing tiers (e.g $35 per original review, $20 to post an already created review from an email address), a la SaaS offering.

Others operate on a contingency fee agreement model, where they only get paid if they’re able to take a negative review down.

The underground economy of company reviews is well and truly alive. And today we’re going to find out how it operates.

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