Thursday, August 08, 2013

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Internet Comments | Science/AAAS | News

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Internet Comments | Science/AAAS | News:

In many areas the Wisdom of the crowds rules, but what is the crowd isn't as smart as we think?

 From Reddit:

"The “wisdom of crowds” has become a mantra of the Internet age. Need to choose a new vacuum cleaner? Check out the reviews on Amazon. Is that restaurant any good? See what Yelp has to say. But a new study suggests that such online scores don’t always reveal the best choice. A massive controlled experiment of Web users finds that such ratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herd behavior”—and that the herd can be manipulated."

Here is the abstract of the paper by  Muchnik, Aral, and Taylor. 

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