Review bombing is a practice in which many people (or a few aggrieved folks with multiple accounts) barrage a product, business or service with negative reviews, usually in bad faith. That can severely damage a small or local business that relies on word of mouth. Google says millions of reviews are posted on Maps every day, and it has laid out some of the measures it employs to stamp out review bombing.
“Our team is dedicated to keeping the user-created content on Maps reliable and based on real-world experience,” the Google Maps team said in a video. That work helps to protect businesses from abuse and fraud and ensures reviews are beneficial for users. Its content policies were designed “to keep misleading, false and abusive reviews off our platform.”
Machine learning plays an important role in the moderation process, Ian Leader, product lead of user-generated content at Google…
