Goodreads Buckles Down on Review Bombing

The law has come to town!

Well, to one particular town, anyway, and that’s after it’s come to a lot of other towns. What I’m trying to say is what I already said in the post title: Goodreads (which is owned by Amazon) is cracking down on fake reviews, review bombing, and any reviews that aren’t relevant or helpful.

This is good news!

Now Goodreads reviews kinda play by their own rules. There are GIFs. There is formatting and bolds and italics! But even if there’s all that extra style floating around, it still matters that the reviews are truthful and helpful.

Sure, we might not be on Goodreads to inform a purchasing decision (although we very well might!), but even if we aren’t checking to see if we’re spending our money wisely, we ARE checking to see if we’re spending our time wisely. If a book is bad, we wanna know. If it’s great, we wanna know. If the male author can’t stop talking about womens’ breasts, we want a list of every time he does it.

We don’t want review bombs muddying the waters. To that end, Goodreads has enhanced account verification procedures, increased staff to respond to issues, and made it easier for users to report problematic reviews when they see them.

Earlier this year, we launched the ability to temporarily limit submission of ratings and reviews on a book during times of unusual activity that violate our guidelines, including instances of “review bombing.” This kind of activity is not tolerated on Goodreads and it diminishes the community’s trust in people who participate. We are currently in the process of removing ratings and reviews added during times of previous unusual activity that violate our guidelines.

So they’re stepping up, and obviously you can step up too. If you see flagrant and blatant examples low quality reviews, report them. Then keep reading, it’s good for your head!