Amazon vs Anonymous

A few months back we ran a story in .net (”Trust No One”) about the ways in which people abused shopping sites, message boards and other public areas: writers reviewing their own books and slagging their literary rivals, record company street teams pretending to be normal people to plug albums, and so on.

Today’s Media Guardian [free registration required] reports that Amazon.com is tightening up its reviews system to prevent such abuses, so while you can still use a pen name it won’t be possible to post anonymous, untraceable comments. That’s good news for authors, but I hope it doesn’t prevent people from pointing out that David Hasselhoff’s Hot Shot City is particularly good.

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