You already discount them. Everybody does. You read the one-star ones to find out what actually goes wrong, you ignore the five-star ones that sound like they were written by the owner's cousin, and you make a judgement on the gap between.
That is a lot of work to do in a car park before deciding where to eat.
Why the fakes are so hard to get rid of
Because on most platforms, writing a review requires nothing. An account, a few words, a star rating. No proof you were ever there.
Which means the economics are all wrong. A fake review costs a few pounds to buy. A genuine one costs a customer who was pleased enough to bother, which is far rarer. Platforms fight it with detection — patterns, timing, language analysis — and the people selling fakes adjust, and it continues.
It is a hard problem to solve by detection, because you are trying to spot a lie after the fact with no evidence either way.
The evidence problem solves itself when the payment is the proof
If a review can only be written by a wallet that actually paid that business, and the payment is on a public record that nobody can fake or backdate, then there is nothing to detect. The proof came first.
Not "verified" as in the platform checked something. Verified as in the review is attached to a real payment that really settled, and without one there is no way to leave a review at all.
Buying fake reviews would mean buying real purchases. At which point the business has simply bought itself some customers, which is a different problem.
What that changes in practice
- No review farmsThe cost of a fake review becomes the cost of a real transaction.
- No competitor with a grudgeSomeone who never bought from a business cannot rate it. The one-star from a rival with five accounts stops being possible.
- Fewer reviews, more signalA business with eleven verified reviews tells you more than one with four hundred of unknown origin.
- The replies matterA considered reply to a genuine complaint tells you as much about a business as the complaint did.
The honest limits
This proves somebody paid. It does not prove they were fair, or in a good mood, or right. People who paid can still write nonsense, and a business can still have a bad day in front of someone determined to be difficult.
It also cannot cover a business's whole customer base, only the ones who paid this way. Early on that is a small number, and a small number of reviews is a thin picture however honest each one is.
What it removes is the specific, industrial problem: people who were never there, writing about a place they have never been, for money.
And you stay anonymous if you want to be. A review shows the name you chose to put on it. The payment behind it proves you were a customer without publishing who you are, what else you bought, or where else you shop.
The proof and the identity are separate things, which is rather the point.
Every review on Ceodore is attached to a payment that settled. There is no other way to write one.