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Episode 850: The Fake Review Hunter

Fake Review By Kenny Malone/NPR

Tommy Noonan is a bit of a gym rat. Back when he was in college, one of his weightlifting friends complained about an energy powder he bought online. The product made him sick, and Tommy saw an opportunity. He built a website where bodybuilders could review the stuff they were putting into their bodies.

But as the website became more prominent, Tommy realized there was a big problem: Weirdly positive reviews. Tommy suspected they were being written by supplement companies themselves.

Today on the show: a quest to identify fake online reviews. It starts with a small bodybuilding website, and ends with the elephant of online shopping: Amazon.com.

Music: "Spinning Piano" and "Club Soda".

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Money podcast. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Human podcast. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C.'s homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News.
Hilke Schellmann