If even amazon can't screen out bogus reviews, what hope is there for a brick-and-mortar business that has no built-in means to identify reviewers who have actually used the product or service (whether or not they personally paid for it)?

Seems fact-checker thinking is effecting more than just false news.

A sure path to brand sabotage is to allow bias and self-interests a voice.

I wonder if they're talking about the properly disclaimed incentivized reviews? Some products have one review after another in which the reviewer mentions they got the product free or at a discount in exchange for an "honest" review. I've seen 12 of them in a row before, followed by some cheeky reviewer saying, "I did not get this for free, I bought it with my own money, and I didn't love it as much as the people who got it for free" to distinguish a totally voluntary review from an incentivized one.

Beyond that, I'm not sure how they could ever know if a review was incentivized.

Amazon does of course, encourage incentivized reviews via their Vine Program which I believe is still going. They send select reviewers a free product in exchange for a review and you must review about 80% of what you get to keep getting free stuff.

you must review about 80% of what you get to keep getting free stuff.

Does it have to be a positive review? (Obviously it can't be written explicitly into the contract, but surely Ve Haff Vays.)