Does Customer Feedback Determine Web Spending?

In the March 2007 Wired, the piece on online recommendation systems is really eye opening. As an online consumer, I look at these, read them closely, and sometimes make spending decisions on them, to an extent. Check out the chart within the link called Four Ways to Manipulate the Mob. It's so evident that these online-rating systems are hacked aggressively by those who want to give online businesses cred. Another, scarier method is the "Sybil Attack"-online identities that these grifters create (named after the infamous psychology patient with more than a dozen distinct personalities), writing a bogus favorable review, which boosts their rating, then auctioning off ten of thousands of dollars in merchandise that's never sent.