Feedback bombing

Comment or review bombing is the deliberate act of flooding an online platform with a large number of comments or reviews about a particular piece of content or product, by people who have not purchased the product or used the service. It is one form of coordinated inauthentic activity, and can be undertaken by self-organized real users or through automation and fake accounts. Though we typically think about feedback bombing as trying to sway public perception against an entity, feedback bombing is also undertaken in order to try to enhance the online perception of an entity - creating fake reviews to boost a store in search rankings, for example.

Negative feedback bombing tends to be coordinated through ideologically motivated informal groups (a trend that also gives it the name "Brigading"), while positive feedback bombing (ex: a store trying to boost their ratings) tends to be financially motivated, and conducted by the corporation or individuals that it directly benefits.

In addition to any direct harms that feedback bombing may incur on the target, as a practice it is a threat to platforms because it distorts the platform's credibility as an information aggregator, generates distrust between users, overshadowing genuine feedback.

Feedback bombing is most common when the platform design:

• Allows anonymous, multiple, or automated, feedback submission
• Allows feedback to come from anyone - ex: an e-commerce platform allows users who have not purchased a product thorough their site to rate it

• Aggregated scores are perceived as important - ex: in some industries, like online purchases of interchangable goods, or movie reviews, user purchasing choices heavily influenced by product ratings.