I was there when Nirav Tolia launched epinions in 1999...
Brings back memories. I think I was something like the 500th member there, basically one of The Old Ones once it got to the point where huge numbers of people were signing up.
But Epinions had a deeply flawed design. If I remember correctly, for a while at least people were getting something like 20 cents per page view, not even needing votes. People were writing crap like "Gruidl fibbing ifjinh ghvkj fijjlv" and getting paid for it.
At least it's not quite that bad here. 😅
"waaaahhh!" They were burning through their "angel funding" at an insane rate.THIRTY CENTS per page view @preparedwombat, it was stunning. But then again, it almost required a degree in rocket science to actually GET a page view, back then... well, not quite. And then it became 3 cents, and everyone went
Remarkably, I kept getting royalty payments till-- I think-- 2014 or 2015.
Flawed or not, the eventual system of members and "category managers" with different levels of voting power did somewhat contain and sort the pure garbage for quite a few years.
Point here being that they did address the issue of spam and spun content rather than pretend it would not be a serious problem.