In the current digital age digital advertising is becoming one the largest industries outside of manufacturing and production. Digital advertisement usually take many forms ranging from social media AD’s to celebrity endorsements. One of the main platform for advertisement, especially for the service industry, is online reviews.
Platforms such as Yelp and Google Reviews are major players in the online review industry, and as with all industries, businesses are willing to pay money for better privileges. Unfortunately, this also translates to situations where online reviews are artificially inflated by the platform or by AstroTurf companies.
The objective of this project is to create a proof of concept project which implements a “web-of-trust” system to allow reviews to be verified for authenticity. The project will also implement a time decay system to ensure reviews are a reflection of the most recent development rather than outdated events.