10/3号亚马逊再度丢下重磅炸弹，更新了community guidelines，禁止任何用折扣或免费商品换取的顾客评价review。过去亚马逊已经明令禁止使用金钱作为报酬去「买review」，虽然对折扣与免费商品放行，但是仍规定不能以此要求顾客要写好评（虽然实务上收到折扣或免费商品的客户普遍会给好评）。如今亚马逊收紧规范，进一步要求连折扣或免费促销换来的review也被禁止，卖家要用折扣商品累积评价，只能使用Amazon自家付费的Vine Program来蒐集，这样大幅度的政策更新，后续会产生多大的影响仍待观察。
以下是Amazon具体的规则更新：
Update on Customer Reviews
October 3, 2016
Customer reviews are one of the most valuable tools we offer customers for making informed purchase decisions, and we work hard to make sure they are doing their job. In just the past year, we’ve improved review ratings by introducing a machine learned algorithm that gives more weight to newer, more helpful reviews; applying stricter criteria to qualify for the Amazon verified purchase badge; and suspending, banning or suing thousands of individuals for attempting to manipulate reviews.
客户评论是Amazon提供给顾客做明智购买决定前，最有价值的工具之一，Amazon努力确保客户评论提供真实且实用的参考。过去一年来，Amazon为了改进客户评论，透过机器学习演算法给予越新、越有帮助的评论更高的权重；并以更严格的标准来过滤确实有在亚马逊购买产品的顾客，将他们所写的评论加以注记；同时也停权、禁止甚至对数千个试图操纵客户评论的人提告。
Our community guidelines have always prohibited compensation for reviews, with an exception – reviewers could post a review in exchange for a free or discounted product as long as they disclosed that fact. These so-called ‘incentivized reviews’ make up only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of reviews on Amazon, and when done carefully, they can be helpful to customers by providing a foundation of reviews for new or less well-known products.
Amazoon的平台政策向来禁止有偿评论，除了评论者可以用评论换取折扣或免费的商品（只要评论者有在评论中自我揭露）。这个所谓的「鼓励评价」只占亚马逊数以千万计顾客评论中的一小部分，在合理的使用下对推广新产品或比较不知名的产品很有帮助。
Today, we updated the community guidelines to prohibit incentivized reviews unless they are facilitated through the Amazon Vine program. We launched Vine several years ago to carefully facilitate these kinds of reviews and have been happy with feedback from customers and vendors. Here’s how Vine works: Amazon – not the vendor or seller – identifies and invites trusted and helpful reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release products; we do not incentivize positive star ratings, attempt to influence the content of reviews, or even require a review to be written; and we limit the total number of Vine reviews that we display for each product.
但10/3，Amazon则更新了平台规定，禁止所有「鼓励评价」，除非透过Amazon Vine program才能是例外。Amazon在2007年推出Vine来促进鼓励评论，并从客户和商家得到了很好的反馈。以下是Amazon Vine的运作方式：亚马逊平台（非供应商或卖家）会帮厂商找到值得信任且会写实用评论的顾客，邀请他们对新的或预售的商品撰写评论；但Amazon并不会鼓励顾客写正面、高星等的评价，或是试图影响他们的评论内容，甚至不会硬性要求他们一定要写评论；同时也会限制Vine对每个产品评论的总数。
Vine has important controls in place and has proven to be especially valuable for getting early reviews on new products that have not yet been able to generate enough sales to have significant numbers of organic reviews. We also have ideas for how to continue to make Vine an even more useful program going forward. Details on that as we have them.
The above changes will apply to product categories other than books. We will continue to allow the age-old practice of providing advance review copies of books.
Vine扮演着重要的调控角色，并已证明它能帮助那些没能产生足够销量带来自然流量与评价的新产品获得重要的早期评价，对卖家是非常有价值的工具，Amazon正在改善Vine program，希望在未来能有更多应用的方式，至于内容则会等到有更多关于Vine的细节时再对外公布。
而以上所述的政策变更适用的品类不包含书籍，Amazon会延续过去对书籍的顾客评价政策。
