How IndexFair handles reviews

This page sets out what we publish, where the data comes from, how we screen for fake reviews, and how to dispute a rating.

IndexFair publishes a single composite score per brand per market, derived from a published methodology. Each score is accompanied by per-aspect breakdowns, the methodology version used, and the count of review signals fed into the calculation. We do not publish individual reviews verbatim; aspect-level evidence quotes are capped at 200 characters per the aggregate-only reviews policy (ADR 0035).

Review signals are aggregated from a small set of public sources. We do not host a review form on indexfair.com and we have never accepted a review submitted directly by a consumer.

For each source we record the aggregate rating, the number of reviews contributing to it, and the timestamp of last ingestion. The complete list of active sources and their per-source weights is published at /sources. We do not retain individual review text after extraction — only metadata sufficient to reproduce the aggregate.

A deterministic Layer-1 filter runs over every review before it enters the corpus. A Layer-2 model-assisted screen then reads the review’s prose for authenticity. Both layers only decide whether a review is trustworthy enough to count toward a score — they can exclude evidence but never adjust the score itself — and the count of excluded reviews is shown on each brand page. We do not publish the exact thresholds or prompts.

Layer-1 verdicts are tracked in the brand record as reviews.is_likely_fake + fake_reason (ADR 0110). Reviewers are never named. Astroturf-prone forums are not ingested at all (see §4).

Defensive commitments. The list is exhaustive — if a behaviour you expect from a review-handling platform is not on this page, the answer is that we do not do it.

• ✗We do not commission, request, or solicit reviews from anyone.
• ✗We do not incentivise reviewers — no payment, gifts, points, or any form of consideration.
• ✗We do not accept payment from operators for placement, ranking, or score modification.
• ✗We do not publish editorial reviews or comparative claims that are not derived from the published methodology.
• ✗We do not store verbatim review text. Aggregate metrics and short aspect-level evidence quotes (≤200 characters) are all that persist beyond the extraction window.

Operators, members of the public, and regulators may dispute a rating or request a correction via /privacy/contact using the «DMCC dispute / operator correction» category. Substantive disputes — those concerning a specific brand fact, a regulatory status claim, or a published score — are acknowledged within 14 calendar days and resolved as quickly as the underlying evidence allows. Resolutions that result in a score change, a published correction, or a methodology clarification are logged in a public-disclosure register that surfaces here on this page once the volume crosses one entry; the register is admin-curated, not automated.

Disputes that turn on the methodology itself — e.g. the choice of a weight or a half-life — are routed to the public methodology changelog at /changelog; no methodology change is made without a versioned entry.

Substantive changes to this policy are versioned alongside the methodology in the public changelog. Minor editorial corrections are made in place without a version bump.

For the score-computation mechanics underlying this policy, see /methodology. For the upstream-source list, see /sources.