I used to love Trustpilot and reading the reviews to help make a purchase decision but the past few years, that platform has gone downhill badly. I've had an account for almost 10 years and I've contributed to around 130 reviews. Albeit, most of them are bad reviews because the truth is, many of the retailers I've dealt with had ripped me off or played me in some ways; now it's more prominent with Chinese websites pretending to be legitimate American brands. But Trustpilot has lost my trust as a reviewer and a reader. In my opinion, NO ONE should have to verify their identity to write a review online. Order number, order confirmation, your name or screenshots should be fine but asking someone to upload their ID with their personal information just to write a review is ridiculous. This platform is so concerned about people putting fake reviews meanwhile there's plenty of scamming websites out there with 100s of fake positive reviews that Trustpilot never removes despite I've flagged them multiple times. However, once the company/scammer flags YOUR honest review, Trustpilot suddenly asks for a boatload of info to "confirm" your experience. Just because I didn't order from a particular business, doesn't mean I didn't have an experience with them. E.g., if you use software or a tool at work but you're not the one paying for the subscription, are you not allowed to share your negative experience on Trustpilot? Furthermore, upon providing info to Trustpilot multiple times to keep my negative review up on a scammer one who was recently on the news after being caught by the FTC themselves, Trustpilot never deleted the fake positive reviews but kept pestering me to provide info for my negative experience. It's ridiculous. They've done this to me 3 times and I've been an honest contributor for years. This is one of the worst practices Trustpilot has suddenly started the past years. Yes, I understand competitors can be ugly and leave fake reviews, but that's the cost of doing business and for my business, many people left me unjustified negative reviews too. I just respond to them nicely and move on. The only ones I ever report are ones that are intentionally obvious spam or ones with racial slur/hate speech or non-related gibberish. Yet those reviews aren't removed but a detailed 2+ paragraph review detailing every aspect of an experience is deemed untrustworthy to Trustpilot!