10:37 PM

Astroturfing on amazon.com:

Many sign their names. Many don’t. They’re the book reviewers on Amazon.com who use such words as “masterful,” “page-turner” and “tear-jerker.” But the ones who sign their critiques only as “a reader from (fill in the city)” lost their anonymity this week when their identities were revealed on Amazon.com’s Canadian Web site.

Among those named were authors who posted glowing reviews of their own work, apparently to boost sales.

The glitch, reported Saturday by The New York Times, replaced pseudonyms with reviewers’ real names, laying bare a culture of self-promotion and potential for revenge among authors and users of the online retailer.

Amazon spokeswoman Patricia Smith told the Times the problem, fixed after a week, was “an unfortunate error.”

“We’ll examine whatever happened and make sure it won’t happen again,” she said.