I never knew this was an actual "thing."

Like, I've seen these for years. It feels like 5 seconds after I open any given website a "rate us on 1-5" popup shows up right in the middle of the screen. I assumed it was just some thing that's automatically thrown in just to annoy users and has no practical purpose, like the cookie warnings (that are ignored regardless of what you select), the email spam requests (which nobody reads despite what people claim [if someone out there wants to get angry and claim their daily spam emails and annoying popups do good for their business, go ahead {I will laugh at you}]), and the "subscribe/follow us on (social media)" that plague every site these days.

Knowing some manager is thinking this is valuable info and this may decide their job is just hilarious. I used to randomly pick numbers just to dismiss it but now I'm motivated to actively mess with them.

I suppose I should have known they're being used for something, but I tend to not answer these because they don't seem answerable. I had a surgery a few weeks back and had an e-mail asking me to rate the experience afterward. Anesthesia results in most memories of the direct experience not existing, so I can't rate that. My satisfaction with the surgery itself depends on the ultimate outcome of it, which I can't possibly know within a day.

It's the same thing with regular product purchase. You get these "would you recommend?" or "would you purchase again?" solicitations either immediately after receipt of the product or within a few days, or solicitations to go leave a review somewhere. How am I supposed to rate something I've owned for somewhere between minutes and days and have barely used? Many of my most disappointing purchases seemed like great things when they first arrived or I first put them together, but after prolonged usage they showed serious flaws or simply stopped working.

Marketing executives often have it as one of their KPI.

Clearly the less fuzzy way to define it is "How many people have you recommended this product/service to in the last n months?" not "Would you, if asked?"

Also, whether customers talk to each other (directly, privately) is not the only thing, there are online reviews, resources like HN, etc. And it's always hard to tell what's compensated or not, e.g. Snowflake's "grassroots" testimonial campaign on LinkedIn, testimonials etc., with the huge budget.

I would have expected everyone to have heard of it by now. I first saw it mentioned on HN in 2017 or so. Good reminder that there's always newer folks around and to define the terms!

That has nothing to do with newer folks, more with interest in certain topics.

"Nonsense per second" is probably a more accurate definition. Or maybe "per sale"?