Amazon is getting serious about combatting fake reviews listed in their ecommerce websites. Most people look at the overall star rating of the product and ensure that the reviews listed are left by people who bought it, it is a matter of trust. Today, Amazon filed legal action against 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
The e-commerce giant has been battling these inauthentic reviews for years, taking legal action against the brokers that help facilitate them as well as the Amazon sellers who buy them. In today’s press release, the company says it has over 12,000 employees worldwide working to prevent fraud and abuse on its platform, which includes fake reviews, and says it’s reported over 10,000 fake review groups to Facebook-owner Meta since 2020.
Amazon says it uses a combination of “advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring” to detect fake reviews on its service. Over the past year and a bit, it’s kicked hundreds of sellers off its platform for violating its policies, including popular brands like RavPower and Aukey. It says it proactively stopped over 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020. The company has a team of 12,000 employees that scour social media to find culprits and bring them to justice. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and even LinkedIn.
“Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Services. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.