Fake reviews are a huge issue. Bad actors use them to mislead consumers. Amazon filed a lawsuit against Facebook group administrators that orchestrated fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. It sued over 10,000 Facebook groups, including one called Amazon Product Review, with more than 43,000 members. The groups recruit people worldwide to write false reviews in return for money or free products, Amazon said in a news release. The “incentivized and misleading” fake reviews target Amazon clients.
Amazon has dealt with fake reviews for years. The New York Times reports that the company has received pressure from the Federal Trade Commission to take action. Facebook parent company Meta has taken down half of the more than 10,000 groups reported by Amazon.
The group administrators’ identities are unknown to Amazon, which said it filed the lawsuit to learn their identities, shut down the groups, and compel them to return their “ill-gotten gains from brokering fake reviews,” according to the complaint. Amazon strictly prohibits fake reviews and has more than 12,000 employees worldwide dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews. The company works with a combination of machine-learning tools and human moderators to try to curb fake reviews. Amazon claims that it proactively stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020 alone.
The case represents Amazon’s latest effort to root out fake reviews on its third-party marketplace. The marketplace accounts for over half of e-commerce sales and has helped the company generate record revenue.
