On Tuesday, Amazon sued more than 10,000 Facebook groups responsible for facilitating the purchase and selling fake reviews on the Amazon marketplace in more than seven countries.
The group administrators face accusations of recruiting people to generate fake and misleading product reviews in exchange for money or free goods.
For years, fake reviews have been an issue for Amazon. They have the potential to influence customers to purchase inferior or dubious goods. But after the pandemic, when e-commerce demand skyrocketed, dishonest retailers discovered fresh ways to boost their sales using phony evaluations. The problem became much worse.
The fake views appeared in France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the UK, Germany, and the United States.
Amazon said that since 2020, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, had eliminated more than 5,000 fake-review groups from the social network because of allegations made by Amazon to the social media behemoth.
Amazon stated that one Facebook group named Amazon Product Review that Meta banned early this year had more than 43,000 members and that fake-review efforts are active on numerous popular social media networks.
Because of the trend, UK authorities started an inquiry into whether Amazon and Google have harmed customers by failing to shield them from fraudulent reviews. Google and Amazon stated last year that they would assist with the investigation.
Amazon’s lawsuit will allow it to identify and remove fake reviews and actors commissioned by the fraudsters that the company’s system has failed to notice.
A spokesman for Meta, Dani Lever, said that “groups that solicit or promote fraudulent reviews violate regulations, will be deleted.” We are collaborating with Amazon on this issue and will keep partnering with businesses in the sector to address spam and fraudulent reviews.”
