Amazon Finally Takes Action Against Fake Reviews on Platform

Amazon is finally taking action against fake reviews on its platform, suing the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups used to coordinate fake reviews on the site.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that were used to coordinate fake reviews on its e-commerce platform.

The group administrators solicit reviews for items ranging from tripods to car stereos, in exchange reviewers are sent free products or money. This specifically violates Amazon’s rules and occurs across the company’s platform for the U.S, UK, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese markets.

Amazon Vice President Dharmesh Mehta said that the lawsuit represents “proactive legal action targeting bad actors.”  The issue of fake reviews has been a problem on Amazon’s platform for years, especially during the pandemic as consumers turned to e-commerce platforms for their shopping needs.

Last year, the UK’s antitrust regulator launched an investigation into how Amazon and Google have been combatting fake reviews. One of the named Facebook group was called “Amazon Product Review” and had more than 43,000 members. Facebook removed the group this year according to Amazon, which added that the group evaded Facebook’s detection by changing letters in phrases that may alert Facebook to its nefarious purpose.

In 2019, U.S. lawmakers questioned Amazon’s efforts to tackle fake reviews in a letter to then-CEO Jeff Bezos. The same year, the Federal Trade Commission fined a retail website that paid a third party to post reviews on Amazon in the first case against the use of fake paid reviews.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan