Amazon Inc., today, said it has filed legal actions against managers of over 10,000 Facebook groups with members who are paid to post incentivised and misleading reviews on the platform.
The e-commerce giant in a press release revealed that the Facebook group admins are asking individuals to post reviews of products ranging from camera tripods to car stereos and are offering them for free in return.
The reviews are designed to artificially boost product ratings and therefore increase their likelihood of being bought by customers.
“One of the groups identified in the lawsuit is “Amazon Product Review,” which had more than 43,000 members until Meta took down the group earlier this year,” the company noted.
Amazon’s investigations revealed that the group’s administrators attempted to hide their activity and evade Facebook’s detection, in part by obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.
The company said it strictly prohibits fake reviews and has more than 12,000 employees around the world dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews.
Since 2020, Amazon has reported over 10,000 fraudulent review groups to Meta. Meta has taken down more than half of these groups for policy violations and is investigating others.
“The nefarious business of brokering fake reviews remains an industry-wide problem, and civil litigation is only one step,” said the company.
Meta, on the otherhand, has updated its Community Feedback Policy to make sure customers post reviews on the pages of businesses that are based on “real purchasing experiences”, while trying to keep irrelevant, fraudulent and offensive feedback off of its platforms.
Going forward, the new policy will tackle users who leave fake or potentially abusive reviews.
