Amazon hits Facebook group administrators with lawsuit over fake product reviews
Over 10K Facebook groups have been used to solicit fake reviews in an attempt to receive money or free products
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Amazon is taking legal action against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups being used to create fake product reviews in an attempt to receive money or free products.
According to the e-commerce behemoth, the groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post "incentivized and misleading reviews" on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 179.62 | +5.95 | +3.43% |
The fake reviews are solicited on hundreds of products available for sale on Amazon, including car stereos and camera tripods.
AMAZON PRIME DAY SKIRTS INLFATION
Since 2020, Amazon has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Facebook parent Meta Platforms. Of these, Meta has taken down more than half of the groups for policy violations and continues to investigate others.
"Groups that solicit or encourage fake reviews violate our policies and are removed," a Meta spokesperson told FOX Business. "We are working with Amazon on this matter and will continue to partner across the industry to address spam and fake reviews."
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| META | META PLATFORMS INC. | 443.29 | +1.91 | +0.43% |
One group identified in the lawsuit is "Amazon Product Review," which had more than 43,000 members until Meta took down the group earlier this year. According to Amazon, the group's administrators attempted to hide their activity and evade Facebook’s detection, in part by obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.
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Amazon said it would use the information discovered in its legal action to identify bad actors and remove any fake reviews that have not already been detected by its advanced technology, expert investigators and continuous monitoring.
The company has more than 12,000 employees across the globe who are dedicated to protecting Amazon's stores from fraud and abuse, including a team focused on investigating fake review schemes through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
"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," Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of selling partner services, said in a blog post on Tuesday.
In 2020 alone, Amazon's expert investigators proactively stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews.
