If you bought a five-star rated item on Amazon and it fell apart a few days after you received it, you've probably wondered if one of those reviewers actually used the product. Well, spoiler alert, it turns out they may not have, as Amazon is suing over 10,000 people for orchestrating conspiracies to leave thousands of fake product reviews on its digital stores.
Filed Monday, the lawsuit targets Facebook group administrators who accepted money or other favors in exchange for posting a bunch of fabricated reviews of products sold on Amazon in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States. USA. Japan (via TechCrunch - opens in a new tab).
This isn't the first time Amazon has taken such action against fake reviews on its services, and the 10,000 number is believed to be just the number of groups Amazon has reported to Facebook since 2020. Reviews since at least 2015 .
Beyond legal action, Amazon is also trying to implement some other tactics to stop fake reviews. The company relies on artificial intelligence tools designed to find ratings that look suspicious, but it also uses real people to find bad actors. As a result, a 2021 Amazon blog post explained that more than 200 million fake reviews were blocked in 2020 before a customer saw them.
Despite these successes, however, some fake reviews continue to surface, and while Amazon is doing its part to blame social media platforms like Facebook that facilitate fake review groups, ultimately the blame lies with Amazon itself. Amazon.
We reached out to Amazon to learn more about its latest legal action and how it plans to combat fake reviews on its platform in the future.
Analysis: The best thing they never bought
Given that this isn't the first time Amazon has had to sue people for fake reviews, it seems their current method is clearly not working. But what else can you do?
Well, maybe it's time to change who can review products and remove accounts that left a rating but didn't purchase the item.
While Amazon does its part to promote 'Verified Purchase' reviews when you scroll to the bottom of the page, which highlights reviews from accounts that purchased the product at full price (or only received a small discount), this doesn't stop bad. actors inflate the overall review count and submit 5-star ratings. How many times have you read the detailed reviews and not just clicked Buy Now on this four and a half star product with 7683 ratings?
Instead, it would be much better to count only verified purchase reviews and remove ratings that don't meet the same standards.
Of course, this method has its flaws, mainly preventing people from leaving a review if they bought the device elsewhere, but it seems like a small price to pay for greater peace of mind that the reviews they leave are actually genuine. No doubt there will be bad actors who will also find new ways to defeat this system, but it will certainly be more difficult (and more expensive), in the hope of limiting the magnitude of the problem.
We'll have to wait and see what, if any, action Amazon takes next, but for something more immediate, we recommend reading our guide on spotting fake Amazon reviews. While we cannot guarantee that this will keep you completely safe, it should limit the chances that you will be misled by a fake review.