Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook Group admins for offering fake reviews
- Reference: 1658298792
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/20/amazon_facebook_reviews/
- Source link:
Merchants selling items on Amazon are more likely to appear first in search results if their products are highly rated by previous purchases. Some vendors therefore abuse the system by persuading netizens to post fake ones. Many are recruited through Facebook groups.
One group, known as "Amazon Product Review", had over 43,000 members before Facebook's parent biz Meta binned it earlier this year. Another, named "Amazon Varified Buyer & Seller" contained more than 2,500 members. Group admins charged $10 per fake review, [1]according to CNBC. Reviewers were also lured with promises of free products in return for sham assessments of items such as car stereos or camera tripods.
[2]
"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, [3]said in a statement. "Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable."
[4]FTC carpet bombs industry with letters warning that fake reviews will be punished
[5]That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients' products in job interviews
[6]UK competition watchdog launches investigation into fake review epidemic across Google and Amazon
[7]Amazon probes alleged bribery of staffers for data on e-tail platform
Amazon said it has a team of over 12,000 people actively hunting for fraud and abuse committed on its platforms. One group specializes in sniffing out fake review scams on social media sites, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. Over 10,000 fake review broker groups have been reported to Meta, and half of these have been taken down, we're told.
Amazon [8]uses a mixture of human reviewers and technology like machine learning algorithms to detect fake posts. In an attempt to avoid being found out by automated methods, sometimes these groups use incorrect spellings or blank out letters in words that might arouse suspicion.
[9]
Trying to get rid of these fake-review farms is like whack-a-mole – remove a bunch, and new ones pop up. Amazon has sued several brokers for misleading customers shopping on its platforms around the world.
"The nefarious business of brokering fake reviews remains an industry-wide problem, and civil litigation is only one step," the company said.
[10]
"Permanently ridding fake reviews across retail, travel, and other sectors will require greater public-private partnership, including collaboration between the affected companies, social media sites, and law enforcement, all focused on a goal of greater consumer protection. Amazon remains eager to continue to partner with all the relevant stakeholders to achieve that mutual goal." ®
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[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/amazon-sues-facebook-group-administrators-over-fake-reviews.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YtfSRZQydC9VkJHYbU5UAQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/amazon-targets-fake-review-fraudsters-on-social-media
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/14/fake_reviews_ftc/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/10/terence_eden_fronk/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/25/uk_cma_google_amazon_fake_reviews/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/17/amazon_employees_sell_customer_data_reports/
[8] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/amazon-continues-legal-actions-to-protect-customers-from-fake-reviews
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YtfSRZQydC9VkJHYbU5UAQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YtfSRZQydC9VkJHYbU5UAQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Maybe I'm being thick, but wouldn't it help massively if they restricted reviews to people who had actually bought the item on Amazon, instead of letting anyone who has an Amazon account post a review of anything?
Then there would be less reviews, reducing share holders value, so illegal
I see your thinking but then we would never get the viral hit that is the Three Wolves Moon T Shirt...
https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B002HJ377A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Are you honestly telling me that they are not all legitimate purchasers?!
Damn, I hate the internet, can't believe anything anymore.....
Verified Purchase
Amazon publishes all reviews, but it will only 'count' the reviews from people who purchased that item (which you can see visually tagged with Verified Purchase). However the fake reviews are done in a way where people purchase the item and then get a refund from the fake review organisers.
In general only 1-2% of real buyers leave a review (whether for products on Amazon or games on Steam) - and that is a key reason that fake reviews have such a strong impact, because if you keep buying fake reviews you can keep a low quality item appearing as a high quality one.
people who had actually bought the item
You'd think that would be a requirement for the reviews to have any weight. seems not.I'm revising the order of sympathry the author told me to think about.
Fake reviewers 4 cash - criminals
Facebook - Fagin-esque aiding and abetting in criminal activity
Amazon - letting their own market place be polluted with that shit because presumably its more profitable to fence cheap shitty products than offer a reliable quality control
.
...really cant work out whose the worst here !
Amazon - letting their own market place be polluted...
Actually, look at the number of reviews that end with the statement " at that price I can't be bothered to return [faulty item] ".
It's getting so bad now that I usually look for reviews on other, more credible sites before I spend money with Amazon.
I thought exactly the same. If they were really that bothered about it, that's what they would do. Even if companies are paying for products and then getting refunds - the number of reviews would still go down. They'd also know if a product was returned - 5 star review + product returned = flag review. Pretty sure there is some kind of AI that could help with that.
On the other side of the coin ...
Trustpilot cannot be trusted because they remove reviews that are critical of their paid clients even if you prove the purchase and are invited to do the review with a personal email.
Not new
Whilst the web has enabled this kind of manipulation of reviews to explode in size, it's not new.
Back in the 80s, there were all sorts of allegations that the advertising department would lean on the editor to write favourible articles so they could sell more advertising space to the advertiser.
Some (slightly) ethical rags put up chinese walls between the editorial & commercial sides of their business to try to fend these acusations off.
Re: 10,000 fake review broker groups
"Over 10,000 fake review broker groups have been reported to Meta, and half of these have been taken down, we're told."
The real question is: so, why haven't Meta taken down the other 5,000 as well?
Re: 10,000 fake review broker groups
Maybe because "Metà" means "half" in Italian?
Sir Tim Berners Lee
I absolutely feel sorry for this man, he gave us an amazing tool, and it’s being trashed by commercialisms, and all the dumbf**kery that entails
I am of course referring to The David Dimbleby Lecture
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bj15
Reviews Business
I bought a shitty phone screen protector on Amazon long ago. As I don't like to be screwed, I wrote a review for this item. A couple of weeks later, I received mails from the vendor asking me to remove my review in exchange of $. I warned three times Amazon about this corruption attempt. The only answers I got were automated generic answers. The vendor is still selling on Amazon
Re: Reviews Business
I had a mattress company call after I wrote their only review, a 1 star review. They gave me a full refund and I got to keep the sinking mattress in exchange for deleting the review.
ignore 5 star reviews
In general I ignore any 5 star review, they're generally useless and either bought or "the box looks good, will try it tomorrow" (Why are you writing a product review if you haven't even taken it out of the box!!). The 2 to 4 star range is generally where you find the real reviews, where people actually talk about the negatives and share real user experiences in a way that allows me to judge if a product meets expectations.
In particular I also avoid buying anything from Amazon.
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