By: Nick Varterian | July 27, 2022
July 27, 2022
The Latest On Amazon’s Fake Reviews
Amazon is suing individuals and entities in California and New Jersey for allegedly buying and selling fake product reviews on Facebook. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (San Diego Division) against defendants “Doe,” “John Doe” 1-20, 21-50 and 51-100, all of whom Amazon says are based in New Jersey.
Amazon is suing entities in California and New Jersey for allegedly buying and selling fraudulent product reviews on Facebook.
Recently, Amazon has come out suing the owners of 10,000 Facebook groups, buyazonreviews.com, amazonreviews.net and amazonreviews.org for allegedly buying and selling fraudulent product reviews on Facebook.
The complaint alleges that these companies have created fake social media accounts that post false reviews on Amazon products in exchange for cash payments from manufacturers who want to increase their sales rankings on the platform.
Amazon sues admins from 10,000 Facebook groups over fake reviews.
Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the owners and/or admins of 10,000 Facebook groups for selling fake reviews. These are not just any Facebook groups either; they are “secret” Facebook groups that were created specifically for this purpose.
Amazon claims that these admins have been selling positive reviews to those who needed them most: sellers who did not have enough authentic reviews on their product pages. The company says that many of these sellers were using this process as a way to get around Amazon’s review algorithm which looks at the number of reviews a product has along with other factors such as how long it has been on the site before being offered for sale (the longer it is there without being sold means fewer people have bought it).
Amazon has been fighting fake product reviews on its website for years.
The e-commerce giant has sued websites years ago that sold fake reviews before, and tried to crack down on the practice by suing sites like buyazonreviews.com as well as individuals who posted reviews in exchange for payments.
Amazon’s latest attempt to fight fake reviews? A new lawsuit against a company we won’t name here, which allegedly posted thousands of phony five-star ratings for products sold on Amazon Marketplace — the part of Amazon where third-party sellers can sell their goods alongside Amazon’s own offerings. The suit claims these ratings led customers to believe they were buying from Amazon directly when they weren’t actually buying from Amazon at all.
The Finer Print
According to the complaint, the defendants bought Facebook ads to attract people to join a paid ‘Amazon Review Club’ through closed Facebook groups. The scheme also involved paying customers 30% commission if they got another person to join the scheme, which would typically involve buying a product using a discount code provided by the review sellers, followed by posting a positive review for that product on Amazon.
Amazon’s complaint alleges that defendants used an Amazon Review Club (ARC), which was a closed Facebook group with nearly 30,000 members at its peak. The lawsuit claims that those involved in the scheme would purchase products from Amazon, then use discount codes provided by the review sellers to make their purchases. They would then post positive reviews for those items on Amazon before returning them to ARC members who had purchased them from third-party vendors.
Amazon’s Investigation
Amazon stated it conducted an investigation into over 1 million suspected fake reviews and found that 90% of them came from consumers who had been incentivized. These incentivized reviews tend to be shorter, are more likely to mention words such as ‘free,’ ‘gift,’ or ‘discount,’ and have high rates of votes from verified purchasers, according to Amazon.
Amazon is suing Facebook for hosting fake reviews of products sold on Amazon.com. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook knowingly hosts a marketplace for counterfeit goods and has refused to remove the listings.
The complaint filed by Amazon alleges that many of these counterfeit goods have been advertised as “free” or with other misleading terms, resulting in a high number of votes from verified purchasers and artificially inflating the popularity of the product being sold. These types of incentives are commonly used by sellers who want to increase their ratings and sales numbers, but they can also be used by bots that generate fake reviews without any consideration for whether or not they are accurate reflections of the product.
Fighting An Uphill Battle
In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday, Amazon alleges that a number of third-party sellers were using the company’s database to buy and sell fake reviews for their products. It also claims that some of these sellers would pay for more positive reviews by having customers write positive comments about their products on Facebook groups like “Amazon Review Club.”
The suit names 15 defendants from multiple states who allegedly violated either the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act or Washington state’s Consumer Protection Act.
Conclusion
It’s clear that Amazon is taking measures to combat fake reviews on its site. The company has also been working to remove incentivized reviews from its platform for quite some time now, and this lawsuit is another step in the right direction. Amazon has been working hard to crack down on fraudsters who have made it their business model to post fraudulent reviews in exchange for payments or discounts. These actions may seem extreme at first glance but there are many reasons why Amazon would choose such a harsh course of action against those who try and cheat them out of legitimate customers. After all, it is Amazon’s mission to provide the utmost customer satisfaction.
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