Amazon Takes Action to Combat Fake Reviews
Amazon announced that it’s employing a multi-pronged strategy, including legal action and advanced technology, to combat fake reviews and safeguard the validity of customer feedback. The company revealed on Monday, October 14, 2024, that it blocked over 250 million suspected fake reviews throughout 2023 and pursued legal action against more than 150 brokers involved in generating these fraudulent reviews.
“Product reviews are core to the Amazon shopping experience, providing customers with invaluable insights and honest opinions from fellow shoppers,” the company stated in a press release. “Amazon understands the pivotal role these reviews play in helping consumers make informed purchasing decisions, and is dedicated to preserving the trustworthiness of reviews.”
To detect and prevent inauthentic reviews, Amazon utilizes sophisticated technology to monitor and enforce its policies. Violators of these policies face suspensions, bans, or legal consequences.
This isn’t a new battle for Amazon. The company filed its first lawsuit against fake-review brokers in 2015 and continues to actively pursue such actions to prevent these brokers from generating fake reviews, according to the release. Recently, Amazon filed a joint lawsuit with the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
Claire O’Donnell, Amazon’s director of selling partner trust and store integrity, highlighted the company’s commitment, saying, “At Amazon, we understand that businesses of all sizes rely on product reviews to attract customers and grow their brand. In addition to our proactive controls, legal actions ensure that we hold these bad actors accountable, stop their illicit schemes at the source, and prevent them from harming customers in Amazon’s store and beyond.”
In a separate development, a June report indicated that a judge ruled Yelp could continue a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit against a company that advertised its ability to remove ‘bad’ reviews from the platform. The prevalence of scams on social media and the plague of fake reviews on crowd-sourced review websites have been significant concerns for some time. In June 2020, PYMNTS.com reported that Yelp removes approximately 25% of all submitted reviews due to suspicions about their authenticity, and TripAdvisor identified 60 different review farms in 2015 alone and took legal action against them.
