Amazon Launches Lawsuit Against Two Firms For Allegedly Faking Product Reviews

Amazon, which has been working on ways to crack down on misleading product reviews, has filed new lawsuits against two companies over alleged fake reviews.

According to CNET, the “fake review brokers” had attempted to mislead customers by populating online sites including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy with untruthful reviews in exchange for money or products.

The two firms, AppSally and Rebatest, had a combined whopping 900,000 members as part of its brigade to pen false reviews, Amazon revealed.

“Fake review brokers attempt to profit by deceiving unknowing consumers and creating an unfair competitive advantage that harms our selling partners,” said Amazon’s Vice President of Worldwide Customer Trust, Dharmesh Mehta. 

“We know how valuable trustworthy reviews are to our customers. That is why we are holding these review fraudsters accountable,” he added.

GeekWire reported that Amazon has over 10,000 employees working on matters relating to fraud and abuse, including proliferation of false reviews. 

It makes use of machine learning to detect and remove such posts, with the site claiming it blocked over 200 million such reviews before they were seen my customers in 2020.

Additionally, it’s brought numerous other injunctions against similar sites churning out fake reviews, such as in the UK and Germany.

[via CNET and GeekWire, cover image via Jeramey Lende / Shutterstock.com]