Elain Brown Tech 07.19.2022 04:Jul AM EDT

Amazon Files Lawsuit Against 10,000 Facebook Admins For Fake Product Reviews

Amazon is cracking down against bad actors profiting from fake reviews.

Today, July 29, Amazon announced that they have recently filed a lawsuit against more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators.

These Facebook group administrators are responsible for coordinating payments of cash or goods to customers who agree to post fake reviews of Amazon products.

Their objective has remained the same, to recruit people with the intent of writing fake reviews, and they operated in the online storefronts of Amazon in Japan, United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy.

Amazon Is Suing Facebook Groups

Amazon stated that aside from holding these administrators accountable, the company will also use further information they will find in order to take down numerous fake reviews out there.

According to Amazon, "Amazon will use information discovered in this legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that haven't already been detected by Amazon's advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring."

Amazon's vice president of Selling Partner Services, Dharmesh Mehta, stated that their team stops millions of suspected fake or bogus reviews before they are even posted on the platform and seen by the customers.

This case takes the search for bad actors who operate on social media platforms one step farther.

Mehta added, "Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable."

Amazon's investigations have uncovered the fact that the administrators of the group attempted to conceal their activities and elude Facebook's surveillance by removing letters from troublesome words in order to disguise their meaning.

The fake reviews that are posted by these bad actors are not just limited to the two or three products, instead, it has been detected that these groups had posted fake ratings and fake reviews for thousands of products on Amazon.

In the lawsuit filed, amazon named one facebook group called "Amazon Product Review," which was a closed group with more than 43,000 members before it was shut down earlier this year by Meta.

Amazon included in their press release that they have more than 12,000 workers working around the world who are dedicated to defending its stores from fraud and abuse, including phony reviews, and the company has a zero-tolerance policy regarding fake reviews.

The company has dedicated team members and employees around the world to investigate fake reviews, fake rating schemes, and also detailed that they are regularly looking on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok to report abusive groups.

Amazon's Continued Efforts

Amazon appears to be extremely committed and dedicated towards acting and tracking down fake reviews to avoid their customers from being scammed into purchasing products that have been falsely claimed.

TechCrunch reports that the 10,000 groups that the company filed to is the sum of groups Amazon has reported to Facebook since 2020.

However, despite the fact that the corporation has taken legal action in the past that was successful and caused numerous prominent review brokers to close their doors, some are still very much existing. It has been reported that the company has been suing these type of practices since 2015.

This act may seem absurd and too much, but it is also important to remember that Amazon was the company to first pioneer and introduce the product review since 1995. With the goal of helping customers make shopping decisions.