Amazon sues 11K Facebook admins for soliciting fake reviews – 5 stars!
Amazon, after deciding it didn’t want to be compared to the FCC, has decided to do something about fake reviews brokered by Facebook groups.
According to CNN, Amazon said it’s lawsuit will all it to “identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters.” The automated systems have and humans have evidently not been able to catch these false reviewers on their own, even though anyone casually glancing at any review page can generally spot the fakes.
The lawsuit aims to get the identities of the leads, and the fake reviewers I’d imagine. Meanwhile, reporting false reviews and fake products to Amazon still results in absolutely nothing happening… so there’s that.
Being a person who reviews tech, I quite often get contacted by companies willing to pay for 5 star reviews on Amazon (and Pocketables.) I mean, I really should have sold out by this point but never seemed to be the right time. Do I sell out for a tech product, or that garden hose?
What is interesting here is if Amazon can get a user list of people who have been paid from any of these fake review groups, they could theoretically go after several hundred thousand individuals for fraud. I doubt that would happen, but might make for an interesting leak. What happens when your employer knows you’ve been actively participating in fraud on the side? Maybe nothing.
It’s interesting to see Amazon finally doing something that might have a pro-consumer angle to it, as the fake reviews didn’t really affect Amazon’s bottom line.
I’ve lost track of how many fake reviews, products, etc I’ve reported and nothing was done. So yeah… think they had crowdsourced tools available and just never used them.
[CNN]
