Amazon’s Crackdown Against Fake Reviews Is Difficult Due To Social Media

Amazon sees itself fighting against windmills because operators of social networks do little against the organized offering of fake reviews. The Guardian reports, quoting the online retail giant.

Amazon said that in 2020 alone, the company removed more than 200 million allegedly fake reviews before customers saw them. This sorting out is done by various filters that prevent conspicuous reviews from going online. However, according to the Guardian, Amazon faces continued criticism for the enormous amount of fake and misleading reviews that make it into its shop.

Amazon Looks for groups in social networks

A big problem with this is that companies that specialize in fake reviews organize themselves mainly via social networks, looking for comrades-in-arms there who publish the wrong reviews via personal accounts. Amazon itself is quite good at recognizing such groups, but outside of its own platform, it can do little against the “faker” companies. You have to rely on cooperation with the platform providers, but they are often very sluggish.

It Takes Too Long

Amazon, therefore, blames the social media companies for their failure to remove fake reviews. “In the first three months of 2020, we reported more than 300 groups to social media companies, which then took an average of 45 days to stop these groups from using their service to engage in abuse,” it said in an Amazon blog post. “In the first three months of 2021, we reported more than 1,000 such groups, with social media services taking an average of five days to shut them down.

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Social Networks Should Take The Stand

“While we appreciate that some social media companies are reacting much faster, in order to address this issue on a large scale, it is imperative for social media companies to invest enough in proactive controls to detect and fake reviews enforce them before we report the problem to them. “

While Amazon hasn’t named a specific social network, the Guardian has repeatedly criticized Facebook for failing to crack down on such activities. In January 2020, for example, the UK’s competition and market regulator CMA secured an agreement with Facebook to “better identify, investigate and remove groups and other sites selling fake and misleading reviews and prevent them from reappearing”. However, a follow-up investigation in 2021 forced the CMA to intervene a second time – the consequences are still unclear.