Source: The Economic Times
On Monday, July 18, Amazon.com Inc went on to file a lawsuit against the administrators of over 10,000 Facebook groups. Reportedly, these are the groups that carry out coordination of cash or goods for buyers ready to post inaccurate reviews for products. These global groups was focussed on the recruitment of would-be fake reviewers. Mainly, they functioned in the retail giant’s online sites in the UK, US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Japan.
These 10,000 groups on the social media platform is reportedly an accumulative number that they got reports of from Amazon. The retail giant further specified how its previous legal actions taken were fruitful, and had even put an end to several of these prominent review brokers. Reportedly, they have been suing many for cases such as these since the year 2015.
The retail giant referred to a group called ‘Amazon Product Review’ which had as much as over 40,000 members till Meta’s Facebook removed it this year. Turns out, it escaped detection by means of an AI-eluding, time honoured strategy which replaces letters in phrases that could be identified. Amazon stated how it would leverage this revelation process for the identification of such actors, and removal of fake reviews which its own technology could not detect.
Though the surveillance is continuous, it is evident that several illegitimate reviews still exist which result in the selling of products across the site at all times, around the world. For long, Amazon has fought with reviews contributing to artificial boosting ratings of products. In 2018, an investigation discovered how these fake reviews had a clear dominance in certain categories.
“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.”
The investigation revealed how sellers lure shoppers on networks such as the Amazon Review Club to provide attractive feedbacks in exchange for a compensation. Last year, Amazon addressed the issue stating how they detected a significant increase in ‘bad actors’ trying to facilitate fake reviews outside the online storefront. The e-commerce company reported having detecting over 1,000 review selling groups to social media sites in 2021’s first quarter. This was a visible increase of threefold the number from the first quarter of 2020.
Other than fake reviews, there are many other forms of misleading content that companies are struggling to get rid of. For example, a big enough cash printing internet machine can lead to uncontrollable systemic issues.
