Amazon (AMZN) announced Tuesday that it has sued the administrators of more than 11,000 Facebook groups allegedly responsible for facilitating the buying and selling of fake reviews on marketplace in seven countries.
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The group's operators are accused of recruiting people to write fake or misleading product reviews in exchange for money or free products, Amazon said in a statement.
Fake reviews have been a headache for Amazon for years and can lead consumers to buy substandard or questionable products. But the issue has gotten much worse during the pandemic, when demand for e-commerce soared and unscrupulous merchants found new opportunities to use fake reviews to boost their business. The trend has prompted U.K. regulators to launch an investigation into whether Amazon and Google have harmed consumers by failing to adequately protect them from fake reviews.
On Tuesday, Amazon said the lawsuit would allow it to “identify malicious users and remove fake reviews from these fraudsters,” which the company’s human and automated systems were unable to catch on their own.
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Tuesday's lawsuit targets activity that allegedly led to fake reviews appearing on Amazon's platform in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The fake reviews covered a range of products for sale on Amazon, from car stereos to camera tripods, Amazon said.
In its complaint, Amazon said it is taking legal action “to learn the identities of the administrators, shut down these Groups, and seek the disgorgement of their illicit profits from brokering fake reviews.” The complaint asks a court in Washington state to award Amazon a cease-and-desist order against the alleged brokers of fake reviews, as well as damages and attorneys’ fees.
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Amazon said that Meta, Facebook's parent company, has removed more than 5,000 fake review groups from the social network since 2020 as a result of Amazon's reports to the social media giant.
