Amazon is suing over 10,000 administrators of Facebook groups that offer to post fake reviews on the online souk's website in exchange for products and money.
Merchants selling items on Amazon are more likely to appear first in search results if their products are highly rated by previous purchases. Some vendors therefore abuse the system by persuading netizens to post fake ones. Many are recruited through Facebook groups.
One group, known as "Amazon Product Review", had over 43,000 members before Facebook's parent biz Meta binned it earlier this year. Another, named "Amazon Varified Buyer & Seller" contained more than 2,500 members. Group admins charged $10 per fake review,
according to CNBC. Reviewers were also lured with promises of free products in return for sham assessments of items such as car stereos or camera tripods.
"Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they're ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media," Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Selling Partner Services,
said in a statement. "Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable."
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