Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook group admins over fake reviews
Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Selling Partner Services, said their teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before reaching customers.
FollowAmazon announced on Tuesday that it had filed legal action against the administrators of over 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on the platform in exchange for money or free products.
The e-commerce giant stated that it will use the information gleaned from the legal action to identify bad actors and remove any fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that have not yet been detected.
These groups post deceptive reviews on Amazon stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Selling Partner Services, said their teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before reaching customers. This lawsuit goes a step further to identify perpetrators operating on social media.
Mehta added that proactive legal action against bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.
Such groups' fraudsters solicit fake reviews for hundreds of products, including car stereos and camera tripods.
One of the groups named in the lawsuit is "Amazon Product Review," which had over 43,000 members before Meta removed it earlier this year.
Amazon's investigations revealed that the group administrators attempted to conceal their activity and avoid detection by Facebook, partly by obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.
The company strictly prohibits fake reviews and has over 12,000 employees worldwide dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews, it added.
Amazon has reported over 10,000 fake review groups to Meta since 2020.
Meta has taken down more than half of these groups for policy violations and is investigating others.
"The nefarious business of brokering fake reviews continues to be an industry-wide problem, and civil litigation is only one step," the company stated.
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