Amazon filed a lawsuit against administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups it accuses of brokering fake reviews.  Amazon alleged in a statement that the fake review groups recruited individuals to post reviews “in exchange for money or free products” on Amazon stores in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan, such as “car stereos and camera tripods.”

Amazon says it seeks trustworthy reviews on individuals’ experiences with products from its stores and it has an “anti-manipulation policy” that strictly prohibits fake customer reviews. Amazon noted in its statement that it has more than 12,000 employees worldwide dedicated to investigating such reviews.  Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Services, in the statement: “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. Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”

Since 2020, Amazon has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Facebook’s parent company Meta. Out of the 10,000 groups, Meta has taken down more than half of them for policy violations while it continues to investigate others.

Editorial credit: dennizn / Shutterstock.com