Amazon is urging social media companies to limit the spread of fake reviews on their websites. In a blog post on Wednesday, Amazon said that bad actors are increasingly turning to outside social media platforms to buy. They sell fake product reviews, making it increasingly difficult for the company to resolve.
“Some use their own social media services; in other cases they hire a third party service provider to do the work on their behalf,” Amazon wrote in a blog post. “However, criminals regularly seek to carry out these transactions outside of Amazon. They hide our ability to conceal their activity and the relationships between the many accounts that commit or take advantage of this abuse.”
Amazon accused social media companies of reacting too slowly when they signaled false ratings from their platform. While also noting that response times had improved somewhat.
Amazon Action on Fake Reviews
In the first three months of last year, Amazon said it alerted more than 300 groups to the social media company that it took “45 days on average” to shut down.
In contrast, for the same period this year, Amazon reported that more than 1,000 social media service groups took an average of five days to delete those groups.
“While we know that some social media companies become much quicker to respond to these issues at scale. It is critical that social media companies invest appropriately in proactive controls to detect. They enforce false feedback before we report issues to them,” said Amazon.
While Amazon doesn’t name any social media platforms, the company arguably cites the existence of fake review groups on Facebook.
A 2018 study by a British consumer watchdog group found several “price review” groups on Facebook. Potentially made up of tens of thousands of members who monitor fake review schemes.
They encourage consumers to buy products and provide brilliant reviews to receive refunds via PayPal.
Facebook Officials have not response immediately on the request.
The company has announced that it will ban fake reviews and invest in automated. The human review teams to detect violations.
Third Party reviews Providers in Market
Amazon’s fake rating affected for this year. The problem make worse as Amazon’s online marketplace grow to include millions of third-party providers. Fake reviews not only risk damaging Amazon’s relationship with shoppers, they can also put shoppers at risk of buying the wrong or counterfeit item.
Last year, Amazon removed 20,000 reviews. Research by the Financial Times found that Amazon’s top UK reviewers benefit from posting fake reviews.
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Amazon says it is investing heavily in machine learning tools and human moderators to help weed out fake reviews and other scams. Last year, the company said it blocked more than 200 million allegedly fake reviews before they discover the buyers.
