Retail giant Amazon has filed lawsuits against two companies that helped fill its platform with fake reviews, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuits have been filed in Seattle King County, and the company accuses AppSally and Rebatest of stepping up fake reviews in the arena. The companies allegedly connected third-party sellers with consumers who would leave positive reviews of their product, in exchange for free or paid products.
In fact, Amazon defines the defendant companies as “fake review brokers,” and so they profit from creating misleading reviews and scams. She wants to stop them, claiming that they helped mislead buyers with the help of users who posted fake reviews in stores like eBay and Amazon.
“We know how valuable credible reviews are to our customers. That’s why we require these reviewers to be held accountable. While we prevent millions of suspicious reviews from ever appearing in our store, these claims are aimed at the sources of the problematic reviews,” said Darma Mehta, VP. For customer trust and Amazon partner support.
Amazon is seeking to close these sites and issue a restraining order against the defendant companies that will prohibit them from offering the sale of reviews on Amazon, and it is seeking indefinite compensation.
More than 900,000 users are willing to write fake reviews
According to the press release, Amazon claims that these companies have more than 900,000 users who are willing to write fake reviews. “In recent years, a vicious industry has sprung up, in which fraudsters allow fake or inflated reviews in exchange for money or free products,” the statement said.
Fake reviews have proven to be a difficult issue for Amazon. According to Amazon’s announcement, these companies acted as follows: AppSally demanded a commission from the various sellers and provided them with “verified reviews”. To make the reviews look more authentic, the sellers provided empty boxes to the company to also include photos in the user reviews. This service will strengthen the product in Amazon’s search results. In addition, Rebatest offered users who would order a product on Amazon and leave a review. The company allegedly returned the purchase to users through PayPal and more.
Both companies did not respond to worldwide reports.
Amazon of course completely prohibits fake or biased reviews, and it uses machine learning technology combined with skilled researchers to identify, prevent and remove them. According to Amazon, it gets more than 30 million reviews every week, and by 2020 it stopped more than 200 million suspicious reviews before they were ever seen by a customer.
The retail giant boasts that by 2021, two major counterfeit review sites in Germany and the UK have been closed following Amazon’s legal action in those countries. The company also collaborates with social networks to avoid this. Amazon last year reported more than 16,000 offensive groups to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, resulting in groups with more than 11 million members being removed.