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Amazon sues over 10,000 Facebook group admins for fake reviews

Amazon is aiming to crackdown on an ongoing and widespread issue of fake product reviews carried out by various Facebook groups.

TJ Denzer

July 20, 2022 9:40 AM

Image via Amazon

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Amazon’s online marketplace is a massive network of third-party sellers moving products back and forth across the platform, but not all parties are playing fair in their use of it. Fake product reviews boosting various goods on the platform for free goods or compensation is a major issue on the platform, and Amazon is hitting back hard this week with a lawsuit filed against around 10,000 Facebook groups that it alleged engaged in fake product reviews for compensation.

Amazon announced the filing of its lawsuit against fake product review groups on Facebook in a press release on its information website. Amazon’s lawsuit encompasses “more than 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.”

It's not easy to tell who runs any of the groups in suit, but that’s also part of the aims of the suit. Amazon’s lawsuit means to gain identities related to set groups, shut them down, and force them to return compensation from “brokering fake reviews.”

Amazon has found itself running up against quite a few problems alongside the matter of fake product reviews littering its marketplace. The company has built machine learning tools to try to seek out said reviews automatically and flag suspicious reviewers. However, the groups on Facebook represent numerous reviewers who are not only organized, but anonymous. Nonetheless, if Amazon has its way in court, it could deal a big blow to another misinformation network operating out of Facebook’s platform.

With Amazon facing various problems such as an issue of workforce burnout by 2024 and a lawsuit from New York alleging mistreatment of disabled and pregnant workers, the company certainly has a lot to sort through. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story for further updates.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.