Amazon wants to crack down on Facebook groups that sell fake reviews

Amazon says it will take legal action against administrators of Facebook groups where people can buy fake reviews. It would involve more than ten thousand groups, spread over several countries.

Amazon’s targeted Facebook groups are mainly active in the US, UK, Japan, Spain, France and Italy, writes the BBC. According to the company, the groups write fake reviews in exchange for money or goods. One of the groups, called Amazon Product Review, had 43,000 members. Once the people in the group bought the designated products and left their reviews, the admins would refund them.

Amazon Product Review has since been removed by Facebook. The group was able to stay under the radar by spelling out certain words differently. An example of this is a post that said “R*fnd Aftr R*vew” (refund after review). That way, the group’s posts went undetected by Meta’s automatic tools, Amazon says.

Meta deleted about half of the groups after Amazon reported it. In a statement to the BBC, Meta stressed that “groups requesting or encouraging fake reviews are violating Facebook’s policies and will be removed.”

The lawsuit has been filed in a court in King County, Washington. It is not yet known when the lawsuit will start. It is also not yet clear how many individuals will be charged.