Amazon sues thousands of fake Facebook reviewers

The online retailer has fought back against people posting fake reviews on its website – and other social media sites – by filing legal action against admins of Facebook groups in the UK and elsewhere – some with thousands of members.

It said they had attempted to “orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products” and had recruited thousands of "individuals willing to post incentivised and misleading reviews” on Amazon in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

It added that one fake review group had 43,000 members until Facebook's parent company Meta took the group down earlier this year.

Amazon also said it had 12,000 employees worldwide dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and had reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Meta since 2020.

“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,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice-president of Selling Partner Services. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”

A spokeswoman for Meta said: "Groups that solicit or encourage fake reviews violate our policies and are removed. We are working with Amazon on this matter and will continue to partner across the industry to address spam and fake reviews.”