Facebook continues to fuel fake reviews on Amazon.com Inc

Facebook groups trading fake reviews on products sold online by Amazon.com, Inc are still thriving, despite promises of a crackdown by the social media network.

An undercover investigation by consumer group Which? found Facebook groups facilitating the trade of fake reviews with over 200,000 members.

The trade of fake reviews works by a reviewer buying a product from Amazon with their own money and receiving a refund once they’ve written a five-star review on Amazon.

In 2020, Facebook told the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that it would crack down on the fake review groups and in April last year, the regulator acknowledged that the social network had taken “significant steps” to remove the groups.

In July 2021, the Department for Business and Industrial Strategy began a consultation on draft proposals to make it illegal to pay someone to write or host a fake review.

Facebook told Which? it had removed 16,000 groups linked to fake reviews in the past year, while Amazon said it had flagged more than 6,000 such groups to Facebook.

But Which? said its latest research showed that fake review groups continue to be rampant, as agents who know how to play the system are able to avoid detection.

It said it found 18 Facebook groups targeting UK shoppers, each offering free Amazon products in exchange for reviews, which is against Amazon’s terms and conditions. 

Which? said it raised its findings with the CMA, which promised to alert Facebook to the issue “to ensure that the commitments it made to [us] are being properly followed… We will not hesitate to take further action, which could include taking action through the courts where necessary”.

Amazon told Which? said it had stopped 200mln suspected fake reviews from appearing on its site in 2020 and had taken out dozens of injunctions against fake review providers across Europe.

“When we detect groups on social media platforms soliciting fake reviews, we quickly report them to that site to have them taken down,” the online shopping giant said.

But it said it “cannot do this alone” and believes regulators need “stronger enforcement powers” to take action against “bad actors”.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s parent company Meta said Which?’s investigation confirmed its measures to remove fake review groups were effective.

“While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to invest in new technologies and methods to protect users from this kind of content,” a spokesperson said.