Like Initiating Legal Actions Against Certain Alleged Fake Reviews Groups on Social Media Websites
Amazon deflects responsibility on simulated reviews simply admits 200M were blocked terminal twelvemonth
Amazon admits information technology has a simulated review problem, only does its all-time to spread the arraign effectually in a new postal service detailing the issue. After numerous reports for years that the online retail giant is overrun with knock-off products and faked or farmed reviews, the company aims to wait as if it is finally putting its pes down, but no new efforts or rules are discussed — rather, information technology is others that need to step upward their work to keep Amazon condom.
Amazon reviews take go notoriously unreliable every bit indicators of quality every bit the store has given itself over willingly to counterfeits, AliExpress resellers and promotion of the visitor's internal brands (developed with the benefit of seller data). Multiple reports have constitute organized efforts to spam the shop with meaningless five-star reviews in commutation for gratuitous products or cash. I take myself received such offers, or sellers promising payment for raising a star rating.
After the requisite preliminary palaver about beingness "obsessed with delighting customers" and all that, Amazon explains that it, like all big tech giants, uses automated systems to vet reviews before they go up. The company has always been chary about the actual numbers, but in this post it drops a whopper: "In 2020, we stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews before they were ever seen by a customer."
200 million is a lot no affair how yous expect at it, but information technology'southward really a lot when you consider that Amazon told CNBC that same year that information technology "clarify[southward] over 10 million review submissions weekly," which adds upwards to somewhere n of 520 million submissions yearly. These two Amazon-provided numbers propose that a 3rd of all reviews submitted, at a minimum, are rejected as faux.
Hard numbers on Amazon's total reviews are difficult to come by. Speaking to BuzzFeed, Amazon list analysis site ReviewMeta's Tommy Noonan estimated that in 2020 Amazon hosted around 250 million reviews (of which, incidentally, he calculated almost 9% were "unnatural"). But if over 500 million were submitted in 2020 and most 200 million of those were fake, that indicates a far larger total. I've asked Amazon for more precise information on this, and will update the post if I hear back, merely the visitor is not communicative almost these numbers in general.
Groups organizing on social media numbering in the tens of thousands have been repeatedly pointed out every bit major contributors to the fake review ecosystem. Amazon writes that in the start quarter of 2020, it reported 300 such groups to the platforms hosting them, and the same period in 2021 it reported over ane,000. Takedown times accept increased, just information technology'southward difficult to accept this increase equally annihilation other than a thriving business model — certainly non something in the process of being stamped out.
"Information technology is imperative for social media companies to invest fairly in proactive controls to detect and enforce fake reviews alee of our reporting the issue to them," Amazon declares. Indeed social media companies are being pressed from multiple directions to have more responsibility for what users exercise on their platforms, but they make the same noises Amazon does: "nosotros're doing what we can," (and, information technology is left unsaid, conspicuously it'south not enough).
"We need coordinated aid from consumer protection regulators around the earth," Amazon writes. But the company lobbied forcefully and successfully against the INFORM human activity, which would have helped identify sellers with bad intent and add transparency to online marketplaces (strangely, Amazon has taken some of the actions it objects to independently). And that line is suspiciously absent when it is Amazon that consumers need to be protected against.
"Information technology is also disquisitional that nosotros hold bad actors—and the service providers that provide them with fake reviews—accountable for their activity," the post continues. But while lawsuits and partnerships with law enforcement are part of that, again the phone call to "work together" rings hollow when Amazon itself is where the activeness occurs and the company is in consummate command of that ecosystem. Though it has banned some major players from the shop, innumerable others flout the rules with impunity.
Nowhere in the post does Amazon detail whatsoever new steps information technology will accept to deter these bad actors or scissure down on the pervasive gaming of the system for which information technology sets the rules. It volition "continue to enhance" its detection tools, "streamline processes" for partnerships, and "work difficult" at keeping scammers accountable. In other words, information technology volition keep doing exactly what it has been doing this whole time — which is what put information technology in this position in the get-go place.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/16/amazon-deflects-responsibility-on-fake-reviews-but-admits-200m-were-blocked-last-year/
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