More than 20 people were arrested! Amazon cracks down on "fake orders and fake reviews"!

Some cross-border sellers said: Nowadays, on the eve of Amazon’s annual Prime promotion, compliance actions of varying scales against platform sellers have become a mainstream trend!

At present, the 2024 Amazon Summer Prime Day membership promotion is approaching. This time, Amazon suddenly announced a piece of information showing the results of its "crackdown on false orders". A group of false order service providers including Shenzhen and Shanghai were brought to court by Amazon.

Amazon's latest crackdown on fake orders announced, more than 20 people arrested

In response to the current non-compliance in the market, Amazon has not only cracked down on it at the platform level, but also carried out comprehensive governance at the source.

Since 2023, Amazon has taken legal action against more than 150 bad actors involved in review abuse in the United States, Europe, and China, and has used machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, as well as a professional expert investigation team to monitor and block false reviews. In 2023, Amazon proactively blocked more than 250 million suspected false reviews in the mall.

Among them, in China, Amazon has successfully sued 14 fake order service provider gangs in China. Since the beginning of this year, Amazon has won the first instance of four civil lawsuits involving fake orders in Shenzhen and Shanghai.

Next, the relevant order-brushing service providers and individuals will not only stop the order-brushing services and issue public statements to eliminate the adverse effects, but will also have to compensate Amazon for the related losses.

In these four cases, the illegal acts of the companies involved included, but were not limited to:

• Ranking optimization: using technical means to artificially improve the ranking of products in search results.

• Drop-in promotion: Manipulating search algorithms to change product visibility.

• Merging international reviews: Merging reviews from different markets to mislead consumers about product quality.

• Direct Reviews and Related Videos: Generate false or misleading product reviews and related videos.

• Guide positive reviews: Guide sellers on how to obtain positive reviews through various strategies.

• Flash sale control: Influence sales activities to create the illusion of strong demand.

While conducting civil lawsuits, Amazon also cooperated with local law enforcement agencies in Shandong, Ningxia, Fujian, Jiangxi and other provinces to take action against four criminal cases of fake orders . Currently, all four cases are in the investigation stage, and law enforcement agencies have arrested more than 20 people involved in the cases.

Amazon will focus on cracking down on four types of violations!

After reading Amazon's announcement, I found that there are four main types of violations:

01. Manipulate the ranking of product keyword search results through technical means.

The purpose is to place an order through a specific keyword, and then raise the ranking of this keyword in the search results to obtain more natural traffic. In the past, there was a service in the cross-border circle called "keyword on the homepage", which is the scope of this first attack.

02. Manipulate buyer accounts to produce false or misleading product reviews and related videos;

The aforementioned “manipulating fake buyer accounts to create fake reviews” is very common and has always been the focus of Amazon’s crackdown. But what everyone should focus on more is the following sentence “and related videos” .

Previously, related videos never seemed to be mentioned in such actions, and no seller had ever been punished for related videos. But now that Amazon has added "related videos", it is not clear whether Amazon will also monitor and punish the act of forging related videos in the future.

03. Guide sellers to post advertisements and products on foreign social media platforms, and guide buyers to go to Amazon to purchase products and post fake reviews.

The idea of ​​letting sellers post outside the site and then guide buyers to purchase and post fake reviews was not very common in the past. But it is also a kind of fake orders, except that the path of fake orders has shifted from within the site to outside the site, and there is no other difference.

4. Induce consumers to visit the seller's website or scan the QR code on the seller's card to submit positive reviews by offering free warranty and gifts to consumers on the Amazon site. These services include fake orders and reviews based on fake or real transactions.

This is generally a "small card" violation, that is, writing some service content in exchange for positive reviews on a small card in the product packaging, such as "reviews for gifts", "discount codes", "cash back for positive reviews" and so on.

In fact, everyone should understand that Amazon does not crack down on small cards. Amazon only cracks down on illegal content on small cards.

The above four types are the violations that Amazon has clearly pointed out in its recent announcement as the ones that it will focus on cracking down on. And before the Prime Day promotion, Amazon will definitely close another wave of stores to build momentum for the compliance operations of Prime Day in the new year.

As for those sellers who have cooperated with service providers, it is only a matter of time before they are punished by the platform.