Block warning! More than 10,000 FB groups are suspected of fake orders, Amazon files lawsuit

It is learned that according to foreign media reports, on July 18, Amazon officially filed a lawsuit against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups because these groups coordinated cash or goods for buyers willing to post false product reviews .

  ▲ Image from CBS NEWS

It is understood that these group administrators usually rely on Facebook's social functions to recruit potential fake reviewers online and let these fake reviewers write fake positive reviews for hundreds of products such as car audio and camera tripods . After purchasing the selected products and leaving reviews, the administrators will return the money to them or give them some gifts.

The number of fake order groups sued by Amazon this time is huge and involves multiple sites. They have operated in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Italy. It is hard to imagine that after Amazon's vigorous crackdown, there are still so many "underground organizations" still active.

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The fraudulent order groups continue to exist despite repeated bans, and the gray industry chain is difficult to eliminate

The existence of non-compliant behaviors such as false reviews is not only related to the Amazon platform , but other seemingly unrelated social media such as Facebook and Twitter also have an unavoidable supervisory responsibility .

Amazon has already begun tracking down the groups that post fake reviews. In 2020 alone, Facebook accepted Amazon's report and deleted 16,000 groups that posted false reviews.

At the end of 2021, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) urged Facebook, Instagram and eBay to review their websites in response to the phenomenon of false reviews on e-commerce platforms. After that, the above platforms deleted a large number of groups and banned individuals from buying and selling false reviews on their websites.

These groups range in size, including some large organizations with tens of thousands of members. According to Amazon officials, a Facebook group called "Amazon Product Review " has more than 43,000 members. The group evaded detection by replacing a few letters in a phrase. This strategy has a long history and daunts AI. It was not until the beginning of this year that Facebook's parent company Meta closed it.

Because of the involvement of user privacy, comment transactions on social media are more hidden and difficult to track down . Often, Amazon can only ask social platforms to delete these groups after obtaining sufficient evidence. This is why, after Amazon's strong crackdown in recent years, black hat sellers and fake order companies have found it difficult to survive, but there are still many Facebook fake order groups that are still active.

Over time, Amazon discovered that reporting through the platform was only a temporary solution and did not address the root cause. After a lot of effort to delete an old group, the mastermind behind the scenes could immediately create ten new ones. If Amazon wanted to eliminate this phenomenon, it was necessary to crack down on the initiators.

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Amazon is no longer just targeting companies

Since 2015, Amazon has sued several companies that provided fake reviews, shut down multiple review brokers, and successfully cracked down on several large -scale review-brushing companies after a wave of account bans .

In February this year, Amazon took AMZTigers (UK) and TesterJob (Spain) to court. These two companies are considered the leading companies in the fake review trade. AMZTigers had more than 60,000 product testers worldwide at its peak, with more than 3,000 testers in the UK alone, who could quickly give five-star reviews to products. Each review cost about 15 euros , and there would be discounts if the number was too large.

The more than 10,000 Facebook groups mentioned above are the total number of groups reported by Amazon to Meta since 2020. Meta has currently deleted more than half of the groups for violating its policies and is investigating other groups. In other words, Amazon is not just deleting groups, but also wants to "eradicate" the organizers of these groups.

If this prosecution is successful, it will serve as a wake-up call to all organizers of fake orders and sellers who are hoping for luck on all social platforms. The last "safe house" will no longer be guaranteed, and they may face legal punishment .

Since the beginning of this year, more and more Amazon sellers have begun to switch from black hat to white hat . Generally speaking, the platform's crackdown has achieved good results. As an Amazon seller, do you think the platform's crackdown on fake reviews is strong enough? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss ~