Shocking! Another exposure of fake Amazon reviews: the wholesale price of water army is $11 per review!

Recently, the foreign consumer rights organization "Which?" discovered ten websites that specialize in posting false buyer reviews for Amazon products. In terms of average price, the charge for a single review is US$20.

Of course, the price is better with larger quantity . For example, 50 fake reviews are provided for $860, and 1,000 fake reviews are provided for $11,141, which comes out to about $11 (about RMB 71) per review .

Among them, the five water army companies investigated have 700,000 registered product reviewers. These water army reviewers can not only get free or discounted products through false positive reviews, but also get small cash rewards, and even participate in loyalty programs to get various value-for-money products. From this situation, it seems that the purchase of false positive reviews has formed a gray industry chain .

In response, the head of the home products and services department of "Which?" said: The UK Competition and Markets Authority should immediately investigate false buyer reviews on e-commerce platforms.

Amazon cracks down on fake reviews An Amazon spokesperson said the company removes fake product reviews and takes action against bad merchants .

In this regard, any seller who is familiar with Amazon knows that Amazon is definitely not just talking.

As early as September last year, Amazon deleted 20,000 reviews from its website due to the fake review storm on the UK site. In October 2020, Amazon also accused an Amazon seller of suspected fake reviews of weight loss pills, and the US Federal Trade Commission fined him up to $12.8 million.

For a long time, many sellers have reported that they received warning letters from Amazon about manipulating reviews .

As we all know, Amazon has always been an e-commerce platform that is more buyer-centric than sellers. Therefore, in order to protect the interests of buyers, Amazon has always prohibited sellers from exchanging reviews at the expense of third parties and has severely cracked down on false reviews on the platform .

In fact, there are "water armies" of people who cheat on reviews everywhere. For consumers, false reviews on shopping websites can not only seriously mislead, but merchants can also use negative reviews to influence their competitors.

Amazon is particularly sensitive to false reviews and will delete all false product reviews it finds. It will also take some restrictive measures against merchants with bad records, and in serious cases, the accounts will be directly blocked.

Of course, this is far from enough. Amazon has previously filed a lawsuit against more than 1,000 online water armies in a Seattle court in the United States, accusing them of "false and misleading" reviews that seriously damaged Amazon's brand reputation.

Regarding the Amazon water army incident mentioned above, some sellers' reactions were a bit different. The focus of this incident was that the price of brushing reviews was too high, and domestic platforms should be much cheaper in comparison.

In addition, we have seen many cases of internet trolls posting comments on e-commerce platforms, and they not only post comments, but also post false news on some self-media platforms.

In November 2020, the Ministry of Public Security cracked a self-media "Internet water army" case. The picture below shows the slogan posted in the office area of ​​the gang involved, "Guangzhou XX Culture Communication Co., Ltd."

Among the mobile phone screenshots provided by the Guangzhou police, there is a screenshot of the order-placing tasks and prices posted on a certain order-placing platform app.

In short, the gray and black industry chain that fabricates fake traffic and manipulates public opinion focus can easily mutate into illegal tools that destroy the Internet ecology and disrupt the social and economic order, triggering many social risks. As for the "fake reviews" that sellers are more concerned about, the editor still wants to remind sellers again that they must abide by the rules of the Amazon platform, otherwise they will suffer a great loss when the platform discovers the fake reviews and the account is blocked or fined heavily.

(Source: Cross-border Black Technology)