Amazon Uses Technology and Legal Action to Combat Fake Reviews

Amazon said Monday (Oct. 14) that it has been using legal action and other methods to combat fake reviews and prevent those reviews from being seen by customers.

The company proactively blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews in 2023 and pursued legal action against more than 150 fake review brokers during that same year, Amazon said in a Monday press release.

“Product reviews are core to the Amazon shopping experience, providing customers with invaluable insights and honest opinions from fellow shoppers,” the release said. “Amazon understands the pivotal role these reviews play in helping consumers make informed purchasing decisions, and is dedicated to preserving the trustworthiness of reviews.”

To detect and prevent fake reviews, and ensure only authentic reviews are published, Amazon uses technology that helps it monitor and enforce its policies, according to the release.

The company then suspends, bans or takes legal action against those who violate the policies, the release said.

Amazon filed its first lawsuit against fake review brokers in 2015 and continues to do so to prevent them from facilitating fake reviews, per the release. It recently filed one such suit in conjunction with the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

“At Amazon, we understand that businesses of all sizes rely on product reviews to attract customers and grow their brand,” Claire O’Donnell, director of selling partner trust and store integrity at Amazon, said in the release. “In addition to our proactive controls, legal actions ensure that we hold these bad actors accountable, stop their illicit schemes at the source, and prevent them from harming customers in Amazon’s store and beyond.”

In another, separate effort to combat fake reviews, it was reported in June that a judge ruled that Yelp could continue a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit against a company that advertised that it could remove “bad” reviews from the platform.

Scammers abound on social media and fake reviews plague crowd-sourced review websites, PYMNTS reported in June 2020. At that time, it was reported that Yelp removes 25% of all submitted reviews as likely falsehoods and that TripAdvisor identified 60 different review farms in 2015 alone and took legal action against them.