Amazon Inc., in a new blog post, has confessed to having a fake review problem, all the while still shedding light on its apparently high and mighty attempts to “become the Earth’s most customer-centric company”. However, at the same time, the online retail platform is also blatantly putting the blame for the same on others, saying that its them that’s stopping the company from completely getting rid of fake reviews and knocked-off products. This comes even as user trust over Amazon’s reviews (both the positive and negative ones) thins at an alarming rate, thanks to the daily incidents of counterfeits and promotions of Amazon’s own products. Its not uncommon to see strings of fake five star reviews on seemingly “unworthy” products, all in return of a promise of cash, or kind.
Nevertheless, the retail giant is clearly putting its foot down in the face of the allegations, claiming that significant resources are devoted towards “preventing fake or incentivized reviews from appearing in our store.” It further asserts that for years, AI and machine-learning have been integrated into the human sensibilities at Amazon, to help pave the way towards blocking out fake reviews. Still, it remains a wide-known fact (and problem) that user reviews on the service can no longer be relied on.
However, while patting itself on the back, the Jeff Bezos-led firm is leaving no stone unturned in bringing others down, by calling alleged “bad actors” out for publicizing certain products outside of the main platform. It says that many fake reviewers resort to using social media to do their bidding on their own, or, in other cases, even have third-party service providers carry the process out. It also accused said bad actors of preferring to “take their transactions outside of Amazon” so that their activity cannot be detected by the firm’s bots.
Despite all this, Amazon did own up to the fact that the fake review problem on its platform is getting out of hand. It has said that only last year, it worked to block more than 200 million reviews which it suspected to be fake, and that too, before the reviews even made contact with customers. It further claims that its “proactive detection” was behind over 99% of the reviews enforcement, which also included taking appropriate action against the accounts involved in posting these fake reviews, such as shutting down and preventing review submissions.
While the post does make it seem that Amazon is indeed working really hard to meet the standards that it has set with regard to user reviews, one can’t deny the fact that both inside the platform and outside, incentivized fake reviews are running rampant, which, in many cases, have led to users ending up with counterfeit or downright useless products.
