Amazon targets fake reviews on Facebook

AMAZON has sued the people behind 10,000 Facebook groups that created fake reviews of everything from car stereos to camera tripods on its online store.

Amazon said the groups set up fake reviews for products, offering gifts or cash to Facebook users who left glow- ing comments on the goods on Amazon.

Fraudulent reviews were left on hundreds of products, Amazon said. One group identified was Amazon Product Review, which had 43,000 members. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, took down the group earlier this year.

Amazon said its stores in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan had been targeted by the scammers.

In the UK, Amazon has faced an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority over whether it is doing enough to prevent misleading reviews. Dharmesh Mehta, an Amazon vice president, said: “Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media.”

A Meta spokesman said: “Groups that solicit or encourage fake reviews violate our policies and are removed.”

Separately, Amazon said its UK tax bill grew to £648m last year, up from £492m in 2020, while an additional £2bn was generated for the Exchequer through sales and VAT on its online store, paid by customers.

Amazon’s overall UK revenues climbed to £23.2bn, up from £20.6bn.