Amazon leads new group of e-commerce platforms to fight fake reviews
Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Amazon is leading a group of e-commerce websites to combat fake online reviews that have plagued digital consumers and Internet businesses for years, the groups announced on Tuesday.
Amazon joined together with Booking.com, Expedia Group, Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, and Trustpilot to form the Coalition for Trusted Reviews -- an international cross-industry collaboration that will combine best practices in combatting fake reviews.
"Through greater collaboration and sharing across industries, including information on fraudsters' tactics and how they operate, we can more effectively shut down fraudulent review activity, deter other bad actors from attempting to game our systems and protect more consumers," Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Services said.
The group said it would engage in "several key areas" to combat fake reviews including developing common standards and practices to establish what a fake review is, sharing practices for how to moderate and detect fake reviews and how fake reviews are proliferated as well as advocating for the importance of genuine reviews.
In 2022, Amazon filed a lawsuit against administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups it accuses of brokering fake reviews. Those fake review groups recruited individuals to post reviews "in exchange for money or free products" on Amazon stores in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.
Amazon said members will work on the best methods to detect fake reviews, aiming to stop fake reviews at the source. The companies first met in October 2022 in San Francisco at the first-ever Fake Reviews Conference, organized by Tripadvisor.
The conference led to the establishment of the coalition which shared public education and ongoing information sharing between members to fight fraud reviews.
"Customer reviews are an important part of the shopping experience, and the goal of this coalition is to ensure every review reflects customers' actual experiences," said Mehta.
"Amazon is aggressively fighting fake review brokers to protect our customers and selling partners, but these fraudsters are a global problem, impacting multiple industry sectors."
Becky Foley, vice president of trust and safety of Tripadvisor, said the coalition's members are determined to make sure that the public can trust the reviews they see online are by actual customers and are credible.
"To further maintain the credibility and authenticity of reviews on our platforms, we aim to make it increasingly difficult for fraudulent actors who try to deceive our customers to operate online," Foley said. "Combating these operators, particularly those attempting to sell fake reviews to companies looking to improve their online reputations, will be an immediate area of focus."
