LONDON (AP) – Amazon has committed to enhancing its efforts against fraudulent reviews, as stated by UK competition regulators on Friday, following an investigation into whether major online platforms are adequately addressing fake product and service ratings.
The competition authorities announced they secured a “business” arrangement with Amazon after a similar agreement was reached earlier this year. From Google Authorities are cracking down on deceptive reviews that plague the internet.
The company has vowed to strengthen its existing measures against fake reviews and address catalog manipulation. This involves preventing sales from customers who artificially inflate the ratings of their products by stealing good reviews from unrelated items.
An illustration of this issue could be a pair of headphones boasting a 5-star rating, yet upon closer inspection, it’s found that most of the reviews belong to cell phone chargers, according to the watchdog.
As part of this commitment, Amazon has agreed to implement measures to penalize offenders. Based on information from the CMA, companies may face bans on selling through Amazon’s platforms, while users submitting fake reviews could be prohibited from doing so.
Watchdog CEO Sarah Cardell remarked that a significant number of consumers shop on Amazon and that “star ratings and reviews significantly influence their decisions.”
Amazon’s pledge ensures that “customers can make informed choices. We are aware that those attempting to deceive will be swiftly addressed.”
This initiative pertains specifically to Amazon’s UK site. The company stated that it has a zero-tolerance approach towards fake reviews and that these measures build upon Amazon’s ongoing efforts against them.
“We allocate substantial resources to actively prevent fake reviews from appearing in our marketplace, employing expert investigators and machine learning models to analyze thousands of data points to identify risks,” the company articulated.
The CMA initiated its investigation into Amazon and Google in 2021 to determine if the companies had breached UK consumer rights by failing to safeguard shoppers. With the surge in online shopping driven by the coronavirus pandemic, numerous major platforms have begun addressing the issue of fake reviews.
Source: apnews.com