Amazon Sues Fake Reviewers on Fiverr

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-16/amazon-targets-web-freelancers-peddling-fake-customer-reviews

by mintplant • 11 years ago

91 87 11 years ago

downandout2• 11 years ago

I will be watching this case with some interest, as I don't see what legal grounds Amazon could possibly have to sue these people. Reviews are free speech, and as such it will come down to whether or not Amazon can prove that these reviews, whether or not they were purchased, contain demonstrably false statements of fact (only then would these reviews be considered fraudulent by a US court). One cannot be sued over their opinion.

JDDunn9• 11 years ago

Free speech doesn't cover fraud. These reviews are generally just lies with the intent of deceiving others for profit.

Karunamon• 11 years ago

But Amazon is put in the position of legally proving that they are lies- tricky.

This sounds like grounds for banishment from the site, not legal action.

newjersey• 11 years ago

Absolutely. Terms and conditions are not laws. I'd date say they are not even proper contracts.

dot• 11 years ago

These people profited from damaging one of amazon's biggest competitive advantages. Amazon is going to go throw the book at them and rightly so.

notahacker• 11 years ago

I assume they're aiming more to discourage people from offering the service than actually win. The occasional $5 isn't worth the risk of being sued, even if you expect to win.

I'd have thought the case would fall down on other grounds as well: it's pretty difficult to sustain an argument that credibility of reviews is intrinsic to Amazon's business model when the company doesn't make the minimum effort to remove well-publicised joke reviews. And it's going to be tough if they want to prove loss of earnings since if anything paid positive reviews probably increase sales revenues.

DonHopkins• 11 years ago

Next thing you know people will be offering $5 legal advice against Amazon's lawsuits on Fiverr.

Marazan2• 11 years ago

Any review which states that the reviewer has purchased the item through Amazon or the 3rd party seller when they have not will be a clear an easy breach of fact.

The review will be attached to an account. The account's purchase record is available to Amazon.

chrisBob• 11 years ago

That only shows they haven't purchased it on Amazon. If they didn't want to enable reviews for items not purchased with your Amazon account that limit would already be in place. It is very hard for Amazon to prove they didn't buy something at Target.

paulsutter• 11 years ago

Commercial speech is not protected the same way as political speech. More importantly, there are plenty of laws against fraud. For example:

"Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud

EDIT: A paid review isn't an opinion, it's an attempt to mislead for commercial gain. And civil suits are decided on a preponderance of evidence. As in 51% plausible. As in, a nudge more than a coin toss.

downandout2• 11 years ago

You are correct that there are laws against fraud. The issue is that the expression of one's opinion, however biased, cannot constitute fraud under US law. If there are demonstrably false statements of fact in each and every one of the more than 1,000 reviews that they are suing over, then and only then will this lawsuit be successful.

mootothemax• 11 years ago

Couldn't they just be suing the fake reviewers for breaching Amazon's terms and conditions?

(nb I don't know what's in their T&Cs regarding fake reviews. I'm be kinda surprised if there's not something in there about doing so honestly and/or not for profit.)

codecamper2• 11 years ago

Amazon's tactic may backfire. They may publicly lose the case & then cause a swarm of me too fake review shops to bloom.

MicroBerto2• 11 years ago

I'm thinking this too. They need to solve the actual problem, not chase the side effects.

1. They need better AI to determine bad actors. It's not like they don't have smart coders working there (right?) and if you look at a fake user's review profile, it's very easy to see the web of fakes

2. They should strongly consider only allowing verified purchase reviews, or highly devalue or have some kind of moderation for non-verified purchases. ie, you need to provide a unique picture.

3. They should strongly consider permanently banning spammy products that have consistent and high amounts of fake reviews.

Some corners of Amazon's marketplace have definitely started to turn into eBay. They need to prevent that at nearly all costs.

facetube2• 11 years ago

As soon as they accidentally sue one of the people who posted a funny review of their out-of-stock 80 gallon barrel of Astroglide, this will _definitely_ backfire.

300bps• 11 years ago

A great summary including a link to a (lengthy) position paper by the FTC:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/01/26/fake-reviews-everyone...

In summary, reviews like this are illegal.

sigmar• 11 years ago

Thanks for the link. This is the best comment on this thread because it gives an actual reference instead of just stating an armchair-lawyer's opinion of the case.

CPLX• 11 years ago

They have legal grounds to sue them clearly, in the sense that they have at least superficially plausible causes of action. If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to find a lawyer past the bar willing to file a summons and complaint.

In the US of course one can be sued for just about any vaguely plausible set of damages. That doesn't mean that they have prevailed on the facts and the law.

The next step then, by definition, is to hear a response from people who are otherwise in a life position where they find themselves writing Amazon reviews for $5 or less.

sitkack• 11 years ago

If news doesn't have to be truthful [1] why should reviews?

http://www.projectcensored.org/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

Bemused by this, because if the same standards applied to the ad world, hardly any ads would be made.

The notional difference is that the ad industry works with implication, dramatisation, and suggestion.

Even so, how many celebrity endorsements are genuine and not bought and paid for in exactly the same way a five star review is bought and paid for - but with rather more money changing hands?

Does anyone believe that corporations have never, ever encouraged ad agencies to plant positive reviews?

Perhaps the issue isn't so much that Amazon's review system is being damaged, it's that it's being manipulated by the wrong people - which puts it outside the usual borders of corporate control.

And personally I find the reviews unhelpful anyway, because Amazon often groups unrelated reviews together - so I see 200 reviews of an old 2TB hard drive, when I really want reviews of the latest 6TB model.

imaginenore• 11 years ago

I predict the whole thing will turn more black market and anonymous. Nothing will really change.

x5n1• 11 years ago

Aren't most of these reviewers in third world countries with horrible legal systems?

fredkbloggs3• 11 years ago

It doesn't matter what their legal systems are like. The important thing is that they don't have any assets in Washington (nor anywhere else in the US, most likely). So when they don't show for trial, a default judgment will be handed down and any of the defendant's assets in Washington (none) will be seized to satisfy it. The first-order result of any such trial itself will be Amazon spending many thousands of dollars to obtain a handful of uncollectible judgments. Sometimes such judgments have value on the secondary market, but against a nonresident foreign citizen, forget about it. Presumably their true objective lies elsewhere, as others here have suggested.

forgotpwtomain2• 11 years ago

I don't know why amazon has to do this stupid (as others have pointed out on dubiously legal basis) crap - when they have lots of smart people, loads of user data and pretty much unlimited resources at their disposal.

It might be a hard to write an algorithm to distinguish shilled reviews from legit ones -- but it should be well within their competence.

gahahaha• 11 years ago

Making a great algorithm _combined_ with suing the fake reviewers might be even better.

duncanawoods2• 11 years ago

It certainly makes a headline unlike "we made a new algorithm!".

brazzledazzle• 11 years ago

Perhaps they want to learn exactly how they do it by forcing the discovery process on them. Then they can use that information to build better detection mechanisms.

forgotpwtomain2• 11 years ago

someone care to explain why they down-voted this comment?

JumpCrisscross• 11 years ago

Amazon gives anyone, whether they are customers or not, the ability to review products sold on its online store.

Makes sense for books. Anyone know why this policy is maintained for products?

parka• 11 years ago

If you limit reviews to only Amazon customers, you limited the number of people who can write reviews. I buy a lot of things from other places as well, not just Amazon.

MicroBerto2• 11 years ago

It's to the point where Amazon really needs to re-investigate this policy though. They have enough sales volume that they can limit to verified purchasers and still have plenty of good content. Quality would trump the quantity too.

That's just one of a dozen things Amazon should be doing here though. We work with a few startups close to this situation, wow is it a mess.

mrfusion• 11 years ago

It seems like fixing reviews would be a good startup opportunity right? Any ideas what you would do?

codecamper2• 11 years ago

Yes, definitely. My app suffered for years in Apple's app store against a competitor with an inferior product, but with high quantities of glowing "reviews". If Apple can't figure out fake reviews, and Amazon can't figure them out... then I'd say there is a HUGE opportunity here.

duncanawoods2• 11 years ago

If Apple is not motivated to do it themselves, why would they use\buy a start-up?

Feels like a soft problem where Apple can do it badly and not feel any pain or see the needle move if they did it better. Mildly frustrated users won't leave because they have to climb over the garden walls.

username223• 11 years ago

So would fixing human nature, but neither is an easy problem. The people writing the reviews have no incentive other than generosity to do so, nor any expertise. This is why Consumer Reports exists: experienced reviewers get paid to write reviews, and buyers pay for that knowledge.

facetube2• 11 years ago

Maybe provide some minimal compensation to trusted reviewers in the form of product discounts or free stuff – enough to make knowledgable people take their time to objectively evaluate something they wanted, but not enough to pull in people who are just willing to do anything to get freebies. You could have a reputation system that provided deeper discounts over time to people who were able to write more-useful reviews (as judged by other users).

sorokod3• 11 years ago

Wouldn't suing the businesses paying for the fake reviews, be more efficient?

Donzo• 11 years ago

It's harder to catch them.

It's pretty easy to comb through fiverr and pick off schmoes advertising fake reviews.

Identifying buyers is a different matter entirely.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon leveraged their position against the sellers to have them turn on the buyers.

I mean, how much loyalty is five dollars going to buy?

sorokod3• 11 years ago

Maybe harder to detect but easier to prosecute. Also, the effect of a single convection is greater.

svckr• 11 years ago

s/efficiet/ethical/

I may be generalising but I believe most of the individuals targeted by the lawsuit are not in the position to just shrug off a fine and lawyer costs. But as Donzo said, it's certainly easier to sue them than the businesses that (IMO) are to blame for the fake review business. Maybe the goal is for the reviewers to turn over their accounts and thus the businesses involved?

sorokod3• 11 years ago

A good reaction of of this ecosystem, us to make sure that the reviewers reside outside of US jurisdiction (if this isn't the case already). Nothing to shrug off in this case.

driverdan• 11 years ago

This is exactly what they need to do. So long as there is demand there will be a supply. You need to kill demand to kill the market.

fredkbloggs3• 11 years ago

What is their relationship with Amazon? In most cases, they won't have any contractual relationship, which I would think makes it harder to obtain a cause of action. They could still sue for false advertising, but they'd have to show that the reviews contain statements of fact that are false. If I'm understanding correctly, this is a considerably higher bar than breach of a reviewer's contract with Amazon.

task_queue2• 11 years ago

No, because then they might be taking on an entity with enough money to provide a competent legal defense against them.

programminggeek• 11 years ago

Because reviews are used so heavily in the ranking algorithm, buying reviews on Amazon is like buying links on Google. Breaking the ranking algorithm potentially hurts their core business, so of course Amazon is going to take legal and other punitive actions.

It was only a matter of time.

carbocation• 11 years ago

The parallel between paid Google links and paid Amazon reviews is apt. Therefore, I do not understand the conclusion that Amazon is going to "take legal ... action".

Faced with link farms, Google penalized the beneficiaries in the search rankings; they didn't file lawsuits.

dsfyu404ed• 11 years ago

Isn't this basic enough to be covered under tort law?

The reviewer is negligent through misrepresentation (withholding the fact that the reviewer is being paid) and Amazon suffers.

On a separate note, it's a shame that many of these reviews are bought by advertising agencies and the manufactures or the products usually have no idea when this is done. So the manufacture might be looking at online reviews thinking people love the product when in reality it's just some of the advertising they paid for.

Oatseller3• 11 years ago

"... the manufactures or the products usually have no idea when this is done"

Some of them (or at least the marketplace resellers) do. In an article linked from another discussion here on HN [0], there is evidence that some of the fake reviewers would have empty boxes shipped to them so they would have the "Verified Purchase" qualifier in the review, the kindle book sellers simply put their books in a free promotion for 5 days so the reviewers have the "Verified Purchase" even though the cost was $0.00

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10402480

plonh2• 11 years ago

These sound like problems in Amazon's system, Amazon mistakes mislead customers.

6stringmerc4• 11 years ago

This is interesting - I do believe shill reviews are a form of fraud, and this lawsuit will put that perspective to the test. We'll get a court answer eventually.

What I find interesting is trying to prove harm done by the fake reviews. If they're against the terms of service, okay, ban the accounts, and take some back-room steps to monitor if those persons try to rejoin (e.g. limited utility of IP address focus). I don't think we're talking about criminal masterminds here.

I'm kind of joking here, but I'd almost try out the defense that paid five-star reviews are a "necessary evil" to counter the inevitable "idiot with a keyboard" which enables any wrong-thinking person to write a one-star review. What I mean is will this case include evidence that non-paid reviewers are just as damaging - if not more so - than paid fake ones. Or, in other words, can Amazon prove genuine harm via "fraud" is able to be differentiated from "stupid people saying stupid, wrong things" in the comment environment.

Personally, I think it's an "in-house" Amazon issue where they should be 'moderating' comments, but that takes labor and effort; if I've learned anything about Amazon's view of menial labor tasks such as fulfillment, I don't think anybody would want the job. If there's better money in fraud than policing the fraud, then maybe the business model should be re-evaluated. I'm not trying to justify what is done for hire - to me it's about on par with "essay writers for hire" and I hate that shit - but it does make for an interesting problem of commerce.

devit• 11 years ago

It's pretty obvious that it is far more damaging.

The reviews from "stupid people" are limited by the ratio of "stupid people" to "smart people", and thus merely change the scale and add some noise, mostly uniformly across all products in a given category: the system is worse, but still usable.

On the other hand, enough fake reviews on a system with discretized scores will result in all products having the maximum score and having almost all reviews presented being fake: the system is now completely useless.

z6• 11 years ago

Exactly this.

I've recently come across a lot of these very highly rated products (with thousands of reviews) and almost immediately you see many of the reviews saying "company gave me the product for free to write an honest and unbiased review."

To me, this completely invalidates the rating and I typically try to find a different product because it's too time consuming to try to find real reviews. On the other hand, 'stupid people' don't tip the scale like that and in some ways their reviews are useful because you can be sure those people were not 'paid'. Also, they may complain about something that isn't really a negative in general, or specifically to you, so you can use that to make your decision.

greggarious• 11 years ago

How do you define "stupid people"?

I don't feel particuarly intelligent - I often meet people with my IQ who have all sorts of illogical views, but according to an IQ test, I'm smarter than 95 out of a 100 people.

If you accept that "stupid people" create bad reviews, then your argument falls apart pretty quickly.

Oatseller3• 11 years ago

"On the other hand, enough fake reviews on a system with discretized scores will result in all products having the maximum score and having almost all reviews presented being fake: the system is now completely useless."

That's exactly what's happened to the non-fiction kindle books.

The fakes are usually easy to spot [0] but sifting through all of that crap is a huge time sink and I've all but stopped buying them.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Management-Effectively-Personnel-Resol...

jellicle2• 11 years ago

Four hours in and I don't see any comment here with the right take on it, so here you go: Amazon is not suing these 1,000 "John Does" in order to win, they're suing them in order to identify them and ban their Amazon accounts.

Once Fiverr is forced to divulge all the info it has regarding these people, Amazon will ban their accounts and drop the lawsuit.

too_late2• 11 years ago

Doubtful. I'm sure they'll ban whomever they are able to identify, but there are most definitely other reasons this suit will develop into a storm. Fiverr threatens Amazon's business model, and Amazon will do anything to keep turning a profit.

I'll be EXTREMELY shocked if Amazon drops more than just a couple of these suits, they're out to prove a point that THEY run the market, and not Fiverr.

fredkbloggs3• 11 years ago

You may be right about Amazon's intent, I don't know. But Fiverr is no threat to Amazon's business model. Even if Fiverr's purpose were fake reviews (it isn't), reviews aren't a key component of Amazon's business model in the first place. And there are plenty of cheaper, faster, and less likely to create bad PR ways Amazon could put a stop to fake reviews if they really felt threatened by them. For starters, it would be very simple to (a) only allow verified purchase reviews if the user bought the product via Amazon, and (b) make sure all verified purchase reviews are shown before any others (or larger, or not greyed out, etc., etc.). The fact that Amazon hasn't done these things tells me they consider fake reviews a nuisance, not a threat.

task_queue2• 11 years ago

That's a lot of money to spend to not follow through and put the last nail in the coffin.

jellicle2• 11 years ago

What money? They have lawyers on payroll and filing fees are minimal. Their direct outlays so far in the three figures.

And I don't get what "following through" is supposed to mean? Trying to convince a judge that someone who got $5 for posting a review on Amazon encouraging people to buy from Amazon has damaged Amazon's business and should pay $XXX because of it? Multiplied by 1,000 defendants? That would be the laughable part. And that's the part Amazon won't be doing.

sb8244• 11 years ago

So going along with the idea that misrepresentation of fact is fraud and you can be sued for it, does it mean that users who put a fake name in order to get free service in a freemium can be sued?

In that case, I would expect the answer is tighten up what you do as a company to make it not worth the time. That is the same answer I have for this situation. It should be on amazon to protect their review portal from false reviews, even non-automated.

bhitov• 11 years ago

The complaint is available here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/285422882/Amazon-Complaint

rebootthesystem2• 11 years ago

Amazon have created a system that is so one-sided and unfair in many ways that sellers could be pushed into resorting to pay for reviews.

BTW, notice I did not say "pay for positive reviews" but rather "pay for reviews".

Now, of course, one could setup something like a paid focus group where those who like the product are then encouraged to review on Amazon. That's not necessarily what happens on Fiverr. I am astounded at how blatantly some of these reviewers advertise on Fiverr. And, yes, Fiverr does look the other way. Not their problem. Well, at least not yet.

How is the Amazon system unfair?

Source/disclosure: I own a company that provides management services to Amazon third party sellers (A3PS). No, we have nothing to do with reviews yet we do see how the system works and how messed-up it is.

    - Bad reviews can absolutely tank product sales
    - No mechanism to protect from stupid or unfounded bad reviews
    - Negative reviews carry way too much weight
    - Amazon routinely removes positive reviews from listings 
      without justification
    - Amazon never removes negative reviews
    - Review posters can use fake names
    - Search ranking is influenced by review score
    - Reviews are being used as business weapons
    - Amazon allows people who never bought the product to post a review
    - There are zero standards to control who can post a review
    - Buyers use neg reviews to extract frebbies

I won't discuss all of these in detail unless someone asks for clarification.

The first problem is that people who would post a negative review are far more motivated to do so than positive reviewers. This is common sense. Posting a review is a hassle. Motivation is important here. Someone who is unhappy about something --anything-- is far more motivated to take the time to post a review. And, in some product categories, dissatisfaction might have nothing whatsoever to do with the product.

This means that reviews are not a true representation of the product except in category-dependent corner or near-corner cases.

Example: Weight loss. Person buys an exercise widget. Doesn't use it consistently. Does not alter their diet. Three months later they've lost no weight at all and they are angry at something. They get an email from Amazon asking for a review. They lash out at the product. It feels good. In the process they've caused a situation for the A3PS whereby they might have to find dozens to hundreds of positive reviews in order to counteract the weighted average effect of that one utterly unfair negative review.

The review system treats weight loss pills and a screwdriver as though the review posting mechanics (motivation, satisfaction requirements, product-buyer relationships, effort required for success, etc.) are exactly the same.

That is just one example of the sort of thing that can drive sellers mad. There's real financial damage to sellers because of the ranking and in-page sales consequences of these reviews.

When someone says "reviews are being bought on Fiverr" the assumption is "positive reviews". The truth of the matter is that less-than-reputable sellers know full-well how deadly negative reviews are on Amazon. And some of them engage in attacking competitors with damming negative reviews.

Using simple math one can see the effects of bad reviews. The weighted averaging Amazon uses to calculate average review score has changed; for the purpose of this discussion I'll used the older and simpler version.

Say a product has 10 5-star reviews. They have a score of 5.0. Perfect.

If I now post 5 1-star reviews to that page the score goes down to 3.7. This is bad. It costs sales and ranking. My fake negative review served to damage my competitor.

How many 5-star reviews would it take for my competitor to repair the damage?

The answer is shocking: They need an additional 60 5-star reviews, for a total of 70, in order to get to 4.7, which would show five stars. Ranking would be affected less and buyers would see five yellow stars.

In order to get back to 5.0 they would need 500. Yes FIVE HUNDRED 5-star reviews for a rounded score of 5.0.

And that, right there, is one of the main issues with Amazon's scoring system. Anyone can post a review. Hire a bank of people in China, have them create fake accounts and start posting 1-star reviews on your competitor's products. You'll destroy them. Their sales with tank and they'll have no humanly possible way to recover their ranking. A minimal effort on the part of the attacker is remunerated with massive damage to their competitor.

The situation that is created is mathematically insurmountable. Someone with a great product and a perfect score would have to amass hundreds, if not thousands, of perfect reviews in order to counteract a negative review attack. This is, well, nearly impossible. And so, I can see how many sellers might be forced to resort to buying reviews in order to protect their business from attackers. The reward for attacking a competitor with negative reviews is massive, the cost is minuscule and the consequences are non-existent.

Amazon flat-out refuses to allow the seller to engage with buyers PRIOR TO a negative review being posted. In other words, something that is normal behavior IRL does not exist on Amazon. If you have a business IRL and a customer isn't happy with something you sold them they can either return it or talk to you to seek resolution. That's why Walmart and Best Buy have a Returns desk. People are serviced and everyone is happy.

On Amazon people get angry and post negative reviews. The seller isn't allowed an opportunity to connect with the buyer and make an attempt to resolve the issue. Perhaps the batteries were missing or the shipper broke the thing or the color wasn't to their liking. It would be sensible to allow the seller the opportunity to help buyers in this way.

Another horrible problem is that some buyers are very aware of the fact that sellers fear negative reviews. We've seen buyers ask for heavy discounts or 100% discounts "or else". In a lot of cases sellers choose to give in to the extortion because the consequences of bad reviews can cost them tens of thousands of dollars per month in sales.

We've seen cases where people post a 1-star review when the product arrived late. The review had nothing to do with the product. The seller was using Amazon for fulfillment. In other words, Amazon shipped the product and they screwed-up. Yet Amazon refuses to remove the negative review and the only way to counter it is to find dozens of positive reviews, which is nearly impossible.

In yet another case a seller got a 1-star review because they ordered three units and only received two. Again, Fulfillment-By-Amazon screwed up. The seller had nothing whatsoever to do with the act of picking, boxing-up and shipping the product. Yet Amazon rules do not allow this review to be removed and the seller would have to add dozens of 5-star reviews to fix the problem.

The Fiverr review jobs are not the problem, they are a symptom. One has to ask "Why are sellers compelled to pay for reviews?". The answer takes you straight back to Amazon. Sellers would have zero interest in reviews if the system was fair, manageable and couldn't be used as an offensive weapon by shady competitors.

I could go on for hours on this one...

rajacombinator• 11 years ago

Scummy move by Amazon, no surprise. They obviously don't care about the integrity of their core product as can be seen by the horrifically gamed reviews and the misleading third party sales system. Suing a bunch of people on Fiverr won't fix anything.

oldmanjay• 11 years ago

care to explain where the scum layer is here?

codifiedhabits• 11 years ago

Way to fight the easy fight Amazon. Didn't sue Fiverr of course, but sue 1k+ John Does? Don't want to invest a little into fixing your easily gamed, crappy ranking algorithm, but want to scare people off from gaming it instead? Priorities straight, not even once.

thieving_magpie• 11 years ago

but want to scare people off from gaming it instead?

Uh yeah. That's exactly what they're trying to do. They've already gone after sites before.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/10/us-amazon-com-laws...

drieddust• 11 years ago

Exactly this is very noble but idiotic. Instead of fixing themselves they really want to fix the world.

There are billion dollar businesses out there actively gaming the Web to promote their customer's products. Why amazon doesn't try to deter them?

Perhaps because they actually earn money for Amazon too or they are too big to fight?

uxcn• 11 years ago

I have to wonder how effective this will actually be considering that Amazon's reviews are completely unmoderated, and explicitly open to the public.

The one thing I will credit Amazon with, is that they are quick to reimburse for fraudulent products when you can demonstrate that it is fraudulent. Quality might be slightly more debatable, but I would be willing to bet Amazon will reimburse on that as well.

micwawa• 11 years ago

This is fantastic. Manipulating ratings is a big business, and it is good to see that Amazon is being aggressive toward this.

There was a time last year when they gave MediaBridge a rough time after they hired a lawyer to harass genuine reviewers. This is a much more proactive approach compared to Yelp, who is hoping congress passes anti-SLAPP laws.

If nothing else, this move may call attention to how much mischief is allowed in online ratings.

rebootthesystem2• 11 years ago

I am not opposed to what Amazon is doing on Fiverr. That said, I don't think you might be aware of the entire picture. Amazon itself is likely to be the very reason some sellers feel they have to play these games. See my post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10408396

Unless you have at least a couple of years of experience dealing with Amazon from a seller's perspective it will be impossible for you (or anyone else, not focusing on you at all) to form an opinion based on all of the facts and nuances of the ecosystem Amazon has created. We get feedback from a large number of sellers we service with our management tools. Believe me when I say that the view from the seller's perspective is far, far less pristine than from the vantage point of Amazon buyers.

In a few words: For third party sellers being on Amazon can be a really fucked existence. A few have even gone bankrupt.

Again, not defending the wrongful purchasing of fake reviews but rather saying I understand precisely why some might feel the pressure to do something, anything, to save their businesses when going up against a mess of a system almost entirely rigged against honest sellers.

Amazon Sues Fake Reviewers on Fiverr

Related Stories