Two people in China were recently sentenced 2.5 years in prison after being found guilty of illegal business operations.
Their crime?
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According to Amazon (AMZN) -), the two fake review brokers were looking to deceive the e-commerce giant’s customers and harm the company's selling partners through the facilitation of fake reviews.
The verdicts in China are the result of local law enforcement’s investigation and a criminal referral supported by Amazon, which said it has blocked more than 200 million suspected fake reviews from its stores last year, and, as of August, has taken action against 147 fraudsters across China, Europe, and the U.S.
Fake reviews are far more than just an annoyance.
The World Economic Forum, which found that 4% of all online reviews are fake, said bogus online reviews influence $791 billion of e-commerce spending annually in the U.S.
Statistics indicate that roughly 95% of consumers read reviews before they buy anything, while 94% of consumers have avoided a company due to a bad review.
Launching a coalition
Businesses risk losing as many as 22% of customers when just one negative article is found by users considering buying their product, according to SEO software firm Moz. If three negative articles pop up in a search query, the potential for lost customers jumps to 59.2%
Now Amazon, along with review sites Glassdoor and Trustpilot and travel companies Expedia Group (EXPE) -), Booking.com and Tripadvisor (TRIP) -) announced that they’re launching a coalition that aims to protect access to “trustworthy consumer reviews” worldwide.
The companies said the coalition is a result conversations that came out of a “Fake Reviews” conference that was organized by Tripadvisor and held last year in San Francisco.
Becky Foley, Tripadvisor’s vice president for Trust & Safety, said in a statement that combating operators behind fake reviews will be “an immediate area of focus” for the coalition.
“These actors often operate outside of jurisdictions with a legal framework to shut down fraudulent activity, making robust cooperation even more important,” she said.
The group said they will meet in early December at a second conference that will be organized by Amazon and held in Brussels.
And, as if things weren’t bad enough, AI is muscling into the review mix, as reviews written using ChatGPT have begun to pop up on Amazon.
Spotting the fake reviews
The internet giant, which sued a Facebook group in 2022 that was allegedly dedicated to generating fake reviews, said it was combatting the AI invasion by using "a combination of expert investigators and sophisticated industry-leading tools that use machine-learning models to analyze reviews for fraudulent patterns and suspicious activity prior to publication."
In June, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a new rule to stop marketers from using illicit review and endorsement practices such as using fake reviews, suppressing honest negative reviews, and paying for positive reviews.
Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the rule would trigger civil penalties for violators and “should help level the playing field for honest companies.”
Consumer Reports has some tips on how to spot fake online reviews, including checking with a site like Fakespot, which uses an algorithm to evaluate the quality of customer reviews for products being sold at major retailers.
If you notice a cluster of very positive reviews all posted on the same day, you may want to skip over them since fake reviews can be grouped together like this.
Keep an eye out for identical phrasing in multiple reviews, and if a particular review catches your eye, you may want to click on to the reviewer for their history.
If a reviewer always gives five stars and uses similar language for different reviews, Consumer Reports said, those may be fake or paid for.
And look for a Verified Purchase tag on a review, which signals that Amazon confirmed that the reviewer paid for the product and bought it through the website.
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