Amazon commits to stepping up fake-review fight after UK watchdog's investigation

Britain’s contention regulator says Amazon has pledged to beef up its systems to combat fake online reviews

LONDON -- Amazon has pledged to beef up combat against fake reviews, Britain's contention regulator said Friday aft an probe into whether large online platforms are doing capable to ace down connected phony online ratings for products and services.

The Competition and Markets Authority said it secured the “undertakings” from Amazon, aft getting a akin statement earlier this twelvemonth from Google to clamp down connected rogue reviews plaguing the internet.

The institution promised to fortify its existing systems for warring fake reviews. It volition besides tackle catalog abuse, which involves sellers boosting prima ratings for a merchandise by hijacking bully reviews from a wholly antithetic one.

As an example, a shopper mightiness travel crossed a brace of headphones with a five-star rating. But, aft looking closer, astir of the reviews are for a mobile telephone charger, the watchdog said.

As portion of its commitments, Amazon has agreed to authorisation anyone caught utilizing these tactics. Businesses could beryllium banned from selling connected the Amazon website and users posting fake reviews could beryllium banned from posting them, the CMA said.

The watchdog's main executive, Sarah Cardell, said that truthful galore radical store connected Amazon and “star ratings and reviews person a immense interaction connected their choices.”

Amazon's pledges “mean radical tin marque decisions with greater assurance – knowing that those who question to propulsion the wool implicit their eyes volition beryllium swiftly dealt with.”

The pledges use to Amazon's U.K. website. The institution said successful a connection that it has zero tolerance for fake reviews and that the measures physique connected Amazon's existing efforts to tackle them.

“We put important resources to proactively halt fake reviews ever appearing connected our store, including connected adept quality investigators and instrumentality learning models that analyse thousands of information points to observe risk," the institution said.

The CMA opened its investigations into Amazon and Google successful 2021 to analyse whether the 2 companies broke U.K. user instrumentality by failing to support shoppers. It began looking into phony reviews connected immoderate large websites amid the roar successful online buying fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

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