Amazon has filed lawsuits in opposition to the directors of over 10,000 Facebook teams which can be allegedly a part of a community to recruit people to go away pretend critiques for merchandise on Amazon in alternate for cash or free merchandise.

Amazon, in fact, is {the marketplace} the place you may have unfettered entry to virtually any product you want. Likewise, Amazon’s trusted assessment system is often an sincere method to get a take a look at the standard of merchandise—effectively, kind of. Today, Amazon revealed in a press release that it filed a lawsuit in opposition to the directors of over 10,000 Facebook teams. These teams are reportedly a part of a coordinated effort to recruit people to go away pretend critiques for various merchandise on Amazon shops within the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan

“Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” stated Dharmesh Mehta within the press launch. Mehta is Amazon’s Vice President of Selling Partner Services. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”

Amazon says that one group particularly had 43,000 members till it was taken down by Meta earlier this yr. The group was vaguely referred to as “Amazon Product Review,” in line with the corporate, and its directors had been capable of obfuscate their exercise from Facebook’s content material filters by omitting sure letters from problematic phrases. The firm stated that customers who posted pretend critiques would obtain cash or merchandise in return, and defined to Gizmodo in an electronic mail that this reward scheme shouldn’t be by Amazon itself, however is about up by the directors of the teams or by way of third-party web sites.

Amazon is kind of good at squashing organized actions. News broke in April that the corporate thought-about spending $20,000 per week on consultants to incentivize warehouse employees to desert unionization efforts at a Staten Island warehouse.