Facebook has removed more than 16,000 group that were trading false reviews after a UK competition regulator criticized the company for failing to do well in a previous promise to strengthen the practice.
In January 2020, the Competition and Markets Authority obtained an agreement from the tech giant Facebook to “better identify, investigate and remove groups and other sites where fake and misleading reviews were being traded, and prevent them from reappearing”.
The practice, where unscrupulous marketers buy illegal positive reviews on their e-commerce sites to increase sales – or beat their competitors with negatively misleading reviews – has often been linked to Facebook and Instagram, the CMA found.
What Did The Regulators Say?
But while Facebook agreed to take action, the follow-up investigation “found evidence that illegal trading of non-existent fake reviews was still happening”, the CMA said, and was forced to intervene a second time.
“Facebook has a responsibility to do everything possible to prevent the commercialization of such content on its platforms,” said Andrea Coscelli, the chief executive of the CMA. “After we intervened again, the company made significant changes – but it is disappointing it has taken them over a year to fix these issues.
“We will continue to keep a close eye on Facebook, including its Instagram business. Should we find it is failing to honour its commitments, we will not hesitate to take further action.”
Facebook Takes Action
Facebook has said it will suspend or block users who “repeatedly” create groups that are dedicated to untrue reviews, and introduce new technologies to automatically mark such groups and make it harder for people to find and join groups in the first place.
A Facebook spokesperson said: “We have worked closely with the CMA to address this issue. Fraudulent and deceptive activity is not allowed on our platforms, including offering or trading fake reviews. Our safety and security teams are continually working to help prevent these practices.”
The scourge of false reviews is widespread on the Internet. In October 2018, an investigation by ‘WHICH’ found that Facebook “factories” were producing the reviews, which were then almost entirely posted on Amazon. The e-commerce site would prioritise reviews from “genuine” buyers, who were then reimbursed for their trouble by the scammers on Facebook. The expensive “genuine” reviews were then backed up by tens of thousands of unverified positive reviews.
Another investigation looked at products on Amazon and found that 71% of headphones had perfect five-star ratings – but that the text of the reviews often referred to unrelated products such as soap dispensers. One set of headphones made by the brand Celebrat had 439 reviews. All were five-star, all unverified, and all arrived on the same day.
