Amazon and Google face UK CMA probe over fake reviews

Albeit, in the case of Facebook, it took until April 2021 for it to take down 16,000 groups that had been trading fake reviews — and the CMA expressed disappointment that it had taken Facebook over a year to take meaningful action.Facebook and eBay pledge to do more to tackle trade in fake reviews after pressure from UK regulatorNow the CMA has Amazon and Google in its sites, both of which control platforms hosting user reviews — saying it will be gathering evidence to determine whether they may have broken UK law by taking insufficient action to protect shoppers from fake reviews.Businesses that mislead consumers or don’t take action to prevent consumers being misled may be in breach of UK laws intended to protect consumers from unfair trading.The CMA says its investigation into Amazon and Google follows an initial probe, which it started in May 2020, which was focused on assessing several platforms’ internal systems and processes for identifying and dealing with fake reviews.That work raised specific concerns about whether the two tech giants have been doing enough to:The regulator also said it’s concerned that Amazon’s systems have been “failing adequately to prevent and deter some sellers from manipulating product listings” — such as, for example, by co-opting positive reviews from other products.And, well, who hasn’t been browsing product reviews on Amazon, only to be drawn up short by a reviewer earnestly referring to product attributes that clearly bear no relation to the sale item in question?While the user reviews that pop up on, for example, Google Maps after a search for a local business can also display ‘unusual patterns‘ of 5-starring (or 1-starring) behaviour…Commenting on its investigation into concerns that Amazon and Google are not doing enough to combat the problem of fake reviews the CMA’s CEO Andrea Coscelli had this to say, in a statement:“Our worry is that millions of online shoppers could be misled by reading fake reviews and then spending their money based on those recommendations.