Thanks to online shopping, we no longer have to suffer the indignity of leaving our bed to buy groceries, technology or hard drugs.
But e-commerce’s most unexpected addition to society has been the birth of a literary micro-genre: the fake product review.
Now, Amazon.com – the original ground zero for fake-as-hell reviews – is cracking down on shoddy product ratings that “undermine the trust that consumers and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers place in Amazon,” with the company launching a new lawsuit against over 1,000 individuals for manipulating the site’s rating system.
Amazon claim that users can buy or sell positive reviews on grey-market sites to bump up a product’s ranking, and that any fictional reviews are not on, under any circumstances. According to the company, these reviews can be bought for less than $5US. Similar scams have also been used before on sites like Zomato to up a restaurant’s rating.
Oddly enough, Amazon haven’t got around to some of their more notable fake reviews, including some absolute classics like that bloody horse mask, actual Uranium ore, and the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt. Of course, all claims made about that last one remain totally accurate.
Story via BBC.
Image: Matt Cardy via Getty.
Image: Matt Cardy via Getty.
