Amazon has pledged to step up its efforts to combat fake reviews on its platform, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on Friday. The move comes as part of an ongoing investigation into whether major online platforms are doing enough to protect consumers from misleading product and service ratings.
The British regulator said it secured a firm commitment from the e-commerce giant, just months after reaching a similar agreement with Google. Both companies have been under scrutiny since 2021, when the CMA launched a probe to determine whether they were violating UK consumer protection laws by failing to address the issue of fake reviews—a problem that surged during the online shopping boom brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amazon has promised to strengthen its current systems to detect and remove fraudulent reviews, as well as crack down on catalog manipulation—a tactic where sellers boost a product’s star rating by linking it to positive reviews meant for a completely different item. The CMA cited a common example: a shopper may come across a pair of headphones with a five-star rating, only to find upon closer inspection that most of the reviews are actually for a mobile phone charger.
As part of the new measures, Amazon will sanction any sellers caught using such deceptive tactics, including banning them from selling on its platform. Users who post fake reviews will also be prohibited from submitting future ones.
CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell emphasized the significance of the measures: “Millions of people shop on Amazon, and star ratings and reviews have a big influence on their choices. This commitment means people can make decisions with greater confidence, knowing that those trying to mislead them will be swiftly removed.”
The measures will initially apply to Amazon’s UK website. In a statement, the company reaffirmed its “zero tolerance” policy toward fake reviews and said the new commitments build on its existing efforts.
“We invest significant resources to proactively prevent fake reviews from appearing in our store, including expert human investigators and machine learning models that analyze thousands of data points to detect risks,” the company stated.
