Facebook is failing to crack down on trade of fake Amazon reviews - Which?

Facebook is still “flooded” with groups on its site where fake Amazon reviews are sold, consumer group Which? revealed on Tuesday.

In an investigation, Which? found that dozens of these groups still encourage incentivised reviews on a huge scale despite the Competition and Markets Authority having urged Facebook to act on this trade.

On 21 June, the CMA announced ‘troubling evidence’ of a thriving marketplace for fake online reviews on eBay and Facebook. The CMA wrote to both companies requesting that the identified content be removed and that measures be put in place to stop them from reappearing. Both Facebook and eBay agreed to co-operate

Which? claimed that there had been very little change on Facebook even though the company said it had removed almost all the groups reported to it and was still investigating the issue.

Which? said it had joined ten separate Facebook groups looking for recruits and that in a 30-day period recruiters had added more than 55,000 posts to the groups that offered free products to people who wrote highly-rated reviews on Amazon.

One Facebook group tripled its membership over a 30-day period, while another (which was first started in April 2018) saw its membership numbers double to more than 5,000.

In total, the 10 groups had a staggering 105,669 members on 1 August, compared with a membership of 85,647 just 30 days prior to that – representing an increase of nearly 19%.

"It is deeply concerning that [Facebook] continues to leave customers exposed to poor quality or unsafe products boosted by misleading and disingenuous reviews," said Natalie Hitchins, head of products at Which?

CMA senior director George Lusty said it was "unacceptable" that Facebook groups promoting fake reviews were reappearing.

"Facebook must take effective steps to deal with this problem by quickly removing the material and stop it from resurfacing," he said. "This is just the start - we'll be doing more to tackle fake and misleading online reviews."

A spokesman for Facebook said: "We don't allow people to use Facebook to facilitate or encourage false reviews."