Social media plagued by Amazon ‘fake review factories’

The consumer rights group Which? found 18 Facebook groups with more than 200,000 members trading in fake reviews
The consumer rights group Which? found 18 Facebook groups with more than 200,000 members trading in fake reviews
ALAMY

Hundreds of thousands of people are trading fake reviews on Facebook and Twitter, despite promises from the tech giants that they would crack down on the problem.

An investigation by the consumer rights group Which? has found that the two social media companies are failing to tackle “fake review factories” on their platforms, in which people offer freebies or money in exchange for positive reviews of products on Amazon.

Rocio Concha, director of policy at Which? said the “weak checks” from Facebook and Twitter to stop fake review agents on its platforms risked “seriously undermining consumer trust in online reviews”.

Facebook has repeatedly made commitments to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over the past two years to clamp down on the fake review