Amazon asks social media platforms to help curb fake reviews

Amazon on Wednesday asked social media companies to help it tackle fake product reviews.

In a blog post that did not specify any platforms, the e-commerce giant said that “bad actors” have been using social media to solicit fake reviews to artificially boost or bury products.

“Some use social media services on their own; in other cases, they hire a third-party service provider to perpetrate this activity on their behalf,” the post reads. “However, bad actors regularly try to take this transaction outside Amazon to obscure our ability to detect their activity and the relationship between the multiple accounts committing or benefiting from this abuse.”

Amazon said that social media companies have been slow to respond to their requests to take down fake review activity, although it did note that response times have sped up recently.

The retail platform has struggled to control the scale of fake reviews on its site for years.

Amazon says it has gotten better at detecting false posts.

It took down more than 200 million reviews suspected to be fake before they were viewed by a customer, according to the blog post.