
Source: AFP
Amazon has agreed to clamp down connected fake online reviews of products advertised connected its UK site, Britain's contention regulator said Friday.
Google agreed a akin UK committedness successful January aft the Competition and Markets Authority launched an probe into the substance 5 years ago.
Amazon "has signed undertakings committing to heighten its existing systems for tackling fake reviews and catalogue abuse", the CMA said successful a connection Friday.
"Catalogue maltreatment involves sellers hijacking the reviews of well-performing products and adding them to an wholly abstracted and antithetic merchandise to falsely boost its prima rating", the regulator noted.
The CMA said "Amazon has committed to pugnacious sanctions for businesses that boost their prima ratings", which could spot them banned from its UK site.
The regulator said that astir 90 percent of UK consumers usage online reviews erstwhile deciding connected a purchase.
It added "that arsenic overmuch arsenic £23 cardinal ($31 billion) of UK user spending is perchance influenced by online reviews annually".
"So galore people usage Amazon, from buying a caller motorcycle fastener to uncovering the champion java instrumentality -- and what's wide is that prima ratings and reviews person a immense interaction connected their choices," CMA main enforcement Sarah Cardell said successful Friday's statement.
"That's wherefore these caller commitments substance and assistance acceptable the standard.
"They mean radical can marque decisions with greater assurance -- knowing that those who question to propulsion the wool implicit their eyes volition beryllium swiftly dealt with."
The CMA successful May 2020 opened an probe into "several large websites" that show online reviews, which led to the opening of a ceremonial probe into Amazon and Google 13 months later.
"The undertakings from Amazon and Google, alongside our precocious published proposal to reappraisal platforms, overgarment a wide representation of what the instrumentality requires from businesses," Cardell said.
"Following this, we're present launching the adjacent signifier of our work. This volition scrutinise whether reappraisal platforms, businesses who database products connected them, and reviewers themselves, are complying with the strengthened laws astir fake reviews."
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Source: AFP