Amazon punishes fake review sites, but does this hurt sellers?

Recently, Amazon filed a lawsuit against two websites, AppSally and Rebatest , for attempting to profit by generating "misleading and fraudulent reviews." As we all know, Amazon has always had zero tolerance for false reviews.

Rebatest describes itself as a product trial site where consumers can get up to 100% rebates when shopping online ! Rebatest also encourages shoppers to buy Amazon items through its cashback program.

The website states that the fundamental purpose of Rebatest is to help consumers find good things, test the potential development of new products, and provide customers with fair and comprehensive trial reports. No fees are charged to members . Rebatest is free to join, free to use, free to redeem ( free redemption within one year ), and there is no minimum payment threshold.

At the same time, the website also offers an affiliate program, where shoppers can get rewards for recommending its website to others. Its website information shows that "in order to expand our business and attract more testers, we have launched the affiliate & referral program . You can get a referral bonus of up to $20 per person by recommending friends and colleagues to join and complete their first order on Rebatest."

In a February news article , Amazon wrote: " The purpose of this lawsuit is to shut down two major fake review sites , AppSally and Rebatest, which mislead shoppers by having their members attempt to post fake reviews on stores such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy."

At the same time, Amazon also began to remove some sellers' products on the website Rebatest , although the sellers said they were not aware of the website and did not participate in any rewarded review activities .

Amazon also said that the platform will use a "combination of machine learning technology and skilled investigators to detect, prevent and remove" incentivized or fake reviews . Amazon sellers of deleted products found that their products appeared on the Rebatest website without permission. In this regard, Amazon said that it may be that the platform "accidentally hurt sellers" when crawling data .

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Fake reviews

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