
Amazon is taking legal steps against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups. The company says the groups are generating false reviews in Amazon's U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan markets.
The tech giant says groups offer free money or goods in exchange for comments posted as a return to Amazon.
One of the groups, removed earlier this year by Facebook's parent company Meta, had 43,000 members. The group was called the Amazon Product Review.
Once the people in the group had bought selected products and left their comments, the managers would reimburse them. Included was a wide range of goods, including car stereos and camera and phone holders.
A large number of comments increased the visibility of retailers on Amazon platforms, as well as placing them higher in search engine results.
Amazon sellers can legitimately pay for services that promise to increase their online ratings, without necessarily knowing that this will be carried out in the form of false reviews.
One example distributed was a Facebook post offering "R*fnd Aftr R*veve" (reimbursement after review).
About half of the groups were removed from Meta after being reported by Amazon. However, Amazon told the BBC that administrators of all these groups were targeted for lawsuits.