Amazon has filed a lawsuit towards directors of greater than 10,000 Facebook teams it accuses of coordinating pretend critiques in change for cash or free merchandise.
The Seattle-based e-commerce big mentioned in a press release posted on its web site Tuesday the Facebook teams have been set as much as recruit folks “willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews” throughout its shops within the U.S. the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.
The drawback over phony critiques just isn’t new for Amazon, or e-commerce as a complete. Amazon itself has beforehand sued folks it mentioned have been providing pretend testimonials, although lawmakers and regulators have questioned whether or not the corporate was doing sufficient to fight the difficulty.
Last yr, U.Ok. competitors regulators launched a probe into whether or not the web retailer and Google have been taking sufficient actions to guard buyers.
In the assertion, Amazon mentioned one of many Facebook teams it’s concentrating on, referred to as “Amazon Product Review,” had greater than 43,000 members. The firm mentioned Facebook eliminated the group this yr, nevertheless it was in a position to dodge the platform’s detection by “changing letters in phrases that might set off Facebook’s alarms.”
Amazon famous since 2020, it has reported greater than 10,000 pretend evaluate teams to Meta, the mother or father firm of Facebook. Meta has eliminated half of those teams and is investigating the others, Amazon mentioned.
The retailer’s announcement comes as one other aspect of the corporate’s operations is going through extra scrutiny.
On Tuesday, federal labor officers confirmed to the AP the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened inspections at Amazon services in New York, Illinois, and Florida after receiving referrals alleging security and well being violations from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, mentioned federal labor officers entered the Amazon warehouses Monday morning after their workplace made referrals about “potential workplace hazards,” together with “Amazon’s required pace of work for its warehouse employees.”
Labor and security advocates have lengthy criticized Amazon’s harm charges and its “time off task” device, which dings staff for taking too many breaks. Biase mentioned the civil division of the U.S. legal professional’s workplace is investigating security hazards on the firm’s warehouses throughout the nation, in addition to “fraudulent conduct designed to hide injuries from OSHA and others.”
“We’ll of course cooperate with OSHA in their investigation, and we believe it will ultimately show that these concerns are unfounded,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel mentioned in a press release.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”