Amazon.Com Suing Fake Reviewers From Fiverr.Com
Amazon.Com Inc. has filed a lawsuit against over 1,000 Fiverr sellers selling fake reviews. For those of you who are not familiar with Fiverr.Com it's a website where sellers can sell anything from graphic design skills, SEO gigs, or just write funny songs. Everything on the site sells for $5 making it very affordable to get small freelance jobs done.
For those of you not familiar with the concept of fake reviews, many freelance sites as well as individuals on sites like Craigslist, as well as those who own their own websites offer fake reviews to boost the credibility of various products and books.
Fake reviews are nothing new, they have been going on for years. A few years back the FCC revised it's guidelines for disclosures required for bloggers or those on social media reviewing or advertising a product or service. If a company gives away a free product or pays for a review, the blogger or writer on a blog or social media must disclose the relationship as well as what was provided in a fairly detailed matter which is clearly visible and easy to see on the blog or review.
An example of this would be if I was given a free phone charger by a company selling phone chargers and I was to leave a Amazon review for their product I would be required in the review to state that I was given a free product for the review. This notifies consumers thinking about buying that product that my review may be slightly biased.
The Importance Of Reviews On Social Media And Sales Sites
Reviews are incredibly important for products, businesses, and services. Reviews are important to businesses, restaurants, and products for a number of reasons. Firstly, they give a customer confidence in buying a product because they can read someone else's experience who had bought and used that product. Reviews are even more important on sites like Amazon.Com as they play a role in how your product ranks in searches.
For example, if I'm selling a phone charger and I have 0 reviews, my product won't rank as well or be shown as much when buyers search for phone chargers. On the slip side a seller who has a combination of a lot of reviews and a lot of those reviews being positive, their product will rank higher and be shown more in Amazon searches as Amazon is trying to provide a good buying experience to shoppers and will be more likely to do so by showing products which many other buyers have been happy with.
If anyone can just be paid to leave reviews it takes away the credibility of reviews. I may buy a phone charger which has many 5 star reviews, however if those reviews are purchased the product may suck and I may have inadvertantly bought an inferior product and even paid more money for that inferior product simply because the seller of that product paid $5 to buy some positive reviews
It's Important To Note Amazon Is NOT Suing Fiverr.Com
It's important to note that Amazon.Com Inc is NOT suing the website Fiverr, it's suing some of it's users. This brings up the interesting question of should Fiverr have done more to stop fake reviews from being sold?
If you want to see the list of the Fiverr Aliases listed in the lawsuit click the link below...
List Of Fiverr Sellers Named In Amazon's Lawsuit - Will You Be Sued? Check The List
It's important to note that selling fake reviews is against Fiverr's terms of service of (TOS). That said the Fiverr forums are full of Fiverr sellers complaining that many of the top rated sellers on Fiverr are those who break the rules, cheat the system, sell fake reviews which are in high demand, and make a lot of money.
Many of these sellers in the Fiverr forum complain they've reported sellers violating Fiverr's TOS and reported sellers selling fake reviews but that nothing is done about it. In fairness to Fiverr eBay has tons of counterfeit merchandise being sold as well as items which violate US sanctions but they slip through and are able to be listed. Large websites like Fiverr and Amazon cannot possibly police the hundreds of thousands of sellers they have and even more reviews on their site.
That said Fiverr does have a pretty sophisticated gig screening system. For example, if I'm selling a gig where I do something Youtube related, I can only use the term Youtube about 3 times in my gig description or they will block my gig from being created and posted. I'm assuming this is to prevent keyword stuffing. With technology like that one would assume they could fairly easily block reviews which contain words like Amazon in combination with the word review. You couldn't completely block the word Amazon as there's nothing wrong with a seller selling a gig such as "I will proof read your Amazon kindle book." Something like that would be completely acceptable, however when the word "review" is also included in that gig it's pretty clear what the gig is going to be about.
For all I know Fiverr could be taking down tons of review gigs and suspending users, however there's not much to stop a seller from creating another "stealth account" and continuing their behavior.
This Isn't The First Crackdown
A few months ago the New York state's attourney setup a fake yoghurt shop in sting to catch fake reviwers, reviwers were fined as much as a coupe hundred thousand dollars a piece. Probably much more than they ever made selling fake reviews.
Yelp has also gone after fake review sellers themselves.
What makes this different however, is in the past the only people who ever really got cracked down on were those who actually setup websites and businesses selling fake reviews. They were the most visible and easy to go after. Most people assumed Fiverr sellers were safe as there was a third party involved and most were smaller time than a site setup solely to sell reviews.
Many assumed that it was only a matter of time until companies either started suing Fiverr, comming after Fiverr sellers, or that Fiverr themselves started heavily policing these gigs. That time seems to have come as Amazon is suing over 1,000, I believe the actual number currently is about 1,114 "John Doe's" as Amazon does not yet know their names. It's a pretty sure bet however that Amazon will supoena records and get the IP addresses and identities of Fiverr sellers and in turn sue them individually.
Who's Going Down And What Can You Expect If You Sold Fake Reviews?
The funny thing about this whole crackdown, is that most likely the largest and most tech saavy sellers will probably escape unharmed, while the smaller less tech saavy review sellers will probably be the ones taken down. Why you ask?
Well most large sellers have probably have a few Fiverr accounts shutdown for this behavior. They most likely just create a new profile, something many call a "stealth profile" using proxies or VPN's to change their IP address and essentially creating a fake identity and getting either a Fiverr card or setting up a Paypal account under a different name to receive their payments. These large tech saavy sellers are for all intents and purposes anonymous and won't be found.
The sellers who will be found are the less tech saavy, small time review sellers who have maybe sold a handful to a dozen of gigs and are using their own origionial Fiverr profiles, with their own names and identities, and with their home or work IP addresses.
So what can you do if you sold fake reviews? Really there's not much you can do but sit back and wait. If you were caught in this sting or crackdown, the damage is already done, you're pretty much just going to have to wait this out and see if your Fiverr account is shutdown or to receive some court documents either in your mailbox or e-mail from Amazon.
Many Fiverr sellers are from outside of the USA in countries like Pakistan and the Phillipines. I doubt these sellers will face any lawsuits or backlash, however sellers based in the USA and Canada should be worried.
In the meantime it would probably be wise for all Fiverr sellers who have fake review gigs up to pull them down immediately. As you can see, even at the time of this article being written 10/18/2015 at about 12:45 Central time, that Fiverr still has tons of fake reviews up not only for Amazon but Google, Yelp, and many other sites and services. Take a look at the screenshots below to see what I mean.
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| Fake Amazon Reviews Being Sold On Fiverr.Com |
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| More Fake Amazon Reviews Being Sold On Fiverr.Com |
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| Fiverr Selle With 141 Positive Review For Fake Amazon Reviews |
The damage is done, if you've been caught you've already been caught, but it would be wise to pull down any fake review gigs you have as it's not only unethical, but also illegal, and can result in huge fines from the FCC, as well as huge lawsuits from sites like Amazon, Yelp, and Google.
Do you have a comment on the sale of fake reviews? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think...
What amazes me about this situation is that fiverr allowed these gigs to be posted and now they're trying to act like they are against these gigs. Reviews were the top selling item. If you would have gone to the homepage like a week ago that's the first thing that popped up. My question is, what is considered a fake review. If people are being sued because they actually reviewed an item I don't get it. But if they are being sued for scamming that's another case entirely. How are scammers being separated from people who received products to honrstly review? And how are sellers being investigated? Are their pages being searched, are investigators viewing their amazon profiles and reviews to see whether or not they even mentioned getting the product for review? This situation raises a lot questions. I spoke to Amazon months ago and they said that suspicious accounts are flagged. I also sent an email questioning fiverr about this situation. If I remember to, I'll come back and update you on what both parties are saying.
ReplyDeleteIt's not illegal to pay someone to do a review or to supply a product free of charge to be reviewd, however if that's the case the reviewer is obligated by FCC rules/law to make a disclosure that it was a paid review. For example if someone does a Youtube review of a product they got for free they are required to state before the review and in the description they were provided this product free of charge by such and such company to review.
DeleteI agree with what you said about Fiverr can't totally deny they knew this was going on. Technically it is against Fiverr terms of service to sell reviews and in fairness it is impossible to police the hundreds of thousands of gigs up there. Supposedly Fiverr does remove these and remove the users when they catch the listings or when they are brought to their attention. I do however agree that it would probably be pretty easy to flag the words "amazon" and "review" when together in a gig listing and prohibit it from being posted. Fiverr actually blocks me from posting gigs when I use a word like youtube too much so you would think they could filter and block review gigs as well and drastically cut down on this.
I just went on Fiverr about 5 minutes ago and you can still find dozens if not hundreds of gigs for reviews still posted. If you search any of the names from the list of those Fiverr users being sued they have all been removed from Fiverr, the gigs currently up are not listed in the lawsuit so that shows Fiverr is removing these gigs and profiles. If you want to see the names listed in the lawsuit they are posted in the link below...
http://rulesforrebels.blogspot.com/2015/10/are-you-on-list-heres-list-of-fiverr.html?showComment=1445197160207#c4216622876049439892
Here is the list of Fiverr Sellers who are named in Amazons Lawsuit...
ReplyDeletehttp://rulesforrebels.blogspot.com/2015/10/are-you-on-list-heres-list-of-fiverr.html
I just read the lawsuit. Amazon is filing the lawsuit against reviewers not necessarily for posting fake reviews but for being paid or receiving free items to review. According to the statement in the lawsuit its against the terms and conditions regardless of stating if you were paid or not. So basically what happens next is every reviewer on fiverr who has ever put a review on Amazon gets served a lawsuit as well and must show the information for the products that they reviewed through their gigs on fiverr. Reviewers will have to pay court costs, damages and pay back the money that they actually received from their fiverr gigs and orders. It does say that some reviewers have indeed posted fake reviews but the point is that the reviews are not against fiverr's rules but they are against Amazon's terms and conditions.
DeleteSo basically fiverr is taking down the gigs as well as some of the profiles involved, not all of the profiles. The lawsuit claims that reviewers know that paid reviews or receiving items to review on Amazon is against the terms and conditions of Amazon. Such is not true. Many reviewers thought that by getting a product you can still review it as long as you say you received and are honest. Such is not the case.
Long story short if you reviewed a product for someone on Amazon and have a fiverr account you're going to get taken down.
Thanks for that clarification, I hadn't dug that deep or read that close for all the specifics. Leaving a sponsored review is not against the law according to the FTC but is against Amazon TOS.
DeleteThey need to go after the buyers of these gigs too. Fiverr isn't the only site offering these gigs. The buyers are just as unethical as the Fiverr sellers.
DeleteVery true, if you read on Forums everyone is talking about how this isn't going to stop fake review, this is just a hiccup and everyone is moving over to other gigs sites which are a bit less high profile than Fiverr and continuing to do what they do there. As someone in a forum said the money is too good to walk away. I think we'll have to see how hard Amazon goes after these sellers and if the FTC gets involved as that's what people should be more afraid of than Amazon, last "sting" that was done even individuals not businesses got fined like over 330k.
DeleteI think Amazon will try to go at these guys hard as a deterrent because heck still on Fiverr there's dozens of Amazon review gigs even after this has been in the news.
As for going after buyers of the gigs, I kind of agree with you. Sellers are in the wrong but there wouldn't be a market without the buyers. Also, even though the sellers are the ones actually logging into Amazon and posting these it's at the buyers direction.
This story kind of died down a bit but I'll be curious to see what happens.
So what happens to the people who did honest reviews, and none of the 5 star or verified purchase scams? It doesn't seem right that they be lumped in with the others.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what your asking? This only affects purchased reviews from Fiverr. Sites are very saavy not they can tell if you came to Amazon from a link that was sent to you on Fiverr which is why smart sellers have the buyers tell them the product name and they find it themselves through a search not froma link or at the very least people have buyers send them a link in a txt file.
DeleteThat's besides the point though. This doesn't affect honest reviews and it doesn't affect promo reviews which have a "disclosure" it affects reviews which outright were purchased for $5 without the reviewer ever trying the product.
They are not taking down all non verified reviews.