Fakespot claimed to detect bad sellers and fake reviews on Amazon using sophisticated computer programs.
Apple; Illustration by Stephen Shankland/CNET
Amazon said Friday that it complained to Apple about Fakespot, an app it believes inaccurately detected bad sellers and fake reviews on its store. And now, Apple appears to have removed the app from its App Store.
In a statement, Amazon said Fakespot “provides customers with misleading information about our sellers and their products, harms our sellers’ businesses, and creates potential security risks,” when it grades products and sellers on a scale separate from Amazon’s own reviews system. Apple and Fakespot didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
On its website, Fakespot calls itself “a data analytics company” that uses computer programs to identify whether reviews and the reviewers leaving them are legitimate. Among them, it looks at the quality of the reviewer’s writing, the profile of the reviewer and other reviewer data for a given product. “We use artificial intelligence that has been trained to pick up on patterns,” the company says in explaining its service. “The more data that flows into the system, the better the system gets at the detecting fakes.”
Amazon reviewed products Fakespot rated as untrustworthy and found it was incorrect 80% of the time. Apple’s review guidelines prohibit apps that spread “false information,” as well as apps that access another company’s service without permission.
“We appreciate Apple’s review of this app against its Appstore guidelines,” Amazon said.
Amazon’s move against Fakespot comes as the e-commerce company increasingly wrestles with companies who solicit reviews on its platform. Amazon prohibits “incentivized” write-ups, where companies give refunds or free products in exchange for reviews.
In June, it said it removed 200 million suspected fake reviews before they could be posted to pages listed by one of 1.9 million third-party sellers on its platform. And, it added, it uses computer programs to look for suspicious behavior like clusters of new customer accounts that review the same products. But event then, fake review groups have popped up on other social networks, like Facebook, further encouraging the behavior.
The fake reviews can help brands game Amazon’s system, where positive reviews help a product climb rankings to be listed as top brands.
“We have seen an increasing trend of bad actors attempting to solicit fake reviews outside Amazon, particularly via social media services,” Amazon’s blog post last month read. “Some use social media services on their own; in other cases, they hire a third-party service provider to perpetrate this activity on their behalf.”
