A great many PC gamers buy a great many PC hardware items from Amazon. The prices are good, the selection is large, you can literally shop to your heart's content without moving a step from where you are parked, and the delivery, while ethically questionable, is fast and reliable.

What is not always so reliable about the experience, however, are the user reviews. In an update posted today, Amazon warned that while it strives to ensure that customer reviews "accurately reflect the customer's experience with a product," it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with fake reviews.

"In 2020, we stopped more than 200 million reviews suspected of being fake before they were seen by customers." In addition to stopping these reviews, we are taking action to shut down and stop review postings from accounts that are posting fake reviews, and to force the enforcement of sales accounts of vendors who are trying to artificially profit from this abuse."

While it sounds like a fairly successful campaign against abuse, thanks to these efforts, perpetrators are beginning to take fake reviews off the site, especially through social media, either directly or through third-party services. The situation is further complicated: Amazon says it is using "a number of technologies, including advanced machine learning," to combat abuse outside its platform, but it is much more difficult to effectively address it when it is happening elsewhere, and the number continues to grow.

"In the first three months of 2020, we reported over 300 groups to social media companies, and it took social media companies a median of 45 days to shut down those groups from using their services to commit fraud," he wrote. In the first three months of 2021, we reported more than 1,000 such groups, and it took social media services a median of five days to remove them."

Social media platforms have apparently been quicker to respond to complaints recently, but to address this problem "on a large scale," Amazon invested more in "proactive controls to detect and enforce fake reviews before we report the issue." It stated that it needs to do so. He also called for "concerted support" for consumer regulators to take legal action against fake review service providers and those who use them.

"We want social media companies whose services are being used to facilitate fake reviews to invest aggressively in combating fraud and fake reviews, partner with us to stop these bad actors, and ensure that consumers can shop with confidence," Amazon wrote .

"It takes constant innovation and partnerships across industries and law enforcement to fully protect consumers and our honest selling partners.

As a multi-billion dollar behemoth, it may be difficult to sympathize with Amazon's woes, but user review abuse is a long-standing and pervasive problem The most well-known example among PC gamers is perhaps Valve, whose "Histogram" chart, "Histogram" chart, "Histogram" chart, "Histogram" chart, and "Histogram" chart are all examples of user review abuse. Despite measures such as "histogram" charts, exclusion of "off-topic" reviews, and automatic prompts to update old reviews, it is still a problem: In March, Nier Automata asked to be updated to the same version sold in the Windows Store. It suffered a significant review bombardment at the hands of users, and if Amazon can come up with an effective strategy to substantially reduce user review abuse, it could prove beneficial in the long run for other platforms and storefronts (and everyone who uses them). It may even prove to be beneficial in the long run.