Britain’s competition watchdog said that Facebook and eBay pledged to crack down on the trade in fake reviews, removing hundreds of accounts, pages and groups involved in the illicit business after the regulator warned them.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the two U.S. tech companies agreed to step up efforts to detect, investigate and respond to fake and misleading reviews after it ordered them last year to address the problem.
According to the CMA, neither company was purposefully allowing such reviews on their platforms, but believed they could do better in preventing such activity. Facebook has since agreed to introduce more robust systems to detect and remove fraudulent content, while eBay has improved its existing filters to better identify and block listings for the sale or trade of online reviews.
A statement from Facebook says that “While we have invested heavily to prevent this kind of activity across our services, we know there is more work to do.” eBay was more upfront in its response: “We maintain zero tolerance for fake or misleading reviews and will continue to take action against any seller that breaches our user polices. We welcome today’s CMA report, as well as their acknowledgement of our ongoing enforcement work on this issue.”
