Amazon convinced Apple to remove Fakespot notice detector from the app store



[ad_1]

Apple App Store Icon

Fakespot touted the ability to spot bad sellers and fake reviews on Amazon, using sophisticated computer programs.

Apple; illustration by Stephen Shankland / CNET

Apple removed the Fakespot review app from its App Store on Friday, after receiving a complaint from Amazon that Fakespot inaccurately detects bad sellers and false writings on his store.

The move ended a month of back-and-forth between Apple, Amazon and Fakespot over the app, Fakespot CEO Saoud Khalifah said in an interview. Amazon said in a statement Friday that Fakespot “provides customers with misleading information about our sellers and their products, harms our sellers’ businesses” when it ranks products and sellers on a scale separate from its own rating system. ‘Amazon. Amazon also said it was unable to verify what Fakespot is “doing or not doing, today or in the future, which is why this is a security risk” .

Khalifah accused Amazon of trying to cover up fraud occurring on its platform, which he said his app is designed to highlight.

“It’s a consumer’s right to know when you read a fake review, if you get a counterfeit, if you get a fraudulent product that is going to harm you,” he said. “This system is broken.”

The Fakespot iPhone app has been installed around 150,000 times since its release a few years ago. The company, which has so far raised more than $ 5 million in funding, does not currently make any money from its services.

Apple said it was “an intellectual property rights dispute initiated by Amazon on June 8,” and has tried to work with the two companies to resolve the issue. Apple said it contacted Fakespot again on June 29 before removing the app.

Amazon’s complaints about Fakespot come as the ecommerce company increasingly wrestles with businesses and groups seeking reviews on its platform. Amazon bans “incentive” items, in which companies offer refunds or free products in exchange for reviews.

In June, around the time Amazon filed its initial complaint against Fakespot with Apple, Amazon posted a blog post about fake reviews on its site. The company said it removed 200 million suspected bogus reviews before they could be posted on pages listed by any of the 1.9 million third-party sellers on its platform. The company uses computer programs to look for suspicious behavior, such as groups of new customer accounts that review the same products. However, fake groups of critics have appeared on social media, like facebook, further encouraging behavior.

Fake reviews can help brands play with Amazon’s system, which uses positive reviews to promote products in its rankings.

“We have seen a growing trend of bad actors attempting to solicit fake reviews outside of Amazon, particularly through social media services,” an Amazon blog post said last month. “Some people use social media services themselves; in other cases, they hire a third-party service provider to carry out this activity on their behalf. “

Fakespot says it is a “data analysis company” that uses computer programs to determine if reviews and reviews that leave them are legitimate. The app assesses the quality of the reviewer’s writing, reviewer profile, and other reviewer data for a given product.

“We use artificial intelligence that has been trained to detect patterns,” the company explains in an explanation of its service. “The more data that flows into the system, the better the system detects counterfeits.”

Amazon said it looked at products that Fakespot found to be unreliable and found them to be incorrect 80 percent of the time. Apple’s review guidelines prohibit apps that disseminate “false information,” as well as apps that access another company’s service without permission.

Fakespot’s Khalifah has expressed frustration that Apple has pulled its app, while allowing Amazon’s app, with the fake reviews found by its company, to stay put. “It’s hypocrisy,” he said.

[ad_2]

Source link