Amazon.com has filed suit against hundreds of people it claims are publishing "false, misleading and inauthentic" reviews on its website.
The online retailer is pursuing legal action in a Seattle court against 1,114 unnamed defendants—whose real names are still unknown to the company—for creating false reviews for some products for sale. The action appears to be an extension of what the retailer did in April, when Amazon went after a group of websites who sold fake reviews.
"While we cannot comment on active litigation, we can clarify that this lawsuit is not against Fiverr, it is against individuals who are providing these reviews and undermining customer trust on Amazon," Amazon told CNBC in a statement.
"The vast majority of reviews on Amazon are authentic, helping millions of customers make informed buying decisions. And our goal is to make reviews as useful as possible for customers. We continue to use a number of mechanisms to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate our guidelines," the online retailer said. "We terminate accounts that abuse the system and we take legal action. We are currently taking legal action against a number of individuals including many that are referred to in the complaint filed Friday."
The news was initially reported by the U.K. Telegraph on Sunday.