According to NBC Los Angeles, however, Amazon users shouldn’t base their decision of whether to buy a particular product or not solely on its reviews. University of Southern California social media professor Karen North said that the sellers are tricking Amazon’s algorithm. “As sellers on Amazon, people know there are ways to game the system, where it looks like you have more positive ratings than you do,” she said.

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Prof. North also gave an example of one of their schemes: sellers post a product to sell, collect reviews, then swipe out the product for a new one while keeping the old reviews in place.

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North said sellers can do this over and over, duping buyers into thinking a product has more or better reviews than it really does. North says Amazon needs to crack down.

“They need to start thinking about whether or not people are figuring out how to game their system. And they need to figure out how to go in and clean that up,” she said.

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In a statement to the I-Team, Amazon admitted these things do happen: “These bad actors show a flagrant disregard for our community, and our policies … we work with sellers and law enforcement to hold them accountable by withholding funds and pursuing civil and criminal penalties.”

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