Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Amazon confirms it’s flagging actual users as bots amidst the retailer’s fight against AI crawlers scraping the web for reviews.
- A spokesperson for the company says it has identified incidents in which users were unable to access reviews and has since restored access.
- This trend could become common among online retailers in the near future as they find ways to combat widespread data scraping.
While buying something online, we instinctively look at the reviews section to see what other buyers had to say. Some products may have hundreds of reviews that could play a big part in your decision-making. However, retailers also have to contend with AI crawlers that are scraping online data. Amazon has now confirmed that it’s limiting the visibility of product reviews due to concerns about bot activity, though this move is also affecting actual human customers.
For some Amazon shoppers, this concern isn’t new. A Reddit thread dating back to November last year, backed by a seller complaint on Amazon’s support page in February, mentions being unable to view more than a handful of reviews. Another affected individual had to submit a request and was asked to wait five business days to view more reviews of a product.
An Amazon spokesperson has since confirmed these developments to Fast Company. “We understand there may have been isolated instances where customers were unable to access reviews, and we’ve worked to ensure access,” the spokesperson said. However, no comment was provided on Amazon’s verification process or on how long the retailer has been flagging actual customers as bots.
According to a frequent Amazon customer who spoke to Fast Company, a chat support agent told them they were in violation of “Amazon’s Conditions of Use regarding data gathering or extraction of community-generated content, such as Customer Reviews.” While this particular customer was able to access reviews within a few days, Amazon reportedly didn’t explain why their account was flagged.
While I haven’t been able to replicate this behavior on my own Amazon account, it’s clear that measures like these will become more common among online retailers in the near future. This is especially true given that AI companies will always have an incentive to harvest more data to train their AI models. With this in mind, online retailers will have no option but to restrict access to user reviews, even at the cost of user experience.
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