LONDON (AP) — Amazon has pledged to beef up fight against fake reviews, Britain's competition regulator said Friday after an investigation into whether big online platforms are doing enough to crack down on phony online ratings for products and services.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it secured the “undertakings” from Amazon, after getting a similar agreement earlier this year from Google to clamp down on rogue reviews plaguing the internet.
The company promised to strengthen its existing systems for fighting fake reviews. It will also tackle catalog abuse, which involves sellers boosting star ratings for a product by hijacking good reviews from a completely different one.
As an example, a shopper might come across a pair of headphones with a five-star rating. But, after looking closer, most of the reviews are for a mobile phone charger, the watchdog said.
As part of its commitments, Amazon has agreed to sanction anyone caught using these tactics. Businesses could be banned from selling on the Amazon website and users posting fake reviews could be banned from posting them, the CMA said.
The watchdog's chief executive, Sarah Cardell, said that so many people shop on Amazon and “star ratings and reviews have a huge impact on their choices.”
Amazon's pledges “mean people can make decisions with greater confidence – knowing that those who seek to pull the wool over their eyes will be swiftly dealt with.”
The pledges apply to Amazon's U.K. website. The company said in a statement that it has zero tolerance for fake reviews and that the measures build on Amazon's existing efforts to tackle them.
“We invest significant resources to proactively stop fake reviews ever appearing on our store, including on expert human investigators and machine learning models that analyse thousands of data points to detect risk," the company said.
The CMA opened its investigations into Amazon and Google in 2021 to examine whether the two companies broke U.K. consumer law by failing to protect shoppers. It began looking into phony reviews on some big websites amid the boom in online shopping fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.
FILE - The Amazon logo is displayed, Sept. 6, 2012, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks of credit-card companies are tumbling on Monday after President Donald Trump threatened moves that could eat into their profits. The rest of Wall Street, meanwhile, was showing only modest signals of concern after tensions ramped to a much higher degree between the White House and the Federal Reserve.
The S&P 500 edged down by 0.1% from its all-time high as U.S. stocks drifted through mixed morning trading, while prices for gold and other investments that tend to do well when investors are nervous rose. The value of the U.S. dollar also dipped against the euro and other currencies amid concerns that the Fed may have less independence in setting interest rates to keep inflation under control.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 179 points, or 0.4%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was nearly unchanged.
Some of the market's sharpest drops came from credit-card companies, as Synchrony Financial, Capital One Financial and American Express all fell between 4% and 7%. They sank after Trump said he wanted to put a 10% cap on credit-card interest rates for a year. Such a move could eat into profits for credit card companies.
But it was a separate move by Trump that was grabbing more attention on Wall Street. Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve's chair, Jerome Powell, said the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed the Fed and threatened a criminal indictment over his testimony about renovations underway at its headquarters.
With an unusual video statement released on Sunday, Powell said his testimony and the renovations are “pretexts” for the threat of criminal charges, which is really “a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”
The Fed has been locked in a feud with the White House about interest rates. Trump has been loudly calling for lower interest rates, which would make borrowing cheaper for U.S. households and companies and could give the economy a kickstart.
The Fed did cut its main interest rate three times last year and has indicated more cuts may be arriving this year. But it’s been moving slowly enough that Trump has nicknamed Powell “Too Late.”
In a brief interview with NBC News Sunday, President Donald Trump insisted he didn’t know about the investigation into Powell. When asked if the investigation is intended to pressure Powell on rates, Trump said, “No. I wouldn’t even think of doing it that way.”
Powell’s term as chair ends in May, and Trump administration officials have signaled that he could name a potential replacement this month. Trump has also sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook.
The Fed has traditionally operated separately from the rest of Washington, making its decisions on interest rates without having to bend to political whims. Such independence, the thinking goes, gives it freedom to make unpopular moves that are necessary for the economy’s long-term health.
Keeping interest rates high, for example, could slow the economy and frustrate politicians looking to please voters. But it could also be the medicine needed to get high inflation under control.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked up to 4.19% from 4.18% late Friday. A less independent Fed and higher inflation in the long term could also erode the value of the U.S. dollar, and it slipped 0.3% against the euro and 0.4% against the Swiss franc.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. Stocks jumped 1.4% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai for two of the world’s bigger gains following reports that Chinese leaders were preparing more help for the economy.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
James Lamb works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Specialist Anthony Matesic works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Daniel Kryger works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Dealers watch computer monitors near the screens showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks near the screens showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Dealers talk near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
