I disagree. There seems to be so much low hanging fruit to at least reduce the problem but they haven't taken even the smallest steps. This is because they're prioritizing revenue, volume, and selection over fraud prevention.
I've seen this in other companies. It's like Amazon had a bad revenue addiction. They can't go cold-turkey and cut every suspect seller in the marketplace, because that would cause a large impact on their quarterly numbers. But if this goes untreated, it will drive out good sellers and destroy consumer confidence.
You could not be more right. At least from my personal experience. I mean, try and buy a phone case on Amazon right now. Literally every single listing on their top two pages of results when filtered by "best rated" is stuffed with fake / paid reviews. Its literally impossible to tell if you're going to be getting a quality product. And if companies like Fakespot or whatever can tell if Amazon reviews are fake, Amazon themselves could easily do as as well, or even just buy one of the review validating services and integrate the score directly into their listings. None of this is that hard, and especially not for Amazon with their scale and resources, so literally the only reason for them not to do this is that it is more profitable not to. The average consumer may have a relatively high degree of trust in Amazon, but anyone who thinks even remotely critically about their purchasing decisions is going to quickly realize Amazon is mired in fake reviews and duplicity.
Not true, they banned incentivized reviews. That's a big step towards getting more accurate reviews.
I'm not sure how they're enforcing the ban because I still see tons of reviews that are openly declaring that they were incentivized with the boiler plate "I received this item at a discount in exchange for my honest review." tag at the end of their review.