For instance Aukey has been caught by Amazon, but in my experience their products were pretty good, and they probably played the fake review game mainly due to everyone else playing it, and it became an arms race.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i...
(since the competitors are sort of forced to use fake reviews)
- they can really fix it (e.g. by kicking every fake review mandator) and drown competiting products far below in the search results, leaving "Amazon's choice" ones at the top.
With way fewer reviews it will be harder to argue the ranking results legitimacy.
- they don't fix it, and as you say, get an excuse to kick any random brand trying to stay afloat on their platform.
Either way Amazon wins.
It is a conspiracy theory. Some of them are just true.
And the first, promoted, comment/ratings is from a guy who received the product for free in exchange for a review.
https://www.amazon.fr/AmazonBasics-One-Port-Charger-Tablets-...
Unless your product is so revolutionary or cheap you're gonna need marketing.