Amazon’s fight against data-scraping bots is hiding reviews from real users

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.