Facebook’s Portal device.
James Martin/CNET
Facebook’s Portal has a pretty high rating on Amazon, with just over 4 stars. But some Facebook employees may not have gotten the memo that they’re not allowed to help boost that rating.
New York Times columnist Kevin Roose tweeted Wednesday that several 5-star reviews for Portal, a video chat device, were posted by people with the same name as Facebook employees.
Speaking of coordinated inauthentic behavior, what are the odds that all these 5-star Facebook Portal reviewers on Amazon just happen to have the same names as Facebook employees? pic.twitter.com/bF7U8Fj5kN
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) January 17, 2019
“Reviewing your employer’s products is definitely against Amazon’s rules. It’s also not exactly an indicator of confidence in how well they’re selling organically!” Roose added in a follow-up tweet.
Andrew Bosworth, vice president of AR/VR at Facebook, responded to the tweet, saying the company didn’t ask employees to leave the reviews.
“Neither coordinated nor directed from the company,” he wrote. “From an internal post at the launch: ‘We, unequivocally, DO NOT want Facebook employees to engage in leaving reviews for the products that we sell to Amazon.’ We will ask them to take down.”
neither coordinated nor directed from the company. From an internal post at the launch: “We, unequivocally, DO NOT want Facebook employees to engage in leaving reviews for the products that we sell to Amazon.” We will ask them to take down.
— Boz (@boztank) January 17, 2019
A Facebook representative confirmed that the company has asked employees to remove their reviews.
Last year, Facebook unveiled the Portal and Portal Plus amid privacy concerns following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from around 87 million Facebook users was improperly shared with the political consultancy. This has led to lingering privacy questions, which may be a drawback for some potential customers.
Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook’s data mining scandal.
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