In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday, the world’s popular e-commerce company, Amazon was alleged to have deceived its users through paid advertising.
More than a quarter of Amazon’s search results are allegedly sponsored by third parties and not categorized according to suitability to the average user.
The complaint was filed by a coalition of United States (US) labor unions, the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC).
According to them more than 130,000 search results were found to have violated the guidelines set by the FTC for the recognition of online ads.
But an Amazon spokesperson instead denied the allegations, labeling the SOC complaint as ‘wrong’ and ‘referring to a misrepresentation of FTC guidelines’.
Clearly, Amazon is designed with the objective of making it easier for its users to find the right and best product according to their needs.
While sponsored advertising is one of the ways to find users with products that have the potential to attract their attention.
As of this writing, there has been no comment from the FTC.
