Facebook Portal reviews on Amazon appear to be padded with employee 5-star ratings

Facebook’s Portal video-conferencing device is life changing and you absolutely have to buy it. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at these five-star Amazon reviews left by people who just so happen to have the same names as Facebook employees. 

The Portal, along with its larger companion Portal+, was released in November amid a flurry of privacy scandals surrounding the Menlo Park-based social media company. With the Portal, CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced a particularly tough challenge: How to convince people to put a Facebook-owned camera in their homes when many already believe the company secretly spies on them via their phones? 

One way, perhaps, might be to have employees secretly leave a bunch of five-star reviews on Amazon. 

The strange coincidence of five-star Portal reviews bearing the names of Facebook employees was first pointed out on Jan. 17 by New York Times reporter Kevin Roose. He noticed that three five-star reviews were left by people who appeared to be Facebook employees. 

Notably, Facebook has denied this was directed in any way. Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s VP of augmented and virtual reality, stated that the company explicitly told employees not to leave product reviews. 

“[Neither] coordinated nor directed from the company,” he tweeted in response to Roose. “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.”

When reached for additional comment, a Facebook spokesperson directed us back to Bosworth’s tweet. 

And yet, of the 103 positive Portal reviews on Amazon, there sure are some notable examples. A quick scroll through Portal reviews — not even including reviews for the Portal+ — on Amazon found six examples of reviewers with the same name as current Facebook employees leaving five-star reviews for the device. It also looks like one ex-Facebook employee did the same thing. 

One such review, left on Dec. 20 by Rama Praveen Pyla, extols the Portal as “Worth the buy” and as having “Amazing video calls.”

A person with the same names lists his job on LinkedIn as Software Engineer at Facebook. 

And, yeah, there are more. Like this review from Javier Cubria, which just so happens to be the name of an event marketer at Facebook. 

Or how about this review from one Tim Chappell, which starts with “I have historically not been a big fan of Facebook,” and then ends with “I would recommend this product to anyone who has family or friends that they enjoy staying in contact with.”

To be clear, there are likely many Tim Chappells in the world. Like, for example, the one who claims on LinkedIn to be Facebook’s head of supply-chain and strategic sourcing. 

Or how about Oren Hafif, who finds Portal’s “camera tracking” to be “AMAZING.” Facebook just so happens to employ a security engineering manager by that same name. 

Then there’s Michael Mayer. Is he the same Mr. Mayer who works as a supervisor at Facebook? 

And, perhaps because you never really leave the Facebook family, there’s even a gushing five-star Portal reviewer that shares a name with an ex-employee. 

Could these all be coincidences? Sure. Maybe. But, and let’s be real here, they’re probably not. 

We reached out to Amazon in an effort to determine if employees reviewing their own company’s products represents any sort of violation of Amazon’s terms. We received no response as of press time, but did find this handy little guideline in Amazon Seller Central [emphasis added]:

“[You] cannot offer compensation for a review, and you cannot review your own products or your competitor’s products.”

But hey, with the cultural DNA of “move fast and break things” it’d be no surprise if some silly little rules attempting to prevent deceptive marketing practices failed to get in Facebook’s way.