Amazon Shields Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Against Trolls
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are no new to public scrutiny. The minute they got engaged, the couple is already receiving criticisms about their relationship, and it went on until they step down as senior members of the Royal Family.
Earlier this month, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex once again made headlines after they were featured in a bombshell biography called "Finding Freedom."
The biography still promises to give readers an honest and closer look at Meghan and Harry's royal life and the details that lead them to their controversial decision to step down as senior members of the Royal Family.
Even before its release last August 11, 2020, the biography written by royal correspondents Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand is expected to become a global best-seller.
Through their spokesperson, Prince Harry and Meghan said that they were never interviewed for the said book.
A few days after its official release, the E-commerce giant catering to the official selling of the bombshell biography made a drastic move to shield Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from hate comments.
Amazon Banned Reviews
According to the Daily Mail, Amazon just recently restricted putting up reviews on "Finding Freedom" after detecting some unusual activity on the site.
It was done after fan accounts of the couple called "Sussex Squad" encourage their fellow fanatics to leave positive reviews on the Amazon page of the book. They are also encouraging supporters to vote on existing posts about the biography to boost the rating.
The "Sussex Squad" is said to be campaigning to drop a five-star review as they believe the rival camp, a.k.a the Sussex Haters, also flocked in Amazon to leave bad reviews.
One Twitter user revealed: "There is an organized effort to leave bad reviews for Finding Freedom on Amazon and to mark hateful reviews as "helpful" so they appear first."
"#SussexSquad, the trolls are upvoting all the negative reviews on Amazon by rating them as helpful (some are rated helpful by at least 400 people). If you have time, please go rate the positive reviews. Please share, thanks," another one added.
Because of this, Amazon now restricted the reviews to verified purchases of the book.
"Amazon has noticed unusual reviewing activity on this product. Due to this activity, we have limited this product to verified purchase reviews," a note on the official selling site reads.
Twitter users instantly noticed the changes as some of their reviews are being rejected even if they are legit buyers of the book.
"My review of Finding Freedom was rejected. Seriously? It was civilized," a Twitter user revealed.
As of writing, "Finding Freedom" has four stars out of 5 ratings on Amazon with almost 1,200 reviews from readers. The book also topped both best-seller charts in the Amazon United States and the United Kingdom.
According to Nielsen Book, the Sussexes biography already sold 31,000 copies in the UK during the first five days of release.
