Amazon takes down 1 million products claiming to cure Coronavirus

The Novel Coronavirus outbreak has taken the world by storm and as countries scramble to fight the virus, the tech giants are fighting a totally different battle. Ever since the outbreak became global, tech companies are fighting to take down fake news and misinformation about the novel Coronavirus.

Just a couple of days back, Facebook took steps to remove products that were claiming to cure or protect people from Coronavirus. Now, Amazon has announced that the tech giant took down 1 million products claiming to cure Coronavirus. The company also removed thousands of products for price gouging and has warned merchants not to sell masks at a premium. The online retailer said, “There is no place for price gouging on Amazon.”

Amazon didn’t specify the exact threshold after which the company will consider the products as unfairly priced. Amazon has confirmed that they will be using a mix of automated and manual review of listings to identify false claims and price spikes. Scientists have also noted that there is no cure for the novel coronavirus at the moment. Hence, any ad you might see online promising a cure is fake and shouldn’t be entertained.

The novel Coronavirus has killed over 2,797 people globally and has infected over 83,000 people. While patients have started recovering from the virus, countries are still at alert and companies are taking appropriate steps to protect their employees. Recently, the virus outbreak forced GDC to postpone the conference indefinitely. Microsoft, on the other hand, hasn’t decided if the company plans to cancel or postpone its Build 2020 developer conference as the US reported the first death in the Seattle area last night.

Source Reuters; Via CNet