I've said before that we seem to have used a cheat code to get the Internet while skipping Socialism, and here's another example [Facebook link used to defeat paywall] of that kind of problem it causes. I have no sympathy for Amazon, but what they're trying to do with their algorithm here makes sense and it sucks that people try to take advantage of it (and moreso that there are warehouses full of poor people in Bangladesh who don't have better options than resorting to this).

Every day, dozens of young men crowd into tiny rooms with 30 computers each in northern Bangladesh. Their mission: Trick Amazon.com

They open Amazon.com and repeatedly type in search terms, each time clicking on the links of products they were paid to boost, according to people familiar with the practice. Amazon's algorithms begin recognizing that these products are popular, ranking them higher in the search results. The higher the ranking, the better chance of sales.

The scams are used to try to outsmart Amazon's automated system that ranks some half-billion products in search results, according to interviews with consultants and businesses engaged in these practices, as well as sellers who say they have been approached by such businesses. It's one of an ever-rotating wheel of tricks used to game Amazon's algorithms.