Beyond the Cart: Safeguarding the E-commerce Ecosystem

Today e-commerce platforms face significant Trust and Safety (T&S) challenges that directly impact consumers and sellers on the platform. Key issues include fake listings, fake accounts, fake reviews, inadequate ad moderation, illicit product sales, account takeovers, platform leakage, return fraud, and payment/refund fraud. The rise of generative AI has further amplified these threats, making them more sophisticated and harder to detect.

In this Viewpoint, we examine the various T&S challenges impacting e-commerce platforms and examine the investments they are making in response to these challenges. Additionally, it introduces our framework, designed to help platforms effectively address these issues.