Great story from the SEM Post about fake reviews and something we have seen a lot of on MLS over the years.
A divorcing couple in the USA has been ordered to pay a whooping $350,000 costs after what was proven to be false reviews about the wifes lawyer.
The reviews were proven in court to be defamatory, unfair and libellous, leaving the court to award in the lawyers favour.
The couple had left reviews on various sites, and their defence argued "reviews constituted statements of opinion and thus were protected by the First Amendment and not actionable as defamation." The court disagreed.
The full story can be seen on The SEM Post
Now this was American law, so it would be interesting to see how a UK court would have handled it, but I would suspect it would be a similar outcome.
We have seen first hand countless times on our UK and US directories fake reviews, including malicious ones such as competitor bashing by a rival business. But our ethos is professional human moderation, reinforced with spam filtering. If we are in doubt, then we investigate.
Unfortunately this approach isn't adopted by the majority of the review site industry, as anyone who has negative facebook reviews can testify to! The likes of Yelp try and address fake and spam reviews, but the question of inappropriate comments or questionable content seems to plague even the biggest review sites.
Managing reviews for Trade Associations and Trading Standards can be interesting as this can be actually be a draw for negativity. So policing reviews and keeping as fair and impartial as possible is a trick job. But with the correct process and procedures in place that protect both reviewers and reviewed, it can be done, should be done, and I wish more sites would.
Have you ever suffered from unjust or unfair reviews? Do you think the opposite and not enough negativity is published? Are you suspicious of online reviews?
