Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins

Gawker: Court Orders Yelp to Reveal Anonymous Reviewers' Identities


China

Recommended Posts

Court Orders Yelp to Reveal Anonymous Reviewers' Identities

 

In a case that might have First Amendment consequences and will certainly strike fear in the hearts of anonymous trolls, a Virginia appeals court upheld a contempt ruling against Yelp, demanding that it release the identities of seven reviewers whom a carpet cleaner intends to sue for defamation.

 

Joe Hadeed of Alexandria's Hadeed Carpet Cleaning is meticulous about responding to reviewers of his business on Yelp, but in mid-2012, he noticed several negative reviews whose writers didn't seem to show up on his customer rolls. Since that would mean they'd made up their accusations of "shoddy service," Hadeed sued them for making defamatory statements, according to Tuesday's court opinion.

 

Except, since he didn't know who to sue, he got a subpoena for Yelp to release info about the reviewers' identities. Yelp threw Hadeed shade, so he won a court order of contempt against the company.

 

Alexandria's state Court of Appeals said that order was legit. "While 'an internet user does not shed his free speech rights at the log-in screen,' the right to speak with anonymity is not absolute, Judge William Petty said for the majority," according to Courthouse News Service:

 

 

"Generally, a Yelp review is entitled to First Amendment protection because it is a person's opinion about a business that they patronized," Petty wrote. "But this general protection relies upon an underlying assumption of fact: that the reviewer was a customer of the specific company and he posted his review based on his personal experience with the business. If this underlying assumption of fact proves false... the review is based on a false statement of fact - that the reviewer is writing his review based on personal experience. And 'there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.'"

 

Click on the link for the full article

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Trying to envision the internet minus anonymity... Seems like potentially a much nicer place.

Nicer certainly. Much of that would be out of fear and intimidation but at least it would be nicer. Looking at headlines these days I'm of the opinion that the one thing we don't need, is less privacy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Looking at headlines these days I'm of the opinion that the one thing we don't need, is less privacy.

 

I'm fine with requiring a subpoena , but it would be easy for racists or other assholes to harm someone's business if a total shield exists as to identity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's been established a long time ago that the word "Internet" certainly doesn't grant people immunity from prosecution for crimes.

Now, whether "writing a bad review" is a crime, that's another matter.

One which the plaintiff will have to prove.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds reasonable to me,I've always wondered if competitors posted negatives and employees posted positive reviews there.

 

Both things happen.   You also get vindictive people who post variations of a negative review under mulltiple names in order to get back at companies as badly as they can.

 

It's still a very useful resource.

I think it's been established a long time ago that the word "Internet" certainly doesn't grant people immunity from prosecution for crimes.

Now, whether "writing a bad review" is a crime, that's another matter.

One which the plaintiff will have to prove.

 

Yeah, a bad review is opinion, protected by the First Amendment.   For defamation, you need to prove that the statement was published, factually false, injurious and unprivileged (at least under California law).    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds reasonable to me,I've always wondered if competitors posted negatives and employees posted positive reviews there.

 

 

Both things happen.   You also get vindictive people who post variations of a negative review under mulltiple names in order to get back at companies as badly as they can.

 

It's still a very useful resource.

 

 

Much more troubling are the reports that Yelp bullies small businesses into paying for paid ad services - starting at $300 a month - with threats of bad reviews or hiding good reviews.

 

PBS: Yelps Yelp’s Rocky Relationship with Small Business

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just thinking, this case might get a whole lot more entertaining, if there are no negative reviewers, and Yelp just made them up cause the guy didn't pay their fee.

But I assume that the odds of him getting evidence of that are REAL slim.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm fine with requiring a subpoena , but it would be easy for racists or other assholes to harm someone's business if a total shield exists as to identity.

I agree, some recourse should exist to stop people from using the Internet to wrongly harm people and businesses. The revenge porn issue that was making headlines not too long ago showed that laws and protections are lacking in certain areas. Also, you'd have to be naive to think that the Internet is truly anonymous today. If the right groups want to find out who you are, they can. The government easily can and, as we've recently learned, monitor a lot more than previously thought. Groups like the hackers calling themselves Anonymous seem to be able to dig up just about anything. Indiviuluals sharing music were also tracked down and sued by the music industry.

In terms of Yelp however how do they know people signing up have done so with real information? Could take a lot of subpoenas before they are able to find the individuals behind those reviews.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many of you all know what I do for a living.

Having good reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook, Yahoo are important in small local business. Nobody uses the yellow pages any more. It's much more likely that someone will turn to google when searching for a local business. Yelp is good because it is supposed to be a site that is user driven.

It is imperative that local businesses have strong ratings on those sites. That can make the difference between a sale and someone not even choosing your business.

It is also important to point out that people who feel like they have been wronged (correct or incorrect) will typically go through greater lengths to have their voices heard than those who recieve typically good service. Alas, there are also "trolls" who will give false reviews.

I am heavily involved in the online marketing aspect of my business. Anonymous reviews are absolutely something that should not be happening on any site you want to be serious about.

I can recall one time, I think it was on yahoo local, where we received a negative review. It was there telling the whole world about how we performed crappy work, charged exorbitant amounts of money and other generally bad things. I clicked on the user to find out all of their other reviews. They had one other review and it was for the business right across the street who they gave a five star rating with a glowing review. Pretty easy to tell that was a review coming from someone involved in the other business.

I contacted yahoo to have this review removed. Their response was that they couldn't because the review didn't violate their TOS. Bull****.

So yeah, I hope yelp has to reveal these "anonymous" reviews. Nothing good can come of them. Only reason you would like anonymous reviews is if you like being lied to about things you may or may not purchase.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...