Businesses May No Longer Sue Customers Over Negative Reviews (thenextweb.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: A few months I wrote about the Consumer Review Fairness Act. In a nutshell, this offers legal protections to consumers who leave negative reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. You can now call out the restaurant who gave you food poisoning, or a bed-bug infested hotel without the risk of being dragged into a civil court. The long-overdue bill explicitly bans non-disparagement clauses in contracts between businesses and patrons. Over the years, there's been a rash of people getting sued after speaking their mind online. Today, President Obama signed off on the Consumer Review Fairness Act. It's now law. As great as this is for consumers, it's even better for the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp, whose business model relies on people being able to speak their minds.
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Shouldn't Freedom of speech have a higher priority than a vague "we have the right to make money"?
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This is literally the exact opposite of what's happening here. But don't let that go spoiling your little mantra...
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Aw jeez Donald, don't you have a business to bankrupt? Here's a clue, you can't have it both ways. You can't in one breath say
and than in the next breath say
Because action "A" is directly contradicting claim "B".
Which is it? (Score:2)
Shouldn't Freedom of speech have a higher priority than a vague "we have the right to make money"?
When can we appeal to freedom of speech, and when can we not?
If the business is Twitter or Facebook, they can ban users for whatever obscure and selectively enforced rules they want. We can't appeal to free speech in those cases because they're both private businesses.
But posting a negative review would seem to be free speech and should be protected over the wishes of the business involved.
So which is it?
Should government force businesses to protect free speech or not?
(Of note: We expect businesses to be ag
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It is the ROLE of government to NOT infringe upon the rights of others, and to protect the liberties of people.
The government should NOT be defining how much of a right belongs to one person/group over another person/group, regardless of who they are. We have libel/slander laws on the books for a reason, and courts to decided these things.
There are two things that could have been done here, without yet another useless law that will end up tied up in courts for years to come, and the result being bought and
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The first being, courts could simply say "these contracts are unenforceable"
Not they can't. It's up to courts to enforce the law. If the law doesn't say one way or the other and someone signed a contract, then it's legally binding. I assume you agree someone can sign away their freedom. Then everyone could add a clause that you will become their slave. Sure, you can't force anyone to sign it, but businesses can collude to create it as something that is standard. Nothing you can do.
Re:Which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you post a bad review of a hotel to Facebook and use lots of foul language, Facebook can ban you because it's their platform; the hotel can't because it's not their platform. Post a bad review on the hotel's webpage and they can delete it and ban you because that's their platform. Neither of those are changing.
What is changing is that if you post a bad review to Facebook, the restaurant is not allowed to point to a clause in the contract you signed when renting the room that says you wouldn't say anything bad about them as a reason to sue you. They can still sue you, of course, but they would have to do it on the basis that your statement was false, not just that it was bad and you promised not to say anything bad.
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sorry, I started off with a restaurant scenario and changed to a hotel scenario but missed an instance of "restaurant" in the text. Please pretend I said "the hotel is not allowed to point..." instead.
Re:Which is it? (Score:5, Funny)
You really should have used an automobile scenario - this is /.
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If you post how you got ripped off by the car dealer named "Honest Jim", you are in no position to complain about people executing their first amendment right of ridiculing you for buying from someone who calls himself that.
Or something like that.
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The First Amendment only prevents the government (originally Federal, now all levels) from controlling (most) speech. It has NO impact on arrangements between private parties. For example, the First Amendment doesn't prevent your employer from restricting your speech in the workplace (even if you work for a car dealership).
Re:Which is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the business is Twitter or Facebook, they can ban users for whatever obscure and selectively enforced rules they want. We can't appeal to free speech in those cases because they're both private businesses.
Correct. Twitter and Facebook have the right to regulate the content that passes through or is displayed by their network. If you find yourself banned from either (or both) you are not having your free speech impeded as you can still speak in other places - including public ones - so there is no free speech argument there.
But posting a negative review would seem to be free speech and should be protected over the wishes of the business involved.
Actually, this doesn't say that Yelp and others have to host the comment. If you post a bad Yelp review about ABCD company, and ABCD company sues Yelp instead of you, they could potentially pressure Yelp to drop the review.
This actually isn't a free speech issue, it is a consumer protection issue. It is supposed to allow customers to speak their minds without fear of retaliation. It doesn't mean that what the customer says has to be heard, though. The place where the review is posted can still be silenced in other ways.
So which is it?
Well, neither really. You can't appeal to "free speech" in either case.
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If I say on your property something you do not agree with, you are allowed to shut me up.
If I say not on your property something you do not agree with, you are not allowed to shut me up.
You are not required to support me in my attempt to execute the first amendment rights. You are not required to give me a platform. You are not required to support me. But you are also not allowed to keep me from choosing a platform not under your control or gain support from someone else.
Do you understand the difference?
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How long have you been in that country? You pinko commie, what's your problem with capitalism?
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I can only hope that Mein Fuhrer Trump will save us from the oppressive confines of justice and freedom!
Re:Does this invalidate such clauses in contracts? (Score:5, Informative)
According to the press coverage, yes, it explicitly invalidates such clauses. However, you should get legal advice from a lawyer, not from the internet.
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However, you should get legal advice from a lawyer, not from the internet.
You must be new. People get everything from the Internet now - dates, porn, news, fake news, etc...
Hell, people even try to get medical advice - on 4chan.
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However, you should get legal advice from a lawyer, not from the internet.
You must be new. People get everything from the Internet now - dates, porn, news, fake news, etc...
herpes, gout, butt hurt...
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Dates? Every time I try to meet a woman from the internet it turns out to be a man and/or an FBI agent...
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Dates? Every time I try to meet a woman from the internet it turns out to be a man and/or an FBI agent...
Well... If you're looking to date a man and/or FBI agent you're all set!
Maybe the Internet is trying to tell you something. :-)
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I would venture to guess that part of the "settlement" means it is a legally binding clause of the actual settlement, which is not an actual contract. In other words, he was compensated for his silence.
Re:Does this invalidate such clauses in contracts? (Score:4, Informative)
But he didn't ask about whether it affects terms of a settlement, he asked if it affects a contract.
And asking the wrong question and getting an answer not actually related to his situation is why he should get legal advice from a lawyer, not from the internet.
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When you have signed a settlement agreement and don't want to live up to it, it's not a simple matter.
And the internet cannot, ever, under any circumstances, be trusted to give useful legal advice. You, for instance, are a perfect example of why he should get legal advice from a lawyer, not from the internet.
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When you've already signed a settlement agreement, and want to violate it, it's not a trivial matter. That's why he should get legal advice from a lawyer, not the internet.
Oh please... (Score:5, Interesting)
. As great as this is for consumers, it's even better for the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp, whose business model relies on people being able to speak their minds.
Yelp is a glorified e-racketeer that collects extortion fees from small businesses the world over. Please spare me the "people being ale to speak their minds" BS.
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Please elucidate.
Re:Oh please... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/yelp-extortion/ [huffingtonpost.com]
http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged-extortion/ [nypost.com]
https://www.facebook.com/YelpExtortion/ [facebook.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046136/Is-Yelp-scared-bad-review-Company-defensive-filmmaker-nears-completion-documentary-exposing-website-s-extortion-small-businesses.html [dailymail.co.uk]
And 126,000 other results on Google from a search for "Yelp extortion." Took all of 0.50 seconds.
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And 126,000 other results on Google from a search for "Yelp extortion." Took all of 0.50 seconds.
You should have spent another 0.5 seconds a read a few of those links. They're about people using Yelp to perform extortion, not as Yelp as an extortioner. You comment is at best orthogonal to the discussion.
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It is unfortunate that people are vastly more likely to go bitch about something wrong than praize something right, but when you read, you assume that is the average experience.
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Nobody would review anything if they have an average experience because there is no excitement or anything to talk about. Only extreme experience would be posted especially when it is bad. Bad thing is more memorable than good thing, so people tend to post bad review more than good review.
However, there are those who are paid to give either good or bad reviews, especially in service businesses/industries, and that ruins good intention of the system. Sadly, it is very difficult to verify whether a review is
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I look at the total reviews. If consistently good, then it will be consistently good. If out of a 100 reviews it goes something like this .. 5*(87%), 4*(6%), 3*(0%), 2*(3%) and 1*(4%) I can be relatively sure that the low scores are trolls of some sort. It is really hard to get 93% of people to agree on anything.
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We activated the reviews function for a business page on Facebook recently, and since then we've had quite a few. Most give us 5*. Now and then we get 4*. Very rarely, we get 1*. I don't think anyone has ever left any sort of comment about why they gave us whatever they gave us.
We know the names of everyone who has ever been a customer of our business, and out of curiosity we looked up everyone who reviewed us in the first few days. Here's the overlap:
.
I can only conclude that most people who saw our page o
Re:Oh please... (Score:4, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/937/ [xkcd.com]
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At least post the relevant one [xkcd.com].
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A well designed site would detect that someone is giving nothing but 1-star reviews, and determine that maybe this person is a problem customer, or has standards set unrealistically way too high, rather than a legitimate reviewer. Especially if the same restaurants have otherwise average reviews.
There's a lot of algorithms that can be used to find this issue and give serial negative reviewers less weight in the overall rating.
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So.... is this a bad law or a good law? I don't know whether or not be outraged...
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So.... is this a bad law or a good law? I don't know whether or not be outraged...
Yes. You definitely should...
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Why do you need a reason to be outraged? Look, if everything fails, be outraged at yet another law being passed and that soon we won't be able to be law abiding anymore because there are too many laws.
Kids these days...
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Please spare me the "people being ale to speak their minds" BS.
I originally read this as "Please spare me the 'people bring ale to speak their minds' BS." I thought to myself: that's not BS, people DO bring ale to speak their minds. And now the company can't sue you for what you speak your mind, having brought ale. Sort of.
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What's the superior alternative?
Seems like something I would hope Consumer Reports would do, but all I seem to see on their web site is appeals for donations (on top of subscription fees). -_-
Yelp may suck but it's the best we have.
btw, speaking of compromised entities, the Better Business Bureau is funded by businesses not consumers. Conflict of interest much?
But what if the customer is lying? (Score:1)
What if the customer is lying? Like suppose they falsely claim food poisoning in retaliation for poor service. Could the business then sue them for unwarranted slander?
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This law means you cant sue under a contract theory. Suing under a libel theory is basically a loser action as getting into the "truth" of a matter is fact heavy, runs up crazy legal bills and amounts to a flip of a coin before a jury. Contract claims for breaching non-disparagement clauses are much more straight forward and often decided on motion with no need for a costly trial at all. Basically, very few people will file libel cases, but many more will happily file a contract claim if one is available.
An
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Anyway, what this really means in practice is if you have a competitor with small pockets its will be even easier for you to pay some people to drown them in bad reviews and they realistically have no defense against it. It's anti-competitive and will help big business screw little business but its sufficiently populist on the surface that the prole masses will think it's a good thing.
They could do this anyway. If you haven't actually stayed at the hotel or whatever, then you are not covered by any potential contract forbidding bad reviews.
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Allowing terms of service that prohibit disparagement does nothing to stop false reviews, because there was no service and no agreement to a contract in the first place. Libel laws are the only remedy against false reviews in either case.
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What? Did they flip that around now, too?
Back when I was young, the rule was "who accuses has to prove guilt". When did that get turned around? I mean, we're just talking about poisoning and killing people, not raping anymore.
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It doesn't change libel or slander laws.
finally we can comment on Slashdot theme (Score:1)
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What? What's that "factually correct" you're talking about?
Now lemme get back to invent... researching news articles.
Apple (Score:2)
Paid reviews still ok (Score:2)
420 (Score:2)
Mr Obama, tear down this wall! Once pot is legal across 50 states, Trump will face an enormous backlash trying to change that.
Bad Summary (Score:2)
The summary leaves out several very important limits on this new law:
1. It does not apply to business that don't sell directly in interstate commerce. (This is narrower than the usual "affecting commerce" language Congress likes to use.) So your local lawn-care service for example may be exempt.
2. It only applies to businesses that use "form" contracts.
3. It only applies to those "form" contracts if the customer does not have a meaningful opportunity to negotiate.
Headline is Wrong (Score:3)
The law doesn't say you cannot be sued. The law makes certain contractual terms void.
The possibility still exists that you could be sued.
Your chance of victory may be higher and your cost of winning that suit might be lower than otherwise.
Squirrels (Score:2)