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A California lawsuit could lead to negative reviews being removed from the web.
Yelp.com is warning that a California lawsuit targeting critical posts about a law firm could lead to the removal of negative reviews and leave consumers with a skewed assessment of restaurants and other businesses.
Lawyer Dawn Hassell said the business review website is exaggerating the stakes of her legal effort, which aims only to remove from Yelp lies, not just negative statements, that damaged the reputation of her law firm.
Though its impact is in dispute, the case is getting attention from some of the biggest Internet companies in the world, which say a ruling against Yelp could stifle free speech online and effectively gut other websites whose main function is offering consumers reviews of services and businesses.
A San Francisco judge determined the posts were defamatory and ordered the company to remove them two years ago, which a second judge and a state appeals court upheld.
The case is now headed for the California Supreme Court.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday September 18 2016, @08:26PM
I guess I am just not quite in the mindset to expect to get badgered to rate every transaction I make. Amazon really has turned up the spam lately in regards to that. I order a $10 box of rubber gaskets and get 5 emails asking me how I like them. I don't know guys, I bought it because I would need it later, so yeah I got what I ordered and it arrived within the free shipping timelines of whenever!
Maybe there is a setting to tone down the amount of spam. I may get 20 or 25 messages within 2 or 3 days if I make a purchase from 4 or 5 marketplace sellers, all of which invariably pester me to give a 5 star rating because its really important. The problem with this is that it means the review is no longer about the product if the rating in turn improves their marketplace standing. They do not deserve praise for the product, since all they did was stock and ship the item (unless it was unique to them, which is a special case).
There should be a seperate mechanism for rating sellers directly, in much the same way that on ebay no one would think to rate someone based on the actual product sold--it's all about if the person shipped the right thing as they said they would in the condition they stated it was in, and if the buyer actually paid on time.
You rate the buyers and sellers on ebay but these amazon marketplace emails are asking me to give a positive review for the company and how they handled the process, as opposed to the product, and the expectation is to read reviews on a store like Amazone specifically for about the products.
The great Amazon review for that network protocol book, "The Story About Ping" https://www.amazon.com/Story-About-Ping-Marjorie-Flack/product-reviews/0140502416 [amazon.com] would not nearly be as relevant were it written to help inflate a marketplace sellers standing...