This is a big deal.
In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers who anonymously criticized a prominent local carpet cleaning business.
The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, said the users leaving bad reviews were not real customers of the cleaning service — something that would violate Yelp’s terms of service. His attorneys issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.
Should a person have the right to post an anonymous review critical of a business? Does the business have the right to the identity of that reviewer?
The court decided that a person has the right to post a negative review, if that is their opinion. But the business has the right to verify that the reviewer was indeed a customer. If not, then this is no longer opinion, but a false claim, and the reviewer’s comments are not protected by the First Amendment.
This is an important precedent.
This is going to hurt Yelp’s business model of charging business to remove bad reviews.
I like this decision. There is too much hiding behind screen names online. People use sites like Yelp to make decisions that can affect a business’s success. Submitting reviews like this seems like libel to me assuming the business is correct that these were not real customers.
Every review should have something similar to ‘Verified Amazon Purchase’ thing to weed out the astroturfers.
Even if they have your real ID, how are they going to verifi if you were a customer? They can’t! Throw this crap out of the court!
Uh, they’re a carpet cleaning business. I guess they can just look at whether the address of the reviewer is where they cleaned a carpet?
Exactly.