Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
While this is specifically illegal, this brings up an interesting moral/legal question:
When should it be okay for businesses to sue customers who give unfair bad reviews, which damage their business?
Today's social media driven society gives a ton of power to reviews, to the point where some businesses (especially smaller ones) can succeed or fail upon bad reviews. For example, when I travel, I don't even consider a restaurant with fewer than 4 Yelp stars (out of 5), even if it's a lower-end restaurant. The only exception is if it's a chain I already know, and even then I will sometimes stay away.
Reviews are very powerful consumer tool, but at the same time, they can torture owners when delusional or unreasonably bitter assholes choose to trash your good and fair business. For example, I have a friend who showed me 100% ironclad proof that a particular reviewer was lying about his business and their experience there, but it was a small business and he was terrified that it was going to really hurt him.
I feel bad reviews should only be actionable legally if one or more of the following is true:
- The reviewer said something clearly false which can be proven false, and which the reviewer refuses to retract when contacted about it. (For example, if you claim they purposely overcharged your credit card when the business owner has proof that didn't happen.)
- The review was posted by a competitor simply in attempt to achieve gains for his own business.
- The reviewer impersonates being several people and posts several different bad reviews, in attempt to make it seem like more people are giving bad reviews than they really are.
Basically, I would support legal action against reviewers only when it's 100% clear that the reviewer is acting in bad faith to harm the business, and attempting to mislead the reader. I would NOT support legal action if the reviewer simply expresses an opinion of the business or business owner which is unflattering.