Aren’t all “non disparagement clauses” unconscionable and thus unenforceable? Truly is ridiculous AF.
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Cloudy fish water is most of the way down the road to killing the fish. “Don’t kill my pets” is pretty high on the list of my expectations for a pet care service.
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Other way around. Giving a review shouldn’t result in a lawsuit unless it meets the most stringent libel requirements and false filing should cost the plaintiff the same amount as they wanted to sue for.
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Threatening to sue your customers is damaging to your reputation which means I think they’re obliged to sue themselves.
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And yet, 20 EU members consider defamation to be a criminal, rather than civil issue, and impose jail time of up to 8 years. So don’t get injured, patting yourself on the back.
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Betas are pretty hardy. Depends what is clouding the water. The fish I had when I was little had no filter and the water wasn’t clear and they were fine. My dad keeps a small pond in the back yard full of gold fish and Herons are the most likely cause of death.
Even LAWYERS don’t read the fine print!!! Gotta love Nathan For You!!!
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We replaced criminal libel with incitement of religious or racial hatred directed against a person. I quite approve of that one.
You’re confusing defamation with libel. Which concerns stuff like: “Despite holding an elected office, natural person X is raping dogs for a living on the side, for reals, it’s true, read inside” Not “Your services suck and I’m giving you a one-star review.”
Sorry, but no. “Defamation” is an umbrella term that includes both libel and slander.
Defamation: the act of making untrue statements about another which damages his/her reputation. If the defamatory statement is printed or broadcast over the media it is libel and, if only oral, it is slander
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Yeah, you’re right, my bad. The specific misdemeanor in my jurisdiction is usually translated as “Libel” but on substance, it’s defamation.
I agree that giving a review shouldn’t result in a lawsuit, but just that fact that Yelp allows the one-star review should be all the protection reviewers need.
It is simply part of the entire review scale, if it is not to be used, then the scale is pointless.
Umm… as much as I appreciate Yelp showing a warning that the business may be acting in bad faith, the First Amendment doesn’t work that way.
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Most consumers are oblivious to the fact that Yelp! will take your money to put your business’s good reviews above the bad ones as the default. That’s nice business you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
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Nuts. I just used Yelp for the first time this week and found it to be wonderful.
A relative just got some moving quotes and asked me to check the moving companies out online. Here in Canada it’s VERY common for a moving company to quote one price, and then charge double that before they’ll unload. And then triples and then quadruples - “storage fees” - if you don’t have the money on the spot. The police won’t get involved because “it’s a civil matter.”
Yelp seemed to be the only reliable source of information. I found a some moving company review sites, but it didn’t take long for me to suspect that they were puppet sites for specific moving companies.
At least on Yelp I could look at all the reviews, not just the top/recommended ones.
I know that xkcd === truth, but that particular xkcd cartoon didn’t address the notion of signing away one’s right to honestly speak about how the service was. So maybe xkcd would support the idea that – rather than this woman being sued for saying something – the issue is (what should be) the illegality of having a non-disparagement gag clause as part of a service rendered.
How would you feel if you discovered that the doctor about to do your heart surgery had in fact caused many deaths through his negligence, and they hadn’t come to light because he’d gagged people with a non-disparagement clause?
I don’t know law well enough to enumerate the cases where the law says this currently is fine or not fine, but to me that’s beside the point. The law once said it was fine to have slaves, and a bunch of people said “This is WRONG.” And if all of those people had simply backed down if someone had said “Well it’s the law”, then we’d live in a very different world.
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Don’t get me wrong, non disparagement gag clauses are a ludicrous notion and I hope that this lawsuit is thrown out of court.
My main point was that Yelp saying its members have a First Amendment right to express their opinions on the site is playing very fast and lose with reality.
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If it works for you, I’m glad. Just know that Yelp! lets businesses pay for better reputation presentation. As with all review sites, one complaint is suspect, a pattern of similar complaints spread over time is informative.
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Or not. While the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that Yelp!, which is in the business of selling advertising, had the right to do so, it appears that in reality, they don’t alter ratings based on ad buys.
Yelp has been dogged by concerns about the legitimacy of its ratings, in part because people don’t understand the algorithm it uses to try to filter out fake reviews, said Georgios Zervas, a professor at Boston University who specializes in online marketing.
Zervas also said the algorithm can make mistakes.
A business might see a 5-star rating one day, only to find it’s gone the next, he said.
“Businesses can find that confusing and occasionally upsetting,” Zervas said.
However, Zervas said his research did not find the algorithm showed any preference for businesses that advertise with Yelp.
Basically, you’ve got some high-pressure salesmen, who suggest that if a business buys some ads, then (wink, wink) you’re ratings might just go up. Well, rating go up and down all the time. At least some percentage of businesses who declined to buy ads, will have their ratings go down, for any number of reasons. But of course, they will blame Yelp! for it. But just because you did or didn’t buy an ad, and your ratings moved, doesn’t mean it’s cause and effect.
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There is a big difference between the market place of ideas, as the founding fathers put it, and a lawsuit. One involves the absence of government coercion, the other requires the presence of said coercion.
