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Posted by ABC Legal Docs, LLC - Jerry Lucas on 5/20/18 7:07pm
The Consumer Review Fairness Act prohibits the use of a form contract to pre-emptively suppress or gag Free Speech when consumers want to express a negative opinion or rating about an actual business transaction.
Freedom of Speech protects the right to express a positive or negative opinion, or to make true statements, but not false statements, which can be defamation that wrongfully damages the reputation of a person or business.
To avoid a non-negotiable fixed form "take-it-or-leave-it" contract, contract terms could remain open for negotiation. A contract needs to have a meeting of the minds, with an offer and acceptance, or an offer, rejection, counter-offer and acceptance. Real estate deals are often negotiated in this back-and-forth manner.
The Act does not help victims of defamation. Many platforms allow unverified postings of anonymous reviews. Some verification filter is needed to confirm that the poster is an actual paying customer or a party to a contract with the business. If the poster cannot show written evidence of a paid transaction or a contract, the review should be removed. It is not a consumer review if there is no consumption of the product, service or contract offered.
Allowing anonymous and fake names in reviews is unfair since it denies the accused business the ability to know the name of the accuser and provides no way to identify the actual disputed transaction to do research, and prepare an explanation or defense. It provides a hiding place for reputation assassins that may be non-customers, competitors, enemies, vendors, hackers, pranksters or disgruntled former employees.
The business can't sue an anonymous person for defamation. Legal discovery is needed with records requests or court orders and subpoenas to force records custodians to reveal user account information, which may turn out to be fake, wasting time and money for the business.
Review platforms provide the megaphone for anyone to praise or denounce a business, but many do not provide any user verification or fair and just procedure to remove false, defamatory accusations.
It is not a practical or affordable remedy for a small business to try to identify and sue a poster for defamation. Even if the posted statements can be proven to be false, it may be difficult to show an actual monetary value of the damages suffered.
A better solution is for platforms to require some written evidence of an actual paid transaction or contract before allowing a person to post a review. Maybe require a sworn affidavit to be filed if the review is challenged by a business. Then, if the review contains false statements, the person is committing perjury.
Meanwhile, a practical solution for the business is to try to get 2 or more happy customers to post positive reviews to offset each negative review.
Many small business owners are complaining on Google My Business about Google doing nothing to help stop or remove false reviews that are wrongfully damaging business reputations. There are some volunteer forum moderators that are trying to help support business owners, but having little success on appeals to Google.
https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Spam-Policy/bd-p/Spam_and_Policy |
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