This first amendment says the government can't abridge your speech. The government is not doing that here, so mentioning the first amendment adds more confusion to the concept of free speech than it adds clarity. It's about as useful as mentioning any of the other amendments.
Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
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Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#52This first amendment says the government can't abridge your speech. The government is not doing that here, so mentioning the first amendment adds more confusion to the concept of free speech than it adds clarity. It's about as useful as mentioning any of the other amendments.
If customers were actually in legal peril for writing honest but negative reviews of businesses on Yelp, then that would be the government abridging their speech. The court system is part of the government.
This message's purpose is to educate customers that the legal threats businesses are making in those situations are idle ones. They're idle ones because of the first amendment.
It's perfectly relevant here.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#53My only concern is around the lack of ability for businesses to respond or request any level of verification that a person actually did business with them. The BBB at least contacts the business and oversees a process for resolution (documenting the entire thing). I personally know multiple business owners who've dealt with threats from customers who will go and write a bad review if they don't simply bow to demands.…
> There are far too many businesses who've been open 10+ years with thousands of customers that have never felt the necessity to leave a review. I wonder what could be a good way to incentivise this. If I like a restaurant, I'll go back multiple times. At most, I may leave a good review once. If I go to a bad place, I'm more likely to leave a bad review. Maybe businesses could integrate a "did business here $x amount…
We were thinking about giving cards with the Tripadvisor name/link to restaurants to give then only to those customers that seems specially happy; however the local restaurants where I live are really technophobic so they just saw it as overhead with no benefit.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#54This first amendment says the government can't abridge your speech. The government is not doing that here, so mentioning the first amendment adds more confusion to the concept of free speech than it adds clarity. It's about as useful as mentioning any of the other amendments.
If customers were actually in legal peril for writing honest but negative reviews of businesses on Yelp, then that would be the government abridging their speech. The court system is part of the government. This message's purpose is to educate customers that the legal threats businesses are making in those situations are idle ones. They're idle ones because of the first amendment. It's perfectly relevant here.
No, businesses are saying that it's libel or slander or something else, and if you responded to their suit by saying anything about your first amendment rights, your be laughed out of court.
Yelp's message should be about libel and slander and things like that.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
If customers were actually in legal peril for writing honest but negative reviews of businesses on Yelp, then that would be the government abridging their speech. The court system is part of the government. This message's purpose is to educate customers that the legal threats businesses are making in those situations are idle ones. They're idle ones because of the first amendment. It's perfectly relevant here.
No, businesses are saying that it's libel or slander or something else, and if you responded to their suit by saying anything about your first amendment rights, your be laughed out of court. Yelp's message should be about libel and slander and things like that.
"No" what? Those are the legal threats both I and Yelp are talking about. Here's the case Yelp used as an example:
http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/06/plano-couple-hit-...
The business sued for libel. The customer's lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, citing first amendment rights. The business dropped its suit. Nobody's laughing.
The business filed a second suit, this time alleging the customer violated a non-disparagement clause in a contract with the business. The customer's lawyer filed another motion to dismiss, citing their first amendment rights. That one's still pending, but nobody's laughing.
Here's a copy of the ANTI-SLAPP motion to dismiss the second suit. SLAPP laws exist to ensure the courts are never used to impede your first amendment rights via the cost of mounting a legal defense. Showing that the defendant was exercising their right of free speech is a required element of making that motion, so it's certainly not going to provoke any laughter in the courtroom.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/DuchouquetteSLAPPmotion.pdf
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off-topic, but would Amazon have anything to lose if they completely purged all reviews by users without verified purchases? It would certainly combat the spam reviews problem.
Companies are gaming verified purchases now. There are several sites that provide a service of connecting reviewers with companies who provide their products for a hefty discount with the expectation of getting a perfect review. Companies are allowed to vet your previous reviews to determine how likely you are to give a good review before giving you a discount code. If reviewers don't deliver, they stop getting disco…
That sounds like something the FTC should be all over.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#57Nothing to do with the post, but I wonder why they've chosen to host the blog on a separate domain instead of a subdomain on the official site. I did confirm blog.yelp.com redirects to it, but still it's easy to be suspicious of a separate domain not having the same owners.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#58My only concern is around the lack of ability for businesses to respond or request any level of verification that a person actually did business with them. The BBB at least contacts the business and oversees a process for resolution (documenting the entire thing). I personally know multiple business owners who've dealt with threats from customers who will go and write a bad review if they don't simply bow to demands.…
Off-topic, but would Amazon have anything to lose if they completely purged all reviews by users without verified purchases? It would certainly combat the spam reviews problem.
Even verified purchases aren't necessarily real — some companies will reimburse reviewers to buy the product themselves so that it looks cleaner on paper. A good reviewer will mention that prominently first thing, but not all do.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#59> but there will always be a small handful of businesses who mistakenly think it’s a good idea to threaten consumers who exercise their free speech right Wh... what? the free speech right only covers repercussions initiated by the government. Businesses are not the government so consumers have no free speech right or expectation here.
> the free speech right only covers repercussions initiated by the government.
No, because freedom of speech and expression is a concept central to Western culture. The First Amendment is just one specific implementation of guaranteeing that freedom as it relates to the US government.
Re: Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers
#60> but there will always be a small handful of businesses who mistakenly think it’s a good idea to threaten consumers who exercise their free speech right Wh... what? the free speech right only covers repercussions initiated by the government. Businesses are not the government so consumers have no free speech right or expectation here.
> the free speech right only covers repercussions initiated by the government. Businesses are not the government so consumers have no free speech right or expectation here. That's a provincial US view, constricting it to what the constitution says, etc. In any case, it's inadequate for the era that we live in. There's more to free speech and freedom of expression than avoiding "repercussions initiated by the governme…
>In any case, it's inadequate for the era that we live in.
>There's more to free speech and freedom of expression than avoiding "repercussions initiated by the government", especially these days where large private interests can be as large or larger than governments and equally powerful.
This recent trend of people from the left encouraging infringement on speech by corporations been very shocking to me.