Italian Court Throws Out TripAdvisor Fine Over Bad Reviews

jfruh writes: TripAdvisor had been fined half a million euros in Italy for publishing "misleading" information in its reviews. But now an Italian court has thrown out that punishment, saying that the site clearly states that the reviews are user-submitted and that TripAdvisor can't confirm all details. In a statement the company said the court's decision, "confirmed what we always knew: that TripAdvisor is a hugely valuable and reliable resource.”

Comments

Is it?

[lastman71]

But the problem was not the reviews, but that in advertisement tripadvisor said that reviews are verified, and of course they are not.

Re:Is it?

[Pubstar]

They never said they were verified. They said they were "Authentic and Genuine". While some would obviously fall through the cracks, this court ruling said that they are using enough proper protections to ensure that paid or fake reviews don't get through.

Nobody is saying it's not valuable...

[h33t l4x0r]

But holding a small businesses reputation hostage is a dicey business model. And when dotcoms get so big that they cam lobby for favorable laws / rulings then the world becomes a scarier place.

Re:Nobody is saying it's not valuable...

[gstoddart]

You know, sometimes businesses give you shitty service. In which case nobody is holding their reputation hostage, they've have earned a lousy reputation through bad service.

Usually when I travel I look into reviews. When I do travel I mostly rent from owner-rented condos and the like. Give me a great, clean place to stay and I'll give you a good review. Give me a lousy place to stay, not so much.

The trick with travel reviews is you have to read enough of them to understand them, and you also have to get a sense of what to expect for where you're going.

I've seen some reviews for places which after a while you go "OK, some people don't understand the differences between their home and where they're going". So some reviews will complain about stupid things because they don't know any better (I've seen reviews complaining the voltage was 220v or that there were lizards around ... and this means someone didn't understand they were going to a tropical country different from their own. I've even seen people complain about rain, like that's under anyone's control.).

I've seen other reviews about rude or lazy staff, or unclean conditions, and I take note of those.

But, really, having read a lot of TripAdvisor reviews, the majority of them are written by real people who have actually been there.

If you give crap service and get a bad review, you don't get to play the victim card. Despite all of this bullshit happening where companies sue because of bad reviews, telling the truth about an actual experiences is legal and not libelous, despite the morons who want it to be otherwise.

Re:Yes reliable

[EzInKy]

So give them as much credence as the paid positive reviews then? It's gotten to the point that I won't buy anything that doesn't have at least a couple of negative reviews to balance out a product's cheerleaders. Nothing is so perfect that somebody somewhere can't find something wrong with it.

Re:Yes reliable

[EzInKy]

My mum says I'm perfect. Are you calling her a liar?

So did mine, a half a century ago. Overtime though the warts and blemishes developed so today we just accept each other as being mere humans.

Re:Reliable?

[rippeltippel]

I wonder how difficult it would be to validate the reviews by asking users to submit their hotel receipt (maybe without publishing them).

You can still fake them, but maybe it wouldn't be worth the pain.

Same for all other review-based websites (amazon, etc)

Re:Valuable and reliable?

[alexhs]

I think the idea is that the CEO will have to pay the fines in person instead of the company, but yes :

the reviews are user-submitted and TripAdvisor can't confirm all details

TripAdvisor is a hugely valuable and reliable resource

Does not compute.

Re:I might also add

[drinkypoo]

The website works just fine. Perhaps you should contact noscript, ghostery, etc and complain their stuff breaks stuff.

If your site doesn't work when your domain and CDN (and other typicals like jquery) are enabled in noscript and ghostery is turned on then you're probably a festering piece of shit anyway and your site can DIAF.