{"id":63663,"date":"2015-01-29T13:04:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T13:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=63663"},"modified":"2017-03-23T16:22:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T16:22:05","slug":"padraig-reidy-beware-risks-one-star-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=63663","title":{"rendered":"Padraig Reidy: Beware the risks of the one-star review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes, when I\u2019m bored, or a bit down and feel the need to believe there are people in the world who are worse to me (worse, not worse off), I turn to TripAdvisor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there are perfectly reasonable people on TripAdvisor. Perfectly normal people, who may have enjoyed a dinner somewhere, or made friends with the barman at their holiday hotel, and thought \u201cI must tell the world! These hardworking service industry people deserve my support.\u201d I\u2019m sure there\u2019s lots of that going on on TripAdvisor (other review sites are available).<\/p>\n

These happy people do not concern me. No, these are not the reviews I want to read. I seek out the one and two stars which are often written by the worst people in the world.<\/p>\n

Petty, greedy, stingy, paranoid and usually convinced of their own way with imagery. Imagine eating out with these people.<\/p>\n

The waitress approaches, smiling (as they often do):<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you like to see the wine list?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes please.\u201d\u00a0(List is delivered. Exit waitress).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think she meant by that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsking if we wanted the wine list like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you hear her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. She said \u2018Would you like to see the wine list?\u2019 They often do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was the waaaayyyy she said it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUh.\u201d (Scans room for exits, sees only cheery floor staff).<\/p>\n

On goes the evening. Everything is noted. The wine is too cold, the food too hot. Side orders are too expensive, there\u2019s a draft only your dining partner can perceive. The service is too slow\/fast. Somehow, in spite of it being a busy night, the waitress has been giving your companion a Paddington hard stare all night.<\/p>\n

No, you certainly will not be having dessert, not at these prices.<\/p>\n

The bill arrives, and is divided down to the last pea (\u201cYou got more ice in your tap water than I did\u201d).<\/p>\n

You depart, he on his bus, you on yours. On his way home, he cancels his debit card because he\u2019s sure the restaurant people will have cloned it. You reach home and climb into bed, despondent. His fun though, has just begun.<\/p>\n

Pouring himself a decent measure of the large whisky he hides when visitors are around, he settles on the sofa and logs into TripAdvisor (other review sites etc).<\/p>\n

\u201cOur trouble started,\u201d he types. \u201cWhen my friend called to book the table.\u201d (You are now implicated).<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving read my neighbour Giles Coren\u2019s fine review in the Times of London, I was expecting high things of Brasserie Sarkozy. Methinks Coren the Younger\u2019s judgement may have been clouded by one too many stiffeners over lunch, perhaps with his delightful sister, Victoria (with whom I would be only too happy to \u2018Only Connect\u2019!)…\u201d<\/p>\n

Why are you friends with this person again? On he goes. The broccoli was insufficiently purple. The steak (always steak) was \u201cinferior\u201d to the Specially Selected 30 Day Matured Aberdeen Angus Sirloin you get in Aldi for just \u00a35.99. The staff were too casual, the room too stuffy, the building in the wrong neighbourhood… And the prices? Is this Monte Carlo?<\/p>\n

And he wouldn\u2019t have minded that much if it wasn\u2019t for the rat he almost certainly saw in the gents.<\/p>\n

Your friend clicks \u201cone star\u201d closes down his computer, and heads for bed, to dream of the panic when the restaurant\u2019s owners (shysters and rip-off merchants every last one of them) discover his latest mighty internet onslaught.<\/p>\n

One wonders if your friend (let\u2019s call him gourmand_Gareth, as that\u2019s what he calls himself), drunk on power, has considered the consequences. Particularly the consequences of the claim about the rat in the toilets, which, while he didn\u2019t quite intentionally make up, is a bit of a misreport. Specifically, he\u2019s moved the rat\u2019s location from \u201cin his imagination\u201d to \u201cstanding on the cistern, singing Blur\u2019s classic Britpop ballad To The End”. It didn\u2019t happen. It is wrong to publish a review saying it did. It\u2019s quite probably libellous. In fact, the chef is on the phone to his lawyer right now.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like your friend (I suspect you don\u2019t either, but you\u2019ve known him since school when… Actually you didn\u2019t like him then either, did you?), but I don\u2019t want him to end up in trouble.<\/p>\n

But this is what could happen. While there\u2019s only ever been one successful libel case against a restaurant reviewer in the United Kingdom (Goodfellas v Irish News, 2007, overturned on appeal, fact fans), there has been a rise in libel cases involving social media and the web. According to the Independent, there was a 300 per cent increase<\/a> between 2012-13 and 2013-14 alone.<\/p>\n

In spite of the work done by Index on Censorship and others in improving England\u2019s libel laws, being sued — even being threatened with libel action — is still a deeply unpleasant experience, and quite possibly an expensive one too. Meanwhile, continued threats to the concept of the \u201cmere platform\u201d (that is to say, a site such as TripAdvisor, which allows people to post content without pre-moderation, should not be held legally liable) face threats from the actions of Max Mosley<\/a> and others who are determined that the web be a more tightly controlled space.<\/p>\n

Pre-moderation (editing, in effect) is anathema to how we use the web every day. Try to imagine having to send every tweet to some poor bugger in an office in Dublin who then has to decide whether it gets past every single restriction on speech in the European Union before he publishes it to your page. Not going to happen, no matter how many European courts believe it should.<\/p>\n

But on the other side of the coin, people like your friend Gareth should at the very least be aware of what the laws are, and what risks they run. The past few years have seen countless cases of people facing civil and criminal sanction for tweets where they clearly had no idea what the law was (*innocent face*). This is not a plea for more laws, or even more self-censorship. But one does wonder if basic education in what the potential pitfalls of online interaction are, is necessary. Index and its partners<\/a> are bringing out guides for artists to free speech and the law, but what about the rest of us? It’s too late for poor, silly Gareth.<\/p>\n

This article was posted on January 29 2015 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do we need basic education in the potential pitfalls of online interaction?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4059,6903,581,21],"tags":[3003,1721,6893,700],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63663"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87086,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63663\/revisions\/87086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}