I saw this article on consumerist.com and it instantly made me think of my TINST207 class. The story is that a dissatisfied patient left a negative review on yelp.com after he had a bad experience with a chiropractor. The article quotes the information left on yelp, and I don't think any of it was slanderous. It was pretty much "I had a bad experience, I had billing problems, the Dr. was hard to deal with, etc."

The chiropractor claims damage to reputation, business, etc AND "mortification and hurt feelings." Regardless of what you think about chiropractic treatments, I think this whole lawsuit, and especially the above quote, make the chiropractor seem rather scummy. I think that this sort of thing is better resolved between the parties involved. Also, way to streisand yourself, dude. You just got your face allllllll over the internets and this just cost you way more than the yelp comment ever could have.

I believe that these review websites are good for everyone. They give consumers valuable information, as well as possibly act as a deterrent for unscrupulous business practices. These sites encourage businesses to resolve complaints. However, a commenter on consumerist.com did bring up a very interesting thing. They said that the same sort of thing had happened in her town. A man who was running for public office in the city had a wife who was a vet. In order to try to keep him from winning the election, some people slandered his wife's vet practice on every site they could find. One woman even accused the vet of killing her cat, even though she had never stepped foot in the office. The vet had a terrible time getting the reviews removed, and it could have ruined her practice.

I think this makes all kinds of interesting problems. Should we even have review sites like this? Should there be a way to see who made the review, or maybe a dispute process? Who should manage the reviews? Should a reviewer have to prove that they did business with the person/business being reviewed? Like I said, I love how the internet gives us so much information with which to make decisions, but the vet ended up in a terrible position. I definitely thing that the person who slandered the vet should be punished.

Interesting things to think about for sure. I'm curious to see what happens with the lawsuit...