[lastangryman]

Surely a simple solution here is for Glassdoor to show removed reviews with a simple placeholder text and a reason for removal.

Glassdoor could also account for these in its overall rankings, and show a graph plotting number of removals against time. That way companies legitimately removing invalid reviews can continue to do so, but those gaming the system would have that activity show up. If they plotted submitted reviews as well you could see when these periods of mass removals and "forced" positive reviews happened.

Glassdoor could also provide a short summary of "X reviews removed in the last Y days - this is lower/higher/inline with the average".

All of this is easily within the power of Glassdoor to do and keeps the platform fair for both parties.

[ritzaco]

You think glassdoor wants to be fair to both parties when one party (business) pays them in order to help exploit the other party (employee)?

Maybe it sounds cynical, but that is the business model.

[wahnfrieden]

I've been designing a worker-owned (both the startup and the user data owned by those 'worker' users) Glassdoor alternative. Wonder about how to grow interest in it. Pay sharing is another useful feature of Glassdoor that could be done better in a worker-centric way.

Another aspect of it is to refer/resell self-hosting for users to completely own their own data (such as Bunny CDN which has very wallet-friendly prepaid schemes and a referral program) so they don't have to worry about what the service owner does. It would then be a kind of decentralized network of mini Glassdoors about the workers current or past employers, where one worker would spin it up and their peers can use. Each would decide what to leave public-facing and private-facing for the workers, and could even monetize for the workers via selling their data as Glassdoor does for things like market comp survey data so that workers could privately share comp data amongst each other and publicly sell access to extra anonymized summaries of that data.

This would be tied together into a user friendly iOS/macOS app to manage the deployment of the site. How does that sound?

[smoldesu]

> This would be tied together into a user friendly iOS/macOS app

Why? Providing a web client would drastically expand your potential customer-base.

[wahnfrieden]

The web client would be for most users, the native iOS/macOS client would be for the smaller group that manages the deployments (would be one person at a company or in a friend group). I'm working on cross-plat Swift strategies to bring this to Windows later.

[smoldesu]

I'm still confused. I can't deploy or buy your app without iOS or MacOS?

[wahnfrieden]

It's a good point, I'll find a good way to start earlier with cross-plat deployment management. Between the two of us we have strong fullstack skills in web and iOS/Apple ecosystem. Apple App Store distribution and IAP are a strong part of our typical app strategies (I'm able to drive huge user growth via App Store) but this approach for this idea needs more thought because the deploy-manager person for this app wouldn't be the one we'd charge IAP to. I'm not actually sure how to make money off this idea yet.

It's also potentially linux-runnable (the management tools) with a native apple frontend, then later can explore bringing to win/web

I've been moving more of my iOS app core biz logic to JS and exploring cross plat Swift for running more across web and windows, while still leaning hard into the nice parts of Apple ecosystem, so that whatever solution I find for this is easier

We're also doing an app using https://github.com/live-codes/livecodes to move a lot more languages/envs capability into the client which might enable some good web and ios cross plat capabilities.

Anyway besides the platform question, interested in any other feedback from anyone

[spacemadness]

Yelp did (does?) this same thing. So many of these type of companies are run by unethical “business leaders” in that their business model is to hold data hostage and filter it in the right way for higher paying clients.

[dicknuckle]

BBB as well

[bazmattaz]

Yes exactly. Same as TrustPilot. If you pay for their top tier you can remove reviews that go against their TOS, funny thing is they let you the customer decide if the review goes against the TOS.

Complete shambles

[gnicholas]

Does anyone put stock in TrustPilot reviews? I have seen some companies brag about them and wondered if they are actually trusted elsewhere (I'm in the US).

[darth_avocado]

I only refer blind reviews now. Keeps things pretty honest.

[lozenge]

Glassdoor runs a job board, they want the appearance of neutrality not the actual achievement of it.

[hedora]

It looks like archive.org scrapes reviews:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200625025452/https://www.glass...

(Hey, I wonder why twitter's CEO rating in 2023 is almost 100%-(rating in 2020))

I wonder if their scraper goes deep enough to let a third party list compute a list of removed reviews. Honestly, that seems like better signal than the non-reviewed reviews at this point.

[cgb223]

Who pays Glassdoor to keep it in business?

Glassdoor wants to make that group happy so they can keep making money

[Lio]

The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

If Glassdoor's real customers are companies using it for hiring then that's who they will prioritise unless that becomes an existential threat to their reputation.

[shp0ngle]

You cannot publish libel even if you preface it with “this is a libel”.

[lazide]

You can certainly say ‘in my opinion…’ however, as long as you’re not making statements that can be factually proven false.

‘In my opinion the New York Times is a pile of lying garbage’ or whatever for instance isn’t libel.

[brookst]

Are you saying Glassdoor should rewrite user posts that the company claims are libelous?

Honestly I’m not sure how many negative posts could reasonably be considered libel, but for those that genuinely could be, Glassdoor is probably better served by just removing them than wading into liability both from posting and from modifying them.

[lazide]

Nope. That should be between the company and whoever did the post, frankly.

I don’t see how Glassdoor would have any liability unless they were somehow presenting it as their own opinion.

They might want to take it down as part of overall community moderation if it violates their TOS of course, say if it includes cursing, or has racist remarks or whatever.

I’m pointing out libel has a definition, and posting what is clearly an opinion isn’t it. It has to be making statements which are presenting false facts as true.

That they’ll almost certainly find ways to take down ‘undesired’ messages that paying customers don’t like seems like something they do, which is shitty and undermines their nominal reason for existing, is… sad but seems to be what is going on. Nothing to do with libel.

[chickenpotpie]

* user posts anonymous review

* Company tells Glassdoor the review is false and to take it down

* Glassdoor says the review is from an anonymous user and not them, so they should sue the user * Company asks for the name of the user so they can sue them for libel.

* Glassdoor refuses to turn over the user because it ruins the anonymity

* Company sues Glassdoor for libel because they refuse to produce proof they didn't create the libel. Glassdoor now has to face the lawsuit or turn over the user and destroy the anonymous premise of their website thats fundamental to their business model

[idiotsecant]

This is not how the law works, and if it was no website on the entire internet would be able to print user comments of any kind.

[vasco]

Everything you say is your opinion, the prefix does nothing. Even if you're "just stating facts" it's still just your opinion of how reality unfolded.

[lazide]

My understanding is that the courts have a different take on it.

Stating ‘x killed y’, even if I wholeheartedly believe it is libel if it turns out someone else killed y, and x had reputational damage due to my statement. I’m asserting something is true, full stop.

Stating ‘in my opinion, x killed y’, if I wholeheartedly believe it, is not libel, even in the same situation, because even if x did not kill y, it is still true it was my opinion that it was true, and I was being clear about that. I wasn’t asserting facts, I was asserting my opinion. Opinions are protected, as long as they can’t be confused with false assertions of facts.

Now, if it turns out there is evidence that I didn’t actually have that opinion and it was all a game to destroy x’s reputation, I might still get hit.

It’s the same reason ‘allegedly’ gets used by the press so much when someone gets arrested.

Regardless of what the courts find later, it was indeed alleged. And that matters if someone tries to come after them later. Which happens.

The news sells itself as making factual reports (except for ‘entertainment’ or ‘editorial’ sections), and can’t get away with saying it’s all just an opinion.

If you have pointers to case law that disagrees, I’d much appreciate it!

[barrkel]

It's not quite the same thing - it's under oath, rather than public speech - but in the Alex Jones, Sandy Hook libel case, the Judge Gamble admonished Jones:

“You believe everything you say is true, but your beliefs do not make something true,” Gamble said. “That is that is what we’re doing here. Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true. It does not protect you. It is not allowed. You’re under oath. That means things must actually be true when you say them.”

Quoted here and elsewhere: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/alex-jones...

I'm not a lawyer and don't know American libel law so I can't speak to that. I will say there's a big difference between using "allegedly" and "believe". Belief in what you say being your opinion is implicit (unless, of course, you're lying). You have no access to facts outside your opinion. It's the nature of your statement which indicates whether it's a statement of fact or opinion, not whether you say "in your opinion" or not. "Allegedly" has a very different purpose; it imputes the statement of fact to someone else. Someone else has stated (in their opinion) a fact; they alleged it. Rather than qualifying a statement as a belief, it qualifies it as the truth of it being someone else's responsibility.

[lazide]

I think you're misunderstanding what is going on there.

Alex Jones didn't say 'In my opinion sandy hook blah blah blah'. He said 'Sandy hook blah blah blah'. He presented those things he was saying as facts, not as something that was 'just his opinion'. Under oath it's a similar rule, but does allow more leeway regarding the persons knowledge. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...]

And what the Judge is telling him, if you do that, it doesn't matter if you think they're true or not, what matters is if they are actually true. Or at least under oath, it's plausible they he believes they are actually true and it's not all delusions or whatever.

Especially if you're saying them in a large venue, with real impact on real people.

Actual truth is an absolute defense for libel in the US. If what you're saying is true, you are not committing libel. Period. even if you think it's actually false when you're saying it

Thinking something is true if it is actually false is not enough in 99% of cases, assuming it is being presented as a fact and not an opinion (which requires no verification and is generally protected from libel in the US).

There is a bit of an escape clause, which is libel generally also requires that the false statements were made with some degree of recklessness, negligence, or maliciousness.

As in, they were not only false, but the person saying them also didn't do the basic amount of checking appropriate in the circumstance to avoid harm before saying them.

Like if someone goes on TV and says 'OJ died today, he was murdered by John Smith' and they never bothered to verify it and just overheard a hallway conversation or whatever. John Smith, and probably OJ would have pretty solid libel cases.

If someone did check and got it confirmed, say with OJ's agent, or the appropriate law enforcement authority, they'd generally get a pass, as they weren't reckless or malicious. It was an honest mistake based on information that should have been sufficient to determine if the fact was true or not. The law enforcement authority or agent might be in trouble though.

[pmoriarty]

"Surely a simple solution here is for Glassdoor to show removed reviews with a simple placeholder text and a reason for removal."

Completely unverifiable and easy to fake.

[okl]

I think a first question could be if it is in Glassdoor's interest to be fair/objective for both parties. I would assume that users are more likely to visit and engage when drama, conflict and emotions are to be found in the reviews. It also gives companies an incentive to respond on the platform because of the reputational damage.

[hyperdimension]

To your first question: not unless employees (as a group) are willing to pay Glassdoor more than the employers. The economics are biased toward the employers unfortunately. See Yelp as another example.

[lisasays]

All of this is easily within the power of Glassdoor to do and keeps the platform fair for both parties.

Indeed -- assuming that Glassdoor actually wants to be "fair" and informative, in some meaningful sense.

Unfortunately its business model stands in the way of that.

[dehrmann]

They can also detect when employers excessively flag. I'm not sure if that means they pause their flagging privileges for 6 months, show it as a metric, or something else.