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by mbirth
13 days ago
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> German law gives businesses unusually broad grounds to challenge online reviews as defamatory. Unlike defamation standards in many other jurisdictions, which typically require proof of deliberate falsehood, German law includes provisions covering what is sometimes described as "malicious gossip" - where the burden of proof shifts to the person who wrote the review. A reviewer may need to demonstrate that their account was factually accurate rather than the business proving it was false. > According to Google's legal help documentation, businesses can simply claim they have no record of a transaction with the reviewer, and unless evidence to the contrary exists, courts have generally ordered platforms to remove the review. The documentation states that the "not-a-customer" argument is the basis for the majority of defamation removal requests Google receives in Germany. > The structural asymmetry is significant. A business filing a defamation complaint through Google's notice-and-action mechanism faces minimal friction - the process involves completing a form and selecting the appropriate legal grounds. The reviewer, by contrast, must respond within a defined timeframe or risk losing their review by default. According to prior reporting by PPC Land, if the reviewer does not respond within the given window, the review is removed regardless of its factual accuracy. Source: https://ppc.land/google-maps-now-shows-removed-review-counts... |
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