[throwaway420]

> I also think that there are cases where legitimate businesses have been seriously damaged by competitors, or just difficult customers writing unfair bad reviews.

This is a big problem for small businesses and people alike, but the actual solution to this is the opposite of what most people's first instincts would be. Ironically, it's the existence of laws against libel/slander that makes fake reviews and false negative content online such a big deal for people going forward.

Because these laws exist, people are conditioned to believe that most of what they read online is true because otherwise legal action would be taken and it would get removed. But few people and small companies have the resources to track down every false review or fake negative comment and find out who did it and make legal challenges.

If you're an average small business, you don't have an easy way to mount a serious challenge against a site like RipOffReport when an unknown competitor starts writing nasty fake reviews about you online that you never shipped a product or whatever. If you're an average person, you have very little recourse if somebody goes and falsely writes that you have an STD on a site like Dirtyphonebook or whatever. People and companies with large amounts of resources are protected by libel/slander laws, but the average person or small company isn't really.

In a society with no laws against libel and slander, people would be a lot more skeptical about the veracity of negative comments that they see online and do a lot more research before buying a product or believing some negative comment was false.

We can talk a lot about better reviews and reviews of reviews but all of these are susceptible to the same issues.

[maxerickson]

My instinct is that online reviews are wildly unreliable and suspect. I certainly don't think they enjoy any sort of legal oversight.

I will take a large plurality as reliable, and someone able to write in the correct tone could certainly mislead me (that is, I will look at an individual review on its apparent merits), but I sure don't expect a couple of good or bad reviews to mean anything.

Also, the encyclopedia I ordered did not contain any murder mysteries, one star because I can't put no stars.

[yesiamyourdad]

"But few people and small companies have the resources"

And that's the key phrase in this entire thing. For everyone who says, "oh, they're in the right, they should hire an attorney", they're either more naturally litigious than I am or have never actually had to hire an attorney and prosecute a case in court. The name of the game is intimidation and harassment. KlearGear is absolutely betting that their customers don't have the resources to combat their meritless lawsuits.