10 ms·
If glassdoor can’t protect the anonymity of its reviewers, this can’t either. There will be legal allegations of libel that will lead to one’s identity being re
by ilikehurdles 3y ago
If glassdoor can’t protect the anonymity of its reviewers, this can’t either. There will be legal allegations of libel that will lead to one’s identity being revealed by court order or otherwise.
I also find these sites largely useless for research as only the people with extremely strong sentiment would go out of their way to add a review, meaning almost any management company with a large number of tenants will end up with bad ratings, as some portion of those tenants almost definitely will have a negative perception of the management and that portion will be overrepresented in the tally.
- srcreigh 3y agoIt’s their own fault if they say something in a review that they can’t prove.
- MollyRealized 3y agoPeople maintain this sort of blind faith only until they are bitten themselves.
- _cenw 3y agoTruth doesn't matter in the US court system, unless both sides are equally well funded. Given that one party owns capital and the other rents, I'd say that seems not too likely.
- quonn 3y agoSo you think the landlord can just liquidate what you call the capital? Sell the house? Unless it‘s a large landlord, chances are that the renter is more liquid.
- infinitezest 3y agoIn my experience, the more difficult a landlord is, the more tenants they have.
- _cenw 3y agoReal estate you rent out is probably the prime example of Capital, and many who own real estate (without a mortgage on it) certainly aren't working class. I didn't find a great source on this, but the average landlord in the US seems to own 3 properties. [1] [1]: https://www.mysmartmove.com/SmartMove/blog/todays-landlord-characteristics-infographic.page https://www.mysmartmove.com/SmartMove/blog/todays-landlord-c...
- bandyaboot 3y agoThat’s not the direction that burden of proof goes.
- gorgoiler 3y agoIn England and Wales it is. English courts are notable for requiring the defendant to prove what they said was true. It is common practice for the world’s rich and infamous to take a trip to London whenever they want to chill their critics’ speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
- ilyt 3y agoThat sounds....reasonable ? Not the tourism part but the fact one comitting suspected libel needs to use actual facts or else they are guilty of it ?
- bandyaboot 3y agoIt’s not about whether they need to use actual facts, it’s about which side needs to prove whether or not they’re using actual facts.
- ilyt 3y agoWhy would one suing for slander need to that whatever slanderer invented he didn't do ? That puts unreasonable level of burden on one being slandered (i.e. the victim) and would allow one doing the slander just make up stuff that is very hard to prove that the victim didn't do.
- swores 3y agoI'm not sure exactly how I feel about English libel law, I think a bit too strict but wouldn't want to lose it all - but surely libel tourism just shouldn't be allowed? Is it just too hard to stop without blocking legitimate claims too? edit: I read the rest of that Wikipedia article, seems a decade ago something was done to at least reduce it - "On January 1st, 2014 the Defamation Act 2013 came into force, requiring plaintiffs who bring actions in the courts of England and Wales alleging libel by defendants who do not live in Europe to demonstrate that the court is the most appropriate place to bring the action. Serious harm to an individual's reputation or serious financial harm to a corporation must also be proven. Good faith belief that a disclosure was in the public interest was made a defense."
- kennyloginz 3y agoYet, glassdoor is still thriving. This is just a step forward for transparency.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoBut the question remains: is it useful?
- clnq 3y agoYes. It's like a pseudo-union. Collectively bad companies are avoided and good ones receive more interest. Low salaries and bad managers are put on display. Good ones are, too. It's useful for the job seeker, and it's useful for society.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y agoSome of the companies I worked for have removed my reviews, so I'm not so sure about that.
- clnq 3y agoYou're saying it is corruptible. But it doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. There's plenty of critical reviews on the platform. More than enough to take a peek into the problems some corps have before joining.
- charlieyu1 3y agoMore information is better than less information. A few more cases definitely are red flags.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoYep. I’ve used Glassdoor reviews in making my decision about employers. I ignored bad reviews once and regretted it.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
- randyrand 3y agoIs it required to record personally identifying data? You could even have the web browser do like a mini Tor protocol where your IP is tunneled through others currently logged in.
- kodah 3y agoOP is concerned about demasking via the court system. Even if the company has no desire to "win" a case, they can compel Glassdoor (or anyone else) to give up the identity of a user. Even if Glassdoor can't figure out who you are, then they'd have to put up a fight to defend you. If they choose not to and to just remove the review with cause instead, then the price of removal is the attorneys time.
- chii 3y agoWhich is a flaw in the US court system - "winning" a civil case may not award you the attorneys fees, so it paradoxically makes it easier to just accept instead of fight, if you're against somebody rich.
- RobotToaster 3y agoCan a court compel someone to give up information they don't have?
- kodah 3y agoNo, but see the consequence: the information is removed if the user or the company fail to defend it. That makes it a vector for people who have a lot of money they can waste.
- Gigachad 3y agoIt would be trivial to just link the words of the review to the individual. You write something like "My screen door broke and the landlord refused to fix it" and the landlord can just remember or check who mentioned a screen door. It's not like a job where they have hundreds or thousands of other employees who could have written it.
- MattGaiser 3y agohttps://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Canidae-Reviews-E845482.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Canidae-Reviews-E845482.htm Glassdoor has a way of dealing with this that is more damning than a bad review.
- weatherlight 3y agoI get where you're coming from, but no system is perfect, right? While anonymity concerns and skewed reviews might be valid points, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the whole idea. Instead, we could work on refining the system to minimize these issues, like implementing measures to protect anonymity and encouraging a more balanced representation of reviews. Remember, sites like this are just one piece of the puzzle when making decisions. Sure, they might not be perfect, but they can provide useful insights when taken with a grain of salt. And who knows? Maybe this website could inspire a new wave of accountability and transparency in the landlord-tenant relationship, which seems like a win to me.
- achow 3y agoFurther to add to your point 'RateMyProfessors.com' as a ideas was/is good. But I understand the way it was designed (unverified students, double ratings, correlation of positive reviews to ease of the class...) did it in. It boils down to how well thought through the implementation is, and how well it is iterated upon. Same with yelp.com
- kentrado 3y agoRatemyprofessors was literally responsible for improving my college experience tenthfold.
- pharmakom 3y agoHow can you know?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- reducesuffering 3y agoBefore and after using it?
- harvey9 3y ago
- sametmax 3y agoAlso, the common people has awful taste, and is terrible at understanding a situation from another point of view. This is why trip advisor is so useless, at least in France. Between the vocal unhappy outliers and the happy idiots that think those french fries coming out of the freezer were delicious, the noise/signal ratio is abysmal.
- toastal 3y agoWhen I lived in Colorado Springs, my ex and I started only going to 2-star places for this reason, _especially_ if the biggest complaint was “bad service” or the restaurant “looked dirty”. Found a lot of great, minority-owned hole-in-the-walls this way. In a town where Panera Bread is 5-star to the white suburbanites, you gotta assume other places are the good ones.
- sametmax 3y agoFor a moment I though you were talking about Michelin stars, and I got confused.