The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

That seems really dumb, if it wasn't for the fact that I get the kickback and her insurance has a huge bump to add just me, we'd pick one for consistency without blinking an eye.

Ok, I went back through our documentation, here's what it actually is:
If you have a spouse/partner who has insurance offered through their employer, you can elect to have our company cover it, but you'll pay for the family premium and on top of that you'll have to pay an additional $200+ a month surcharge for coverage.

I think it goes back to our company being self-insured. They pay all of the 80% that the employees don't cover. So it's about keeping their costs down. The only money we pay out is for someone to do the paperwork and administration.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/politics/scotus-political-donor-limits/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Sure hope this means more political ads on tv. Can't get too many political ads on tv, in my opinion.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/politics/scotus-political-donor-limits/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Sure hope this means more political ads on tv. Can't get too many political ads on tv, in my opinion.

I'm a bit confused by this sentence, maybe because it's kind of clunky (way to keep those high standards CNN):

However, the decision left intact the current $5,200 limit on how much an individual can give to any single candidate during a two-year election cycle. Until now, an individual donor could give up to $123,200 per cycle.

Edit: Never mind. The NYT cleared it up.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

I'm a bit confused by this sentence, maybe because it's kind of clunky (way to keep those high standards CNN):



Edit: Never mind. The NYT cleared it up.

You get that it used to be so much per candidate/PAC plus a cap on the total to everyone...now you can donate to every candidate/PAC you want up to the limit, there is no longer an aggregate limit.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

The online review service Yelp is defending itself before the Virginia Supreme Court. It seems that some businesses are using Yelp to defame competitors. The defamed businesses want recourse, Yelp doesn't want to give up the defamers' real identities....

A closely watched Internet free-speech case is headed to the Virginia Supreme Court this month, with many businesses that live and die by online reviews rooting for the owner of a small, suburban carpet cleaner.
...
The Federal Trade Commission has received more than 2,046 complaints filed about Yelp from 2008 through March 4....Most of the complaints are from small businesses that claim to have received unfair or fraudulent reviews, often after turning down a pitch to advertise on the site, according to a separate spreadsheet of complaints to the FTC about Yelp.

For his part, Mr. Hadeed says he is certain that at least seven of the bad reviews about his business are fraudulent—possibly posted by competitors—because he was unable to match them to actual customers, based on time, location and sales data. One review, for instance, came from Haddonfield, N.J., where the company doesn't do business.

In July 2012, Hadeed sued the seven reviewers for defamation, and demanded that Yelp turn over their true identities. So far, both the Alexandria Circuit Court and the Virginia Court of Appeals have sided with Mr. Hadeed, holding Yelp in contempt for not turning over the names. Yelp in January appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the reviews are protected under the First Amendment.

So anyone can go on Yelp and post anything?? and Yelp has no responsibility to verify whether said person making the post has ever even done business with the company being reviewed?

So if a relative of mine on the West Coast opens a business, I can sit at my desk on the East Coast and write a rave review for her without ever having stepped inside?

 

[duper]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

The online review service Yelp is defending itself before the Virginia Supreme Court. It seems that some businesses are using Yelp to defame competitors. The defamed businesses want recourse, Yelp doesn't want to give up the defamers' real identities....



So anyone can go on Yelp and post anything?? and Yelp has no responsibility to verify whether said person making the post has ever even done business with the company being reviewed?

So if a relative of mine on the West Coast opens a business, I can sit at my desk on the East Coast and write a rave review for her without ever having stepped inside?

Yelp may not know their true identities. It's possible that at least one of those reviews came from a marketing firm of some kind hired by a competitor who created an account for a nonexistent person specifically for the purpose of writing that review.

 

[XYZ]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

So anyone can go on Yelp and post anything?? and Yelp has no responsibility to verify whether said person making the post has ever even done business with the company being reviewed?

People on here lie about things all the time. Some identities many believe to be real...are not. Time to sue USCHO? Hardly.

 

[theprofromdover]

People on here lie about things all the time.

Don't pick on Hokiedope!

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

People on here lie about things all the time. Some identities many believe to be real...are not. Time to sue USCHO? Hardly.

Here, there are no damages to sue for, and so it would be pointless. Who exactly would you be lying about, anyway? another anonymous person?

If I run a carpet-cleaning business and a competitor says on Yelp, "don't use them, all my carpets came back full of mildew", that easily could result in serious dollar loss for me. If that same competitor said the same thing on a radio program, I could sue for slander, and request compensation for lost business, and then the courts would decide whether s/he would have to pay me, and how much. If it were in a newspaper ad, I could sue for libel. Maybe I'd get awarded something, and maybe not.

No one is suing Yelp directly. They merely have a court order that requires Yelp to disclose the true identities of the people who posted supposedly false reports, so that they could then sue those people.

Finally, just because you sue someone, doesn't mean you automatically win (and then, if even if you do win, you might not be able to collect).

I don't know why Yelp would want to protect people who are knowingly and deliberately filing false negative reviews. They have twice been ordered by the courts to disclose the identities of those seven people, and they have twice refused. That's how the case wound up before the Virginia Supreme Court in the first place.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

I don't know why Yelp would want to protect people who are knowingly and deliberately filing false negative reviews. They have twice been ordered by the courts to disclose the identities of those seven people, and they have twice refused. That's how the case wound up before the Virginia Supreme Court in the first place.

Most likely because it is difficult to prove their identities in the first place, and Yelp doesn't want to be forced to spend the money to do so. You could do an IP trace on the user account, but IP addresses can be easily spoofed and then relayed through several different proxies (using TOR, for instance), which anyone making money as a "reviewer for hire" would be wise to pursue.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

Most likely because it is difficult to prove their identities in the first place, and Yelp doesn't want to be forced to spend the money to do so. You could do an IP trace on the user account, but IP addresses can be easily spoofed and then relayed through several different proxies (using TOR, for instance), which anyone making money as a "reviewer for hire" would be wise to pursue.

It's simpler than that: follow the $$$. There's probably a decent percentage of people who would stop posting reviews to Yelp if they couldn't do it anonymously, reducing Yelp's traffic. With fewer reviews, it would be less useful for people for learning about reviewees, so that traffic would go down as well. Secondly, of those who did continue to post reviews, they'd have to think twice about posting even a legitimate negative review, for fear that they might be sued anyway. The nature of the reviews would therefore skew to the positive side, making the site less useful, and driving down traffic even farther. Traffic=money for advertising-driven sites, so Yelp's revenue would decline significantly if they could not guarantee anonymity to their reviewers.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

It's simpler than that: follow the $$$. There's probably a decent percentage of people who would stop posting reviews to Yelp if they couldn't do it anonymously, reducing Yelp's traffic. With fewer reviews, it would be less useful for people for learning about reviewees, so that traffic would go down as well. Secondly, of those who did continue to post reviews, they'd have to think twice about posting even a legitimate negative review, for fear that they might be sued anyway. The nature of the reviews would therefore skew to the positive side, making the site less useful, and driving down traffic even farther. Traffic=money for advertising-driven sites, so Yelp's revenue would decline significantly if they could not guarantee anonymity to their reviewers.

Also an excellent point.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

It's simpler than that: follow the $$$. There's probably a decent percentage of people who would stop posting reviews to Yelp if they couldn't do it anonymously, reducing Yelp's traffic. With fewer reviews, it would be less useful for people for learning about reviewees, so that traffic would go down as well. Secondly, of those who did continue to post reviews, they'd have to think twice about posting even a legitimate negative review, for fear that they might be sued anyway. The nature of the reviews would therefore skew to the positive side, making the site less useful, and driving down traffic even farther. Traffic=money for advertising-driven sites, so Yelp's revenue would decline significantly if they could not guarantee anonymity to their reviewers.

Yelp could provide information on a good faith effort. Many (most?) sites require you to provide a name and email, and then they will display a screen name of your choosing. Yelp could simply provide that information to the group filing the lawsuit.

Let's face it, most bad reviews won't be pursued like this. When/if I write a bad review of a restaurant for bad service or food, there's no way to disprove my experience. The number of honest reviews that could lead to a lawsuit is very small because the plaintiff would have to be able to prove far too much, including intent.

 

[Patman]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

It's simpler than that: follow the $$$. There's probably a decent percentage of people who would stop posting reviews to Yelp if they couldn't do it anonymously, reducing Yelp's traffic. With fewer reviews, it would be less useful for people for learning about reviewees, so that traffic would go down as well. Secondly, of those who did continue to post reviews, they'd have to think twice about posting even a legitimate negative review, for fear that they might be sued anyway. The nature of the reviews would therefore skew to the positive side, making the site less useful, and driving down traffic even farther. Traffic=money for advertising-driven sites, so Yelp's revenue would decline significantly if they could not guarantee anonymity to their reviewers.

To me, anonymity should be no different than that of a book publisher. If there is sufficient evidence to compel the info of an anonymous book writer then the same should go for Yelp. Slander is not protected, but it seems to me the burden is on the store owner. Otherwise you could unmask anybody with a simple claim.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

Let's face it, most bad reviews won't be pursued like this. When/if I write a bad review of a restaurant for bad service or food, there's no way to disprove my experience. The number of honest reviews that could lead to a lawsuit is very small because the plaintiff would have to be able to prove far too much, including intent.

That's an excellent point, and actually it is at the crux of the case at hand. One of the negative reviews was posted from a town in which the company did not even do business. Several of the other bad reviews could not be cross-referenced to actual work done (you get a review that says you did a terrible job last Friday, except that you had no orders last Friday, that kind of thing).

Again, it's not enough merely to sue someone for posting a bad review, you also have to prove malicious intent ("preponderance of the evidence" standard, not "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard) and you also have to demonstrate actual damages.

I remember a case once where a person won their suit and then was awarded $1 in damages.

I did a quick search and found this case and this case but they definitely are not the one I remember.



Anyway, if I ran a business that got a legitimate bad review, I'd want to know about it so that I could do something to mend things with that customer. We submitted a negative review on a comment card in a local restaurant, and they subsequently contacted us, offered us a free meal, and corrected the situation which we complained about. We still go to that restaurant as a result. Legitimate bad reviews provide valuable feedback that helps a business improve its customer service.


It's amazing how much more responsive Comcast has become since UVerse started competing with them, though that's a different story.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

Yelp could provide information on a good faith effort. Many (most?) sites require you to provide a name and email, and then they will display a screen name of your choosing. Yelp could simply provide that information to the group filing the lawsuit.

Let's face it, most bad reviews won't be pursued like this. When/if I write a bad review of a restaurant for bad service or food, there's no way to disprove my experience. The number of honest reviews that could lead to a lawsuit is very small because the plaintiff would have to be able to prove far too much, including intent.

Most bad reviews aren't pursued because there is no claim if someone simply has a bad opinion of you or your business. That's just an opinion, and that is protected. Claims arise out of false statements of fact. You claim that a restaurant uses dog food to make it's hamburgers. If false, you can be sued for that.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

Claims arise out of false statements of fact. You claim that a restaurant uses dog food to make it's hamburgers. If false, you can be sued for that.

+1. This is a perfect explanation of the case at hand. Well stated.