Calmer Cafe owner taking legal action against the VCAA

[Aaron]

Just a note, TSFX recently got pummelled by more than 500 bad reviews on google following their involvement in shutting down Vce Discussion space. They managed to get google to remove all reviews within that time period and even those since. I noticed even genuine, negative reviews from before the saga were also removed.

That's pretty bad if Google did that tbh. Why even bother having a review system at all if the integrity of it is compromised. Pos/Neg.. not "Pos reviews that helps the company's image only". I get spam reviews / fake ones are terrible but it happens everywhere where no filtering is implemented. Obviously the idea of "verified customers only" comes to mind (e.g. given a code to post a review once a purchase has been made??) but that's a totally different discussion, one which should have its own thread and not be here.

[Poet]

Interesting views/comments! It seems to me like VCAA definitely stuffed up with their research but I agree... I can't see why the cafe would make a big fuss over something that is actually having positive effects for them! Also... is it worth what it costs to try and charge the VCAA?

Well, the cafe originally held a 5/5 star rating. By VCAA's mistake, and the student's immaturity, they've been falsely defamed and their rating has dropped shockingly, perhaps even permanently. This is typically a bad thing for a local business, and despite my own beliefs that it's not necessary, the owners have every right to take action against VCAA for negligence, or action against the students for defamation.

It's the owner's decision to decide whether it's worth the cost or not. If they win, they would be reimbursed of the majority of their fees. I guess they feel it's a good gamble.

[Sine]

My understanding is that, although illegal, defamation is extremely difficult to prove.

In the short term I guess this would advantage the cafe as they get more public attention and interest from this situation as well us more support from their already "loyal"customers. I guess to rectify the rating system they could remove all ratings from whenever the first students could leave the English exam until a suitable amount of time has passed.

[turinturambar]

That's pretty bad if Google did that tbh. Why even bother having a review system at all if the integrity of it is compromised.

I actually completely disagree.  It is these reviews that compromise the integrity of the review system. Taking them down is absolutely the right thing to do.  I see it as similar to the "fake news" (as in actual made-up news, not the Trumpian form of "news I happen to disagree with"): Society expects these companies to disseminate accurate information (or at least provide their best endeavour).

Two cases that they need to be able to deal with are a company paying for positive reviews, or a company paying for negative reviews of a rival (or, more likely, an activist group calling for it).  This situation is a variant of the second one.  I'm pretty sure Amazon has programs in place to try and detect these kind of fake reviews, and I would expect Google to have them as well (though search online suggests they are not perfect). They would be considering signals like an unusual number of reviews in a period of time, unusual characteristics of the reviewer, etc.

I think this is completely different from a business trying to get individual reviews taken down because they don't like them. That is where some review systems have the opportunity for the business to respond, allowing the potential customer to decide between the reviewer's story and the business's story. That isn't an appropriate mechanism to respond here because the reviews significantly affect the aggregate, even for potential customers who don't read individual reviews.

EDIT: Should clarify - this to me is the ideal way review systems should work. I'm sure the reality is much more messy...

[Bri MT]

I suspect that Aaron was referring not to the fake reviews being taken down, but to the pre-existing negative reviews also bring taken down. 

To me,  the logical thing to do is take down the reviews (negative and positive) from the day that the fake reviews started (and following days), and leave the pre-existing reviews untouched. 

Otherwise,  the situation creates a more positive spin than otherwise would've existed and provides a biased view.