Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

As a corollary, then, is it legal to buy negative reviews on competing products?

It isn't legal for them to buy positive reviews in the UK.

They might have some problems with the Advertising Regulator, but their bigger problems would be with the Competitions & Market Authority. Misleading & deceptive conduct to sell your goods is illegal in the UK (and the EU & Australia and other places).

Negative reviews would seriously open you to being sued by the people you are review bombing..

I thought that deceptive conduct to sell goods is illegal everywhere, as that pretty closely matches the textbook definition of fraud ("gain through deception")?

> Misleading & deceptive conduct to sell your goods is illegal in the UK (and the EU & Australia and other places).

How often is this enforced?

The ACCC (https://www.accc.gov.au/) don't fuck around. They're basically the reason Steam started offering refunds for games that didn't work for example.

That's a pertinent question.

It almost certainly (in the UK at least) would carry a high risk of a defamation claim for the people writing (or generating) them.

Defamation means lying. You can buy negative reviews of your competition where nobody lies.

There are certainly a lot of interesting subtleties and implications here though.

The charge of defamation includes more than just lying.

UK defamation laws are more like a religious inquisition than American defamation laws. You essentially have to prove your innocence.

In the US, truthfulness of a statement is an affirmative defense to libel/defamation, but believe it or not, that is not the case everywhere. Specifically, it is not the case in the UK.

Damn, that sounds insane. Is the UK the only country in the world with this? What is the reason?

As mentioned elsewhere, the UK does _not_ have this, but there are libel systems, generally old-fashioned ones, where truth is not an absolute defence (a couple of US states still have criminal libel laws where truth may not be an absolute defence, though use of these presumably wouldn’t be constitutional, say).

Italy has criminal libel laws where truth is not an absolute defence. It is routinely used to silence journalists. There is for example currently an high profile case involving Roberto Saviano being sued by the Italian PM.

There have been multiple calls to reform it as the law obviously does not conform to European and International standards, but I believe the reforms haven't gone anywhere yet.

i.e. Japan where even if something is true there needs to be an actual public interest in my publishing of it.

[1] > Under Article 230-1 of the Criminal Code of Japan:

> “(1) A person who defames another by alleging facts in public shall, regardless of whether such facts are true or false, be punished by imprisonment with or without work for not more than three (3) years or a fine of not more than 500,000 yen.”

Personally I like the UK model where the speaker is on the hook for knowing what they say is true. It shouldn't be too much to ask people to avoid making an unfounded claim ...

[1]: https://kellywarnerlaw.com/japan-defamation-laws

Sweden, and to prevent character assassination. For example, back when that was taboo, by revealing that someone was homosexual.

Truth is a defence here, but you have to prove that what you said is true, not the other way around.

If you made up 100 negative reviews that’s going to be tricky.

I'm fairly sure that's wrong.

In the UK, you are expected to prove that it is true for the defense to work though, whereas in the US it's generally enough to be able to argue that you reasonably believed that what you said was true. Hence why the UK is a favorite location for celebrities/companies/... to sue compared to the US: It's a lot harder to defend reporting based on hearsay and indirect conclusions there.

Not sure why people believe this so frequently; it’s completely wrong. Truth is an absolute defence under both systems, though there are significant differences around burden of proof and importance of intent.

> Truth is an absolute defence under both systems

My limited understanding (not a lawyer, just a rando) is that truth may be an absolute defense to defamation in the US, but defamation isn't the only ground you want to cover here.

In particular, "public disclosure of private facts" seems to be illegal without the subject's consent in some states. [1] I can't tell if the effective law is significantly different in the UK, or whether the main difference is just the semantics of whether it'd fall under "defamation" or something else.

[1] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/harm-to-reputat...

Sure, you could give 100 people the competitors product, have them use it and then review it and just publish the negative ones. Maybe that’s also useful market research. I don’t think that’s what most people buying reviews online do.

You actually are lying though, because the goal of leaving fake reviews is to intentionally mislead consumers to give the false impression of genuine experiences with the product. "Fake reviews" are "lying for profit" AKA fraud.

defamation applies to people, not objects, right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com