I saw this story today…
A British historian will pay damages to rivals who said he defamed them in pseudonymous comments on the amazon.co.uk Web site.
In the spring British literary circles were abuzz over a mysterious Amazon commenter who used the handle Historian to trash works by authors like Rachel Polonsky (“dense,” “pretentious”) and Robert Service (“rubbish,” “an awful book”) while lauding Orlando Figes, an author and history professor at Birkbeck College in London, whose book “The Whisperers” was called
a “beautiful and necessary” account of Soviet history. Mr. Figes initially said that Historian was his wife, Stephanie Palmer, a lawyer and lecturer at Cambridge University. A few days later Mr. Figes said he had written the reviews and that he had pointed the finger at Ms. Palmer “without thinking this through rationally.” The Guardian has since reported that Mr. Figes and Ms. Palmer will pay unspecified damages and legal costs to the authors and have promised not to post any more reviews of their works.
I have a lot of clients who have a love/hate relationship with the internet. Specifically with websites that are based on reader reviews – like Yelp or Amazon.
Get a great review and you’re flying high for a week. Get some jerk who is pissed because his sandwich arrived touching his vegetables or goes on a rant because he was seated on the patio and thinks there is too much noise or its too hot – and it can be a crushing blow.
Sites like Yelp and Amazon have been criticized for “fake” reviews. It is not uncommon for an owner to have his employees, family and/or friends go onto these sites and leave “reviews” to help boost their star rating. It is also not uncommon to use these same groups to trash your competitors. I see it all the time. And it’s sad, that a few apples can potentially spoil the whole barrel.
Which is why I am happy to see people like this getting busted.
People tend to use the anonymity of the web to let their inner meanness come out. Things you would never say to a person’s face, you will say online. And if you think you can hide behind a fake email address or pseudonym – think again.
Didn’t your Mama ever tell you that there are consequences for your actions? Even online.
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