Once upon a time in my other life as a defence lawyer I was cross-examining a witness about a fight in a kebab shop.
In fact I kept calling it a kebab shop and the witness kept calling it a restaurant.
He went on to say, because he was the manager as I recall, that his international customers were utterly shocked to see this fracas taking place. Considering this to be milking it excessively and certainly not doing my client's prospects much good I suggested customers could expect a punch up in Glasgow kebab shops at about same rate they could expect chips and curry sauce. His reply? Certainly not.
His restaurant was in fact Number One on TripAdvisor for the whole of Glasgow. Surprised silence. The judge's eyes met mine. I moved on to something else. Swiftly. And wisely.
Later when I went to check this out I discovered the witness was right. It was No 1 on Trip Adviser. I was right too. It was a kebab shop. With a tiny restaurant attached. As I sat and ate a meal that was nowhere near No 1, in my head anyway, the restaurant door would open at regular intervals and people looking startlingly like international travellers would pause, seemingly confused, before going to their booked tables.
I went home and looked through reviews on Trip Adviser. It was impossible to tell if they were all genuine. Or not. Now. Fast forward a few years. The kebab shop bit is no longer there. The restaurant still is. It prospers. Though it's not No 1 anymore.
TripAdvisor is still there. It prospers too. It's definitely No 1. And it's still almost impossible to tell if reviews are genuine or not. Why? Because many of them are effectively anonymous.
Of course reviewing without responsibility is what makes the whole thing such a rip-roaring success and occasionally great fun to read. But Trip Advisor has now been banned from claiming in the UK they are reviews "you can trust". Or from "real travellers".
The real issue long ago stopped being about whether bland and glowing reviews are genuine. It's about whether damaging reviews are fake. Or malicious. Or posted by rivals. The courts are so far not getting involved in this punch up. This is a good thing because if they do they could destroy TripAdvisor as we know it. A phenomenon of our times.
In the meantime something interesting is happening. Consider this: "Your dreadful review has zero validity and/or malicious intent. We can't even be bothered to write more. Or this: "We note...as you left you voiced satisfaction with the meal" And this: "We see we have joined the lengthy list of quality Glasgow restaurants you have visited and then disparagingly reviewed and won't be returning again. And this: "Your email was a list of words strung together in a strange, oblique and abstract manner." One new restaurant in Glasgow has personally responded to every single one of the hundreds of reviews it has had. Whether good or bad. It tracks reviewers, it checks their other postings, it makes people think before they post. The way forward?
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