"Down Under" for the purposes of this article means "Australia" and has nothing whatsoever to do with any regions of the body, nether or otherwise.
Have you ever been pressed by a doctor or dentist to write a review?
Before you oblige them, bear in mind that you are thereby telling the world where you live (approximately), and what kind of doctor or dentist you see, from which information can be extrapolated about your health and spear-phishers acquire a trusted name and email address to spoof in order to trick you into opening a bogus bill or malicious "appointment reminder".
If you live in Australia, and you write a less-than-glowing review, you could be sued and you could lose.
Legal blogger Katarina Klaric of Stephens Lawyers and Consultants discusses a recent court decision concerning a one star review that was alleged to be defamatory and false or fake.
https://stephens.com.au/what-does-a-one-star-defamatory-review-cost/
As Katarina Klaric reports:
"The court ordered the patient to pay $30,000.00 in damages to the doctor."
Not only that, but apparently, the patient's spouse and one of her close family members piled on and posted an additional negative review based on their understanding of the patient's experience with the doctor. They were ordered to pay $40,000 in damages.
Moreover, the defendants will have to pay the doctor's court costs.
The article has a good deal of advice about what businesses in Australia can do about damaging reviews, and also a warning to folks who believe that anonymity is impenetrable, and is well worth a two-minute read.
In America, the bloggers of the GALA law blog discuss the ramifications of allegedly defamed doctors trying to pay one-star reviewers to take down bad reviews, and/or to suppress the impact of negative reviews by soliciting--and even paying for-- specious good reviews from friends and family and businesses that can be hired to post misleading reviews.
For anyone in any business, including writers, this particular case has lessons about the consequences of encouraging inauthentic reviews.
For the Who? What? Where? and When? you need to follow the GALA link and read the excellent article. The Why? should be self-evident. As for the shocking How:
"According to the allegations in the complaint, in order to get platforms to take down negative reviews, he would flag the reviews for removal by falsely indicating that they violated the platforms' policies prohibiting inappropriate conduct. He would also have his office contact patients who posted bad reviews and offer to pay them in exchange for removing the review. In order to prevent bad reviews from being posted in the first place on the medical booking site ZocDoc, the doctor would falsely indicate that patients had not shown up for their appointments; that way, the patient would not be invited to post a review on the site."
The bottom line in this case is that the doctor had to take down all the inauthentic positive reviews and pay a $100,000 fine.
The GALA lawyers give wise advice to the recipients of bad reviews on what they can legally do, and what they absolutely must not do.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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