Manufacturer threatens lawsuit over negative review

Lounge
45

But now this is not about defamation, but about suing a person who wrote a bad review as I understand it?

1 Like
46

I think there was more to it than just “a bad review “ but best to leave it there, as i believe it has been settled by both parties.

1 Like
47

In the UK, the defamation act is the only law I am aware of, a civil law, that you can use to sue for damages from a knowingly false review or other media article that damages your business. But it’s quite a high bar that has to be passed to be successful in the UK, although a civil bar, or burden of proof, is lower than a criminal burden of proof… However simplistically the claimant needs to show the accused is acting maliciously and stating knowingly falsehoods such that it measurably damages the claimant’s business . An ‘honest’ mistake in a negative review is a valid defence if there is no malice. Also a case can’t be made against a personal ‘honest’ opinion that is if there is no ulterior or malicious motive.

1 Like
48

“Professional reviewer”. An oxymoron.

Anyways, IMHO, it’s sad that almost every reviewer that I like ends up monetising their YouTube channel.

49

How is that different from Magazines that sell advertising?

I think a good way of navigating the water is only publish the reviews of products that are generably favourable but (and this is the important bit), also publish a list of products you reviewed and did not publish. Let that speak for itself and shield the reviewer from claims. You can’t sue someone for what they did not say. And as Emily Dickenson once said, “sometimes, saying nothings says the most of all.”

50

The review would cease to be valid if always generally favourable, and would simply become advertising for the target item being reviewed.
Remember there is an industry of professional reviews and assessments outside consumer centric YouTube… and industry relies on commercial reviews of strengths and weakness of services and product assessments. These reviews and assessments are undertaken by professional organisations, and is is a world away from amateur ‘influencer’ consumer type reviews you see on platforms like YouTube.
I think it’s the latter where we can see issues, and because of their lack of of professionalism some I have seen loose objectivity and simply turn into personal opinions and worse still some turn into personal rants to gain attention… this is where many of the problems start I suspect.
To be honest I used to be a fan of YouTube reviews, bur I largely ignore now, as many have become click bait, vacuous and even start to focus more on the personality of the reviewer… waste of time. I tend to focus on written summarised reviews now and avoid YouTube altogether.

1 Like
51

I think not putting pen to paper for a bad product is pretty common. Some of the paper publications were quizzed about their abundance of positive reviews once and the reply was basically, “it is tedious to spend time with products you dislike so yes, they absolutely pick up things they like and spend time with them to review properly.” Especially since the read rates of poor reviews is also lower.

But of course the caveat there is they don’t list what they reviewed and did not write up. You don’t think it would keep everyone happy if they said, “This month, we reviewed the Arcam XYZ, the Linn IJK, and the Naim SOB250, and have published the Naim and Arcam,” ? Obviously, knowing why they hated the Linn might be interesting, but not if a manufacturer might play silly buggers and sick their lawyers on them. Such is the world we live in. After all, Even Jeremy Clarkson got sued by Tesla. Most reviewers don’t have deep pockets.

52

I like the idea of the SOB250…
But serious professional reviews and assessments are written artefacts and are about objectivity and constancy using structured methods, which is why they have value and are procured by organisations through consultancies and such like … amateur opinions on social media channels like YouTube are unlikely to be objective and often be centred around the opinions of a single person, and so as an objective review or assessment are unlikely to useful or consistent. They may be considered influencer based advertising, simple entertainment, or a picture into someone’s personal preference…

I am entertained by YouTube, but am rarely informed by it.

53

Hahaha. You noticed.

54

I think so

1 Like
55

Hi Simon ,

“ I am often entertained by YouTube but rarely informed by it”

I am watching the Post Office enquiry and I am not entertained but very informed by it.

Hope you don’t mind me disagreeing with you on this point

Best wishes

Ian

56

Hi Ian, of course I don’t mind you disagreeing with me - I didn’t realize the Post Office statuary inquiry proceedings are being broadcast (live streamed) on YouTube - in which case that should clearly be an example of informing -

However I was referring to my use of Youtube - but I have just gone onto their explore page and they do have ‘learning’, ‘news’ and ‘live stream’ sections - so clearly as a service it can inform for those who wish to use it that way and watch those particular categorise of videos on their platform, it is just I rarely do. (I find video rarely a good format for informing - unless its a live stream, structured documentary or graphical instructions - its too slow and linear for me)

1 Like
57

It’s also very useful for how-to videos of serving old products where no official service manual exists or they are talking about after market repairs for things with no original parts available.

Panasonic refuse to repair a 10 year old washing machine? No problem, You Tube has a “How to replace the inlet solenoid on a NX-9000” video. Or how to replace the battery in your FitBit? There’s a video for that too.

There are a few products I’ve used lately where there is literally no written manual. They just do You Tube videos.

2 Likes
58

In fact all the previous evidence sessions are available on YouTube too as well as various commentaries, as the Inquiry goes along. So it’s not just live streaming.

1 Like
59

Yes it can be helpful to show graphical illustrations/examples of ‘how to do’ - it has certainly got me out of jail once or twice over the years.

I think I opened my Youtube membership back in 2006 when it was very young - I loved it back then as I thought it was truly liberating - and chimed with what I had been doing professionally around that time with web technologies.
I still think its a great platform though am turned off, by in my opinion, the over focus on monetisation of much of content and so called funded ‘influencers’ … when it started back then that wasn’t really part of its mission as far as I was concerned. Possibly the algorithm changes in around 2015 /16 started the decline in my opinion with the increased personalised targeting and selection …which is potentially valuable commercially.

But the algorithm has just changed again 2024 so we will see how the service improves… as I understand there is concern within YouTube about the over monetisation of some content as well as AI accelerated sharing of misinformation.

2 Likes
60

David - thanks - yes I searched for the Post Office Horizon statutary inquiry on their search - and it showed the inquiry landing page.

1 Like
61

Not videos about statues then?

63

Your post is an excellent write-up about this phenomenon:

By the way, I got my Cisco 9130 and 9105’s setup using YT videos …

7 Likes
64

Ah reviews! I have scoured the internet this summer looking at Hi FI gear reviews. I gave my HiFi system an almost total overhaul. I tried to find as many opinion as I could about the items that interested me.

I started off with a basic search like “best integrated amp”. Surprisingly you can soon build up a consensus about a piece of gear. After much reading and rereading of review sites like What HiFi and more independent review sites, along with HiFi forum posts, it is quite easy to build a picture of how a piece of kit will perform. My demo of the Naim XS3, pretty much confirmed what I read.

It is pretty difficult these days to demo gear. After the amp, it was new speakers. A post on this very forum, pipped my interest in PMC speakers. They had several attributes that seemed by consensus around the web, to be the right choice for me. I bought by mail order in Milan, and my reading was pretty much confirmed by how they sound at home. Love these speakers.

My CD player and Headphone amp, survived the cull as they were already up to where I wanted to be. The turntable survived too, as I never play vinyl, unless it it is something old. Seventies and Eighties vinyl is pretty dire, so the Project turntable is OK.

Headphones are the latest item that I have upgraded. These are more tricky. There are far more pages on the internet about headphones, than the rest combined. Focal Utopia, would probably been my choice, but more than I wanted to spend. I made a safe choice with the Sennheiser HD800S.

My headphone odyssey revealed the fact that ears in some parts of the world, often prefer a different tonality to those, in let’s say Europe. I found some of the old school paper mags, transferred to the web, tend to give everything five stars, even things other sites politely dismiss between the lines, and forum users, class as being a dog. I watched very few YouTube vids. I can scan a written article in seconds to extract value, a video plods along, and stuff like unboxing is a waste of time, before getting to the meat.

Forums like this are probably where you can get the closest to the truth about an article, one man band review sites are probably the next most truthful source. Old media transferred to the web live to have reviews reproduced in the manufactures blurb, as far as I can see.

So far I have not returned anything I have bought without hearing first.

1 Like
65

I love the 800s but with headphones, there’s no such thing as a safe choice. You can alway put on a pair of premium cans and find they hurt like hell after 10 minutes because your noggin is a walnut wheras the reviewer’s was an acorn.

I think we just have to thankful Elon Musk isn’t making hifi. He just sued an advertising advisory group and the costs alone put them out of business in less than a week.

It does make me think that something is broken with the tools of litigation when the deepest pocket disproportionately prevails.

4 Likes