The internet might make you feel you are anonymous but the truth is that every single out there is traceable. So, when an online troll decided to post a number of fake negative reviews for a restaurant on Tripadvisor, they did not realise that they might get caught and sued for it.
Martin Stewart Potts wrote?ten fake reviews about Bispham Kitchen, with one claiming that the restaurant's food made him, his wife and his children sick. He also claimed that the restaurant's haddock was in fact 'catfish' and that their chips were 'fried in burnt oil'.
The fake reviews?about the restaurant in Blackpool, Lancashire in the UK, were posted between October 23 and November 16, 2018, using eight different usernames.
The first review read, "Owner glares at you weirdly when you are trying to eat your fish and chips, not a nice experience."
Owner Steve?Hoddy replied to the review but it further provoked Potts and he wrote more false reviews over the next couple of weeks.?Hoddy noticed that the reviews had similar spelling errors which meant that they were written by the same person.
Potts landed in big trouble when Hoddy, who is a trained lawyer with a first-class degree from Cambridge, took him to court.?
The restaurant owner traced Potts and asked him to apologise. "I gave him a letter warning him that unless he apologised for the reviews, I would sue him for malicious falsehood. Unbeknown to him, I did law at university and have two law degrees, although I don't practice as a barrister," Hoddy was quoted as saying by?Daily Mail.
Hoddy had specialised in defamation law but knew nothing about county court procedure and had to do some research.
Initially, Potts denied that he wrote any of the fake reviews but once evidence was produced, he had no choice but to admit to his actions.
During a hearing in July, Judge Sephton ruled that Potts was guilty of malicious falsehood and was ordered to pay ?7,455 (Rs 7.52 lakh) as compensation to Hoddy.
"Online trolling is rife and one of the big problems nowadays. It's becoming a pandemic of its own. It wrecks businesses," Hoddy said.
He added, "I have owned Bispham Kitchen for 44 years now and my business is robust enough to withstand this sort of nonsense. But particularly for hotels it is a real problem, because people really do take note of hotel reviews because they are spending larger sums of money. It is the scourge of modern society."
Hoddy added that websites like Tripadvisor make it easy for trolls to remain faceless.?
"You can't get anywhere with Tripadvisor to get them to reveal the identity of the reviewers. One of their terms and conditions is that any dispute with Tripadvisor must be decided in the court of Massachusetts, where they are based, so you would have to go to the US," he said.
A UK spokesman for Tripadvisor said, "Tripadvisor takes the issue of fraud extremely seriously and we use the best in technology and human moderation practices to fight it. Our advice to business owners and consumers alike is simple: if you see a review that arouses suspicion or breaches any of our guidelines, please report it to us. Our team will then investigate, and act accordingly."
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