"Seventy-five dollars or your restaurant gets it!" Blackmailers arming critics with a star

Name: One-star rating.

Age: Travel guides first rolled out star ratings in the 19th century ; the Michelin guide introduced its stars for restaurants in 1926.

Appearance: A lone star.

That sounds bad . Not always. Initially, Michelin only had one star - that is, good - but when it's out of five, yes, it's bad.

Is it just for food? No way. You can give a star to almost anything these days: songs, books, airport toilets, the Sistine Chapel, and even the White Cliffs of Dover ("Dreadful" - Rachel D, Tripadvisor).

I imagine such dismissive advice could really have a negative effect on business. If you run a restaurant, definitely. Hence the rise of One-Star Blackmail.

One-Star Blackmail? Recently, a series of mysterious one-star reviews were left on Google for restaurants in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami, followed by messages to scam owners claiming to be in India.

What did the messages say? That unless the owner paid with a $75 online gift card, the bad reviews would continue at the rate of one a day.

What did the restaurants ? Some went public with the scam, prompting even stronger threats: “We can keep doing this indefinitely. Is $75 worth more to you than a loss to the business?"

What does Google think? "Our policies make it clear that reviews should be based on real-life experiences," a spokesperson said.

If you can't trust anonymous online reviewers, who can you trust? Then While thousands of genuine one-star ratings are posted every day for filthy toilets, tedious movies, overrated murals, and disappointing geologic formations, bad faith reviews are sadly commonplace.

Is it still extortion? No. In 2016, a family of four went to a Lancashire wine bar, started a fight, were arrested and passed one night in the cells. The next day they gave the bar a one-star rating on TripAdvisor. "We won't be back," he said. are.

So unethical. If you start a huge fight, the service will suffer. Agreed. And in 2020, there were reports of independent Amazon sellers using fake one-star reviews to harm their rivals.

I'm old enough to remember d 'a more innocent age, where small businesses left fake five-star reviews for themselves. Apparently they've cracked down on this - fake one star is easier to get away with.

Say: "Terrible weather, huge queues, lost two fingers You won't find me on Everest anytime soon."

Don't say, "The food was disgusting and the portions were too small."