Criticism of others on forum

[miner2049er]

I'm in Los Angeles, California, and a thread was recently started on our forum:

Local Dentist is a crook! beware

http://www.foothillsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1627

where a member was critical of the excessive treatment they were told they required from a local dentist. They also posted the name of the dental location.

Not long after, a number of members began responding with their experiences of the same and other dentists.

As you can see the title of the thread/first post is "Local Dentist is a crook! beware". I also have no way of knowing if the treatment was actually required or not.

The poster does say that they are "...in the process of filing a grievance with the ADA."

In the four days or so since the thread started, I have not yet received any complaints from any of the dentists mentioned in the posts.

When members do sign up to our forum they are presented with the default vBulletin "Forum Rules" regarding the forum owners not being responsible for contents of posts, we can edit/delete posts at any time etc.

Being concerned about the validity of the claim, and any possible future repercussions, does anybody have any advice on what I should do regarding this post, as in any editing of it, and/or have you been faced with a similar situation in the past?

[TygerTyger]

I'd lock or remove it. You can't realisitically expect a rebuttal from the persons named in the thread, it's a big old internet out there. Chances are they'll never even know it's there.

But if they do, you might want to be cooperative, if not actually cooperative in advance. I guess it's just up to whether or not you think it's a big deal to lose the thread or not. When I ask myself that question, 99.99% of the time the answer is no.

[MRGTB]

You need to be careful, if members starts to bad mouth there local dentist, I'm not sure if they could take action against your site if they saw it. As they could claim the bad mouthing is ruining there business and sue for compensation because your allowing your site to advertise bad press about them all over the net which is losing them custom and money.

You could be opening one big can of worms with that one. Businesses don't take kindly to bad press and will normally do anything to avoid it. I would let it run for now, but the first chance you get complains from the mentioned dental practices, I would lock it.

[mihai11]

What about the freedom of the Internet ? People have no right to complain about a company or individual that is behaving unethically or even harm them ?!?


Such discussions are necessary. If there are a lot of people that have complaints to make then the best way to get them organized is to exchange information on the matter. Also, potential customers will be warned about the behavior of certain companies with their clients.

The law doesn't protect people's right to complain about goods/services ? This is very hard to believe.

[TygerTyger]

Yes it does. But complaining about goods/services doesn't mean going around slandering their name to anyone who will listen. It means the right to retribution from the company themselves, it's an entirely different issue.

[mihai11]

It means the right to retribution from the company themselves, it's an entirely different issue.

This must be wrong because if it is true, VBulletin team MUST CLOSE the forum "vBulletin Hosting Options". Many times people complain about poor web hosting services.

What gives them the right to do so ? Other customers might decide not to buy. The company in question may loose income because of their complaining.

Let's put a fist into their mouth. Even if they were treated miserably they should just shut up.

This scenario looks like one taken from a book of Kafka.

I am not saying that you are wrong from a juridic point of view because I have no knowledge in that domain.

If the law forbids you to share your experience in a public forum (like this one) then the law must be changed.

[TygerTyger]

Fair enough. I just think if a thread in the Hosting forum came under scrutiny or complaint from the hosting company or whatever, they'd probably just remove it without question. If things might get legal it's just not worth it unless you particularly want to take a stand or are sure of yourself winning.

[mihai11]

Fair enough. I just think if a thread in the Hosting forum came under scrutiny or complaint from the hosting company or whatever, they'd probably just remove it without question. If things might get legal it's just not worth it unless you particularly want to take a stand or are sure of yourself winning.

More precisely, the issue is like this: webmasters will delete threads in order to avoid litigation. I don't think that the webmasters are thinking whether they can win or not. They are thinking that in either case they must pay a lawyer upfront. So, in the end, it is an economical decision.

I still have a question: can they really win such a trial against a webmaster ? The TOS clearly states that he is not liable for what the users are saying...


Perhaps someone from VBulletin team could answer: what would you do if someone would threat you with litigation unless you delete some threads ?

I am glad that this question was asked. Let's hope that we will have a clear understanding of the issue at the end.


Additional information:
I am making the assumption that the user complaining is not using a sub-urban language, is not attacking sexual minorities or religions or whatever.
The user in question is an educated guy not being satisfied with a service that he bought.