Feds assess TripAdvisor censorship accusations
More reviewers say rape warnings were blocked
Acting on reports that TripAdvisor deleted accounts of rapes, blackouts and other injuries and deaths among travelers vacationing in Mexico, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into the company’s practices, according to a letter sent Friday to Sen. Tammy Baldwin, DWis., who urged the agency to take action.
“The Commission has a strong interest in protecting consumer confidence in the online marketplace, including the robust online market for hotel and travel,” wrote Maureen Ohlhausen, acting chairwoman of the FTC. “When consumers are unable to post honest reviews about a business, it can harm other consumers whose abilities to make well- in-
formed purchase decisions are hindered and harm businesses that work hard to earn positive reviews.” An investigation by the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, published Nov. 1, revealed that travelers accused TripAdvisor of silencing their reports of disturbing, sometimes terrifying, experiences when they tried to post on its website.
Tuesday, a lawyer in Texas representing the family of a Wisconsin woman who drowned in January under mysterious circumstances at a resort pool in Mexico, said he received about 30 calls in the past couple of weeks from people who had their negative posts deleted by TripAdvisor.
Aside from uncovering how TripAdvisor deleted negative posts, deeming them hearsay, “off- topic” or in violation of “family friendly” guidelines, the
Journal Sentinel investigation found the website’s policies and practices keep consumers in the dark in a multitude of ways.
Users have no way to know how many negative reviews TripAdvisor withheld, how many troubling experiences never were told.
It’s difficult for site users to realize that much of what appears on their screens has been selected and crafted to encourage them to spend.
Secret algorithms determine which hotels and resorts appear when consumers search. Some hotels pay TripAdvisor when travelers click on their links; some pay commissions when tourists book or travel.
The $ 1.5 billion online travel website’s initial public response has been swift, rolling out a warning system that marks resorts where safety concerns have been reported in the news media. The company promised to make other changes aimed at making it easier for travelers to share their troubling experiences. Two days after the Journal Senti
nel investigation was published, TripAdvisor co- founder and chief executive Steve Kaufer said the company’s policy changed in recent years.
“Over time TripAdvisor has updated this policy to allow more descriptive reviews on the site about firsthand accounts of serious incidents like rape or assault,” Kaufer posted on LinkedIn.
Assault allegations
Kaufer’s statement contradicts the experience a travel writer from Russia had after she tried to post a review describing how she was raped at knifepoint by a housekeeper at the Six Senses Zil Pasyon in Seychelles, an island off the east coast of Africa.
In June and again in July, she tried to caution other travelers using TripAdvisor. Despite the criminal charges filed against the man, her attempts at posting her experience on TripAdvisor failed.
“I was looking for TripAdvisor people in Russia to give them my documentation,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published because her son and parents don’t know what happened. “There was nobody to connect with and ask why they didn’t publish it. I write letters to general mail. I got nothing back.”
The Journal Sentinel confirmed her report; The man’s trial is scheduled for next month.
TripAdvisor did not publish the woman’s review initially because she didn’t respond to a verification email, then tried to post from a different email address, a company’s spokesman said. It did publish the woman’s review the day the Journal Sentinel published its investigation.
Among the changes TripAdvisor promised is to provide users with more specific information when their reviews and forum posts are rejected.
The company vowed to train moderators to be more consistent in how they apply the guidelines.
An internal committee decides which places will get the “badges” — information the company tentatively plans to keep posted for three months, according to TripAdvisor spokesman Brian Hoyt.
He said the company will focus on credible media reports and where owners, employees or contractors are responsible, rather than guests.
For example, the case of Erin Andrews, a TV sportscaster and co- host of Dancing With the Stars, who was secretly videotaped by a stalker while she was naked in a hotel room wouldn’t qualify, he said.
Protection problems
A federal law passed in 1996 called the Communications Decency Act provides immunity to online companies that republish content from elsewhere. TripAdvisor is protected under Section 230 when reviewers say negative things, according to Vivek Krishnamurthy, an instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic.
He said the “badge” system is a good way of hedging against some of the risk of being held liable for injuries to travelers or to the hotels and restaurants that get bashed by bad reviews.
“Once you start playing with the content, it becomes trickier,” he said. “The more you go down the road of becoming an e- commerce site with reviews, the protections start to look shakier.”
“There are lots of unanswered questions here,” he added. “We’re just at the beginning of seeing these kinds of suits emerge.”
“There was nobody to connect with and ask why they didn’t publish it.”
A Russian travel writer said she could not get an explanation for why her account of a sexual assault was kept off TripAdviser.