Unvarnished colleague-rating site may fail in UK
Sites such as the recently launched Unvarnished, a US beta site that lets people write anonymous reviews about colleagues, professionals or clients, are unlikely to be a success in the UK because of our strict libel laws.
According to Struan Robertson, editor of OUT-LAW.com and legal director of Pinsent Masons LLP, even if Unvarnished does take off, "litigation seems inevitable".
The Unvarnished website, currently invite-only, lets you create profiles about either yourself or other people and post anonymous reviews about how good they are at their job, how they cope with situations and tasks and their general work ethics.
Once profiles and reviews are live on Unvarnished they cannot be removed. It is possible to take control of your profile even if it has been created by someone else, however you do not have control over the reviews that are published.
Unvarnished claims that there are lots of tools to manage your reputation throughout the site and community guidelines state that reviews must not contain "obscenities, personal attacks and aggressive or discriminatory language".
But Robertston told Web User: "Over here, a professional who feels he's the victim of damaging lies can say to the host "Delete that comment or I'll sue you" - and the host will likely be quick to comply."
"The host does that because the host can become liable for the comments if it doesn't remove them fast. In the US, though, a host enjoys far greater protection from libel lawsuits."
Unvarnished does warn that the reviewer themselves may be open to potential legal claims if they pass off false statements as fact, insisting that all reviews must be candid assessments based purely on professional dealings and performance.
Robertson argues that anonymity doesn't change liability, it will just make any legal proceedings more expensive in getting a court order for the host to identify the person who posted the comment.
He added: "Unvarnished will do what it can to avoid becoming a party to these suits. Just because many people hate the idea of anonymous comments doesn't mean that the service is illegal."
Unvarnished has also been described by some media commentators as like the evil twin or a meaner version of professional-networking website LinkedIn.
TechCrunch blogger Evelyn Rusli slammed the site as 'scary' and a place to anonymously settle vendettas, saying: "A damaging review could severely jeopardise a user's present and future employment. Because humans magnify the negative; an employee with 50 extremely positive reviews and five very negative reviews would be at a disadvantage against someone with no Unvarnished profile."
