This is interesting but a more accurate title would be "New Zealand law allows corporations to sue Glassdoor for user data." As the article notes:
> statements of “pure opinion” are protected by the First Amendment in America. But New Zealand doesn’t have this. Statements of opinion are not categorically protected.
That said, the warning that Glassdoor adds to the pages of companies that do this has to be the biggest warning not to go work for these companies; definitely a bigger deal than a couple of bad reviews.
US law could and should protect freedom of speech, even when it's not protected in other countries. If you sue a company in the US in an attempt to suppress speech that would be protected by the first amendment, US courts should reject that.
Are such reviews always "pure opinion"? Things like "low salary", "bad manager" etc are always opinions no matter what but what if I am lying and saying "we do overtime every other month" or "it is acceptable and encouraged for people to slap interns"? Why to do in such case?
That law feels very abusable. How do you prove an opinion to be honest/dishonest? That I expressed a different opinion at other times doesn't mean anything, because opinions change all the time. If my opinion is that your company sucks, I may also want to cause damage, so my motives for posting a negative review can't be used to show the option is dishonest. What metric would a court use to decide?
> statements of “pure opinion” are protected by the First Amendment in America. But New Zealand doesn’t have this. Statements of opinion are not categorically protected.
That said, the warning that Glassdoor adds to the pages of companies that do this has to be the biggest warning not to go work for these companies; definitely a bigger deal than a couple of bad reviews.