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There’s lots of good stuff in the New Scientist article Don’t let cyber-spite ruin your good name, and a bunch of great companies mentioned – ClaimID, TrustPlus, and ReputationDefender . The issue is not just reputation, and the protection of your reputation (which is certainly the end result), but is the person posting a comment, negative or positive, really real or completely anonymous?
Just like in the real world, someone is more likely to shout some craziness from the bleachers, versus in an in person forum, where they have to introduce themselves in some fashion but they do have to prove they are identifiable.
Don’t let cyberspite destroy your good name
You buy a television on eBay. When it arrives, you eagerly unwrap it, only to find it is badly scratched. You return it, and leave a negative comment about the seller on the site. The next day, you find the seller has retaliated by posting a nasty comment about you, branding you as a time-waster. Suddenly, no one wants to sell to you and your reputation is in tatters.
Until now eBay’s rating system, which allows users of the auction and trading site to leave good or bad comments about their trading partners, has worked well. Sellers who ship out damaged goods, or items that do not match their online description, rightly get a black mark against their name. However, this system has recently come under increasing pressure from an all-too-human failing: spite. Sellers can easily retaliate against buyers who have named and shamed them, leaving unwarranted but highly visible comments – perhaps claiming that the buyers do not follow through with purchases, or needlessly return items they have bought.
Fear of this retaliatory renegging can deter buyers from posting negative comments about their trading experiences. In turn, this threatens to undermine the trust that buyers place in sellers ratings.
So severe has the renegging problem become that this month eBay was forced to change its rating system, preventing sellers from posting negative comments about bad buyers on the site.
In an online auction site like eBay, your reputation is your livelihood. Economists Daniel Houser of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and John Wooders of the University of Arizona, Tucson, have shown that sellers with positive ratings are able to sell items at higher prices, because buyers will willingly shell out greater sums just to be sure they are buying from a trustworthy source. And more people are likely to bid on items offered by those of good standing (Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, vol 15, p 353).
In a study to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research next month, Amar Cheema of Washington University in St Louis also found that when a seller’s reputation is less than squeaky clean, bidders are more likely to scrutinize additional costs such as shipping charges and bail out if they are too high. When the seller’s reputation is good, however, buyers are less interested in such surcharges, and sellers are more likely to secure a deal.
Trading websites are not the only place where nasty comments can have serious financial implications. When someone writes something malicious about you online it can be read by anyone typing your name into a search engine for years to come – including potential employers and university admissions staff. And as the number of websites that people use to buy and sell or make new friends and business contacts increases, so too does the need to guard against such acts of cyber-spite.
