EU businesses covertly eliminate negative appraisals through the implementation of the EU Digital Services Act
The Digital Services Act (DSA), a comprehensive regulatory framework adopted by the European Union in November 2022, aims to establish uniform rules for online intermediary services across all member states. However, the abuse of review removal mechanisms by businesses, particularly in Germany, poses a significant challenge for the DSA's effectiveness.
In Germany, the abuse of review removal mechanisms has reached an industrial scale, involving specialized service companies, automated complaint filing, and coordinated campaigns against negative feedback. German businesses are filing mass complaints against negative reviews, claiming defamation even when reviews describe genuine customer experiences.
This systematic manipulation of online reviews on platforms like Google Reviews, TripAdvisor, and Trustpilot continues to affect consumer choice and business competition. It undermines the reliability of online reviews for marketing professionals and calls into question the effectiveness of the DSA's provisions.
The DSA includes provisions for reporting potentially illegal content (Article 16). However, platforms like Google, TripAdvisor, and Trustpilot receive thousands of takedown requests daily but lack the resources to properly evaluate each complaint. This leaves room for abuse, as German businesses exploit these provisions to remove unfavorable online reviews.
The Duesseldorf Regional Court's January 15, 2025 decision in the case of Stuttgart-based Skinport versus Google Ireland Limited established important precedent regarding platform liability under DSA provisions. The court ruled that platforms can be held liable for the removal of reviews if they do not properly assess the legitimacy of the takedown requests.
Google's approach involves notifying reviewers about removal requests and providing limited appeal opportunities. However, reviews aren't automatically deleted upon complaint, but if the reviewer does not respond within a given timeframe, the review is removed. This raises questions about the effectiveness of current appeal mechanisms.
Consumers are advised to seek businesses with mixed review profiles rather than uniformly high ratings for more accurate and helpful information. Photographic evidence appears to provide the strongest defense against false removal claims.
Despite comprehensive DSA implementation across all EU member states, Germany demonstrates unique patterns of systematic abuse not observed at similar scales in other jurisdictions. The European Commission has defended the Digital Services Act against censorship allegations, but the statistic encompasses all content types across all platforms, not specifically review abuse in Germany.
Regulators face challenges in balancing content moderation effectiveness with protection against abuse as digital competition frameworks continue to evolve. The phenomenon of review manipulation demonstrates how regulatory mechanisms designed for consumer protection can be weaponized by businesses to suppress legitimate criticism.
Food safety departments can conduct inspections and take enforcement action against establishments with genuine hygiene problems, providing remedies that review removal cannot eliminate. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it is crucial for regulators to address the issue of review manipulation to ensure the integrity of online reviews and maintain fair competition among businesses.
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