Restaurant listing and food delivery company Zomato has launched a ‘report abuse’ feature for its restaurant partners to fight against malicious user reviews, the company announced in a blog post. Why? Zomato said that some bad actors started abusing the platform to their benefit, which led to two major problems - blackmail and bribery, as Zomato likes to call it. It said that some such users were trying to solicit perks like free meals, discounts, or cash in exchange for positive reviews or with the veiled threat of a poor review if the restaurateur refuses - which Zomato calls blackmail. And, some restaurant owners and managers were offering freebies or money in exchange of positive reviews or rating - which it likes to tag as bribery. How does the feature works Restaurateurs, who use Zomato for Business app can directly flag any review which they feel is written with malicious intent. When they flag it or report abuse it, the review will not get immediately moderated, but Zomato will use that data to identify bad users on Zomato over the long term and eventually freeze their profiles and delete their past reviews. Speaking about its second issue of bribery, the company said that before the end of the year, it will take significant steps being towards solving bribery as well. It will then let users to report instances where restaurants (or the agencies they hire) have offered something for free to solicit a positive review. For such cases, Zomato will put up a ‘shame…
