Reviewers Deserve Respect

The other week, a pal of mine on Bluesky made fun of Edifier speakers, suggesting they were cheap and low-quality. As I had Edifiers on my desk at that very moment, I saw the message, and I guess I had to take it as some sort of personal attack? I don’t know.

Which is to say that I’m not exactly an audiophile over here (even if I love some loud, ripping music), I’m more likely to buy a $15 DIY DAC over something more complicated. (Side note: $15 DIY DACs are quite good.) There is little threat of me reviewing multi-thousand-dollar DACs with very specific features beyond my price range. (If you want me to review obscure or random computer stuff or the occasional kitchen tool, I’m your guy.)

People who review things have tough jobs that they often try to make look easy. But sometimes, the challenge of the job shows itself in fairly dramatic ways.

Recently, the audiophile reviewer Cameron Oatley, who runs the website GoldenSound and frequently collaborates as a creator with the online store Headphones.com, faced a legal threat over a review he had done more than two years prior.

What did he do wrong? Essentially, his highly technical 2021 review of the dCS Bartok seemed to set off an executive at dCS, a high-end audio brand that sells five-figure audio devices of extremely high sophistication. Over the span of a few years, what had started as a somewhat cordial relationship had devolved over a series of perceived slights and claims of misinformation that only seemed to worsen over time.

It culminated in a pair of videos, posted Sunday, in which Oatley laid out what led to the seven-figure threat. As Oatley noted in his own video, the company’s VP of Sales and Marketing sent a vicious message with this jaw-dropping line:

I have no insight into what motivates your irresponsible and overtly malicious behavior. I’m neither your mommy nor your therapist. But you can bank on the fact I will do all within my power to prevent people like you from lying about a company I love.

The tone, given the original review the VP was responding to, felt wildly out of line. That was reinforced when Oatley, who had asked for a list of corrections, later received a letter from a lawyer with those corrections, along with the implied legal threat.

One thing in Oatley’s favor, however, was that he had started working closely with Headphones.com in the meantime, and the e-commerce company, which has clout in Oatley’s field, decided to use their platform to defend him, posting a video of their own and announcing they would drop dCS from its product line. The CEO of the company even went to bat for their creator, which they did not have to do.

Eventually, after a bit of back and forth between the different stakeholders, cooler heads prevailed, especially after dCS revealed the executive had misled the firm’s managing director about the nature of the situation, leading to more honest rekindling of relationship between reviewer and company (along with at least one firing).

Now, to be clear, situations like these regarding negative reviews don’t always happen, but they can be damaging to the entire review ecosystem—and not just for professional reviewers. Back in April, for example, Google faced a civil lawsuit in Japan, filed by a group of doctors upset about negative reviews posted on Google Maps.

The Google lawsuit’s location points towards another complicating factor in the GoldenSound situation: It involved a British reviewer and British company, but the situation also had American stakeholders, including Headphones.com, the dCS employee who sent the disrespectful email, and the lawyer who sent the threatening letter. In the U.S., what Oatley was threatened with would be referred to as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or a SLAPP suit. But this is ultimately an international problem.

Reviews are by their nature subjective. And people won’t like negative reviews. I think a lot about how reviews of artistic things, like music reviews, would likely never lead to a lawsuit. (Travis Morrison wouldn’t have a legal case, but Pitchfork should perhaps consider sending him a gift card to a nice restaurant some time.) But when technology products are involved, the pressure to show things in a good light becomes more important.

Since I first stumbled on this issue a few months ago when MKBHD embarrassed Fisker, signs of companies taking more dramatic actions to offset negative reviews have been growing. The legal threat Oatley faced—not even the first in the audiophile space in recent months—speaks to companies who feel they can dictate coverage, and who will point at technical deficiencies in the review to try to silence their nagging critics.

That’s not how it works.