Italian Legislators Rekindle Decade-Long Grudge Match Against Tripadvisor And Its Reviewers

Italy remains pretty fucking weird when it comes to all things Italian. From top prosecutors taking aim at vendors who debase" respected Italian art by, say, offering products featuring Michelangelo's David" (mainly the naked bits, which is all of it) or fining government entities (even those engaged in promoting tourism) for using any other language but Italian for official communications.

And, for some reason, the government entity in charge of promoting tourism (with or without the use of languages tourists would be more familiar with), has been going after Tripadvisor and its users since late 2014. Regulators, who perhaps didn't realize none of this matters to an American company with Section 230 protections, decided they could fine Tripadvisor over $600,000 for failing" to remove fake" reviews fast enough to soothe the eternally perturbed souls of a country that still hasn't managed to shed all the fascism it obtained during the World War II years.

Fortunately, the country's courts aren't quite as performative as the rest of the government. An Italian court overturned the fine six months later, pointing out (logically) that the harm to consumers was, at best, negligible. If local businesses felt some reviews were fake," they could still approach TripAdvisor to have them removed. And they still retained the opportunities afforded to all businesses everywhere: they could respond in kind on any number of services offered worldwide by dozens of tech companies.

For no apparent reason, what seemed to have been cooled off permanently nearly a decade ago is now back in play. As CNN reports, legislators are proposing a new law that would force Tripadvisor to verify" reviews of Italian touristy stuff in order to root out the alleged fraudulent reviews politicians are once again claiming plague this one particular review site.

The proposed law, supported by Italy's tourism minister, Daniela Santanche, will put the onus on travel review sites like Tripadvisor to verify that anyone leaving a review has actually visited the establishment they are reviewing and is not getting paid to write positive appraisals.

Any reviews will have to be verified with a valid ID and the reviewer will have to prove that they were at the establishment within two weeks of writing a review.

The skew is in play here. The real reason for this law is to discourage people from leaving negative reviews of Italian establishments. The side effect is also the chilling effect: the collection and retention of identifying info from all Tripadvisor users, because simply filtering for reviews+Italy" probably isn't going to catch all the people these legislators feel should be named, retained, and (if need be) shamed.

According to the bill's supporters, this isn't about discouraging negative reviews of Italian tourism businesses. Instead, they claim this will prevent unfair" competition, expose pay-to-play reviewers, and root out fraud."

I can guarantee this bill, if passed, will accomplish none of these things. But it will discourage honest users from criticizing (or even praising) places they visited in Italy. Lots of people like writing reviews. And the more reviews an entity gets, the better others can appraise it before spending their own money on it. Forcing them to cough up identifying info is a non-starter, especially when people will be made aware by TripAdvisor that it's the Italian government demanding this, rather than the site itself.

Given the history of Italy's governance, informed travelers will just refuse to leave reviews lest they become the new targets of the government's bizarre ire. And that will just leave other travelers with less informed going forward.

If you don't believe me, just ask tourism industry reps what they think about this proposal:

Confescercenti Nazionale, an association that represents small tourism entities, said the proposed law doesn't go far enough.

We expected a lot and we find very little," the group said in a statement after the bill was introduced Tuesday. It is certainly insufficient to effectively enhance the system of Italian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises."

Anyone can read between these lines. The tourism industry isn't happy because the law doesn't mandate only positive reviews or target Tripadvisor (the entity with the biggest pockets) for hosting negative reviews that tourism entities (and the legislators that love them) always insist are fake."

What's not immediately clear is how demanding proof of identity and receipts is going to deter fake positive reviews. What seems immediately clear is how this information can be leveraged by the government to seek further action against negative reviews of Italian businesses and apply even more pressure to Tripadvisor and others to discourage users from reviewing these businesses altogether.

It appears the government would prefer silence to the occasional negative review. And just a heads up to those looking at visiting this country: the industry you're patronizing thinks people who leave reviews it doesn't like aren't being treated harshly enough.