I'm confused if I should respond with a cat litter comment or Hive...LMFAO
For the cat litter, the fancier it looks, the more likely to be a gimick. Checking the laws of the country of production and the standards helps determine the safety. With the easy globalism concept, this is also not only to cat products but also children's products with elevated heavy metal content. As a pet owner, I have pondered the option of a much safer version with weight and time release features and no lid to trap the cat "in" to get got by the killer-litter. Didn't take the plunge but they have been around for a decade so I'm sure that says something to as far as reputation.
Now for the Hive part, an honest product review is an honest product review and if they don't want a bad review then they shouldn't create harmful products and sell to consumers under false safety guises and lies. Much of it is a lack of the population themselves using common sense and researching what they put in their households for their families and the law shouldn't be able to suppress a real honest review with these products genuinely warning other potential would be users for experiencing the same repercussions. This is where it's a double edge sword, some people use that to discredit honest people to create a bad reputation for their product/business to fail just out of pure spite. I suppose the hive translation we would all understand, like getting caught up in a whale downvote path for no reason but a beef and a means of intimidation and bullying. In which case, the law should be able to interfere with the wrongful slander.
everything we tinker with as repercussions pros and cons. What is the PROPER BALANCE between customer safety and warning of a faulty product that a company genuinely is trying to downplay vs an honest one at the mercy of an unfair lynch mob.
I suppose for further investigation as in the event of disappearances and murders, it's probably good that there is an accessible version of the original text at the very least upon request.
Yeah I guess that's why reputation is also important on the reviews, hive does save you with the immutability but if you're someone who just goes around and leaves bad reviews cause you're in a bad mood or have a vendetta against the brand/product/ or are being paid to do so by competitors/etc, then there should be a reputation factor in play as well that let's readers know this particular reviewer has had a history of false/fake reviews so their review shouldn't be trusted.
It wouldn't even necessary have to be tied to hive itself, the reputation here is very bad and most of the time doesn't mean much. If there's wars spawning due to these reviews with downvotes, etc, the community should then step in to counter the "bad" downvotes if the reviews are legit and the user has a good reputation history for reviews.
You bring many good points for sure with rep and other things, re-peat Karens just cause they got paid to do so or other incentive, that's deceptive. We get they exist and shouldn't be enabled either to incinerate some one's personal/online/business reputation and false law suites and all. It's such a complicated topic to explore to fully go into it.
In this specific litter case or others of the likes...well clear damages/harm/loss were experienced. Like you pointed out, some companies take great intimidation tactics, often underhanded on top of illegal to suppress the critic in question making the affected reviewer more squashed and made to look un-credible when they actually are. It's a slippery slope and hardly anyone can fully grasp a 360 perspective. This gets even deeper in the case of whistleblowers as well occupy that same dualistic concept and would often be faced with backlash and campaigns to discredit of some sort. Where do they fit in in all of this? Like I said, it's not really a black and white topic...there is bends all over. You affect one thing, you throw something else unforeseen completely off balance elsewhere.