I feel like if leaving a one-star review of Google Maps can put you in jail in Thailand, it is highly irresponsible and unethical of Google to allow leaving reviews in Thailand. They should remove review feature entirely for Thailand, or disable lower ratings, or show a giant flashing warning explaining what you are risking by leaving the review.

On top of that they could scratch the review score for this property, remove the possibility to review it and put in a story about how a guest was arrested and jailed for posting a review. Google didn't cause this but they could have a part in stamping out this problem.

It sounds like it was the specific text of the review that led to the arrest. It doesn’t sound like all 1-star reviews would qualify as defamation. Of course it’s possible in any country to post certain text that is illegal. Fraud, threats of violence, and defamation are three obvious examples that are probably illegal to post online in nearly every country. I’m not sure why Google would need to post a specific warning about this.

The issue was not so much rating as content of comment. In particular they took offence over his claim they engaged on modern day slavery. That particular comment was taken down cause it broke site guidelines.

Thank you! This should be the top comment in this whole thread, as it is the only one, that speaks to the actual subject of the case.

It's just a figure of speech. What's so gravely offensive about it?

“Modern slavery” isn’t a figure of speech. It has a specific meaning describing worker exploitation.

For example the UK has the Modern Slavery Act - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Slavery_Act_2015

I mean, it’s at least arguably an allegation of a crime. I wouldn’t be a fan of criminal libel still existing, but that’s a case where it might be appropriate for the hotel to take a civil libel case, assuming it’s unfounded.

Which, considering this is Thailand, probably is founded indeed.

Nice downvotes. I don't get how people can be so oblivious to the fact that Thailand is one of the major hubs for modern slavery, especially when it's so well publicized but, well.

Context matters, in this case location.

It’s like joking about child prostitution in Cambodia. As an American it’s something that happens in far away lands (not entirely true, it happens in the US too).

In Cambodia, it’s a very serious issue that really pisses of locals since it’s mostly Western tourists supporting it there.

Joke about it in the US and it’s just frowned upon. Do it in Cambodian and you’ll piss people off enough to get yourself in trouble.

Read the article please. Quote: "A disgruntled American hotel guest who posted several bad TripAdvisor..."

It's right there at the start. So has nothing to do with Google Maps.

>I feel like if leaving a one-star review of Google Maps can put you in jail in Thailand, it is highly irresponsible and unethical of Google to allow leaving reviews in Thailand.

What? No. You can defame yourself in literally any public media forum where what you say could affect the other party. That means literally any public website with a comment feature. Singling out just google maps with a solution like that makes no sense.

Google has no ethical requirement to cotton wool people from being a dick and trying to negatively impact a business's revenue.

Jail for one star reviews is atypical even outside the west.

Short of threats of physical violence, you can't be put in jail for a comment in the US. That you think an opinion, no matter how dickish, warrants incarceration is ethically bankrupt.

That's not true at all. Aside from the obvious possibility of posting a comment that incriminates yourself, there are many situations where people have access to information that would be illegal to share on facebook - here's an example of someone found guilty of contempt of court for doing so https://www.wwlp.com/news/crime/mom-jailed-for-facebook-post...

Foreign travellers in the US can be as bad or worse than US travelers in other countries. Many Europeans, Asians, Africans, South Americans etc do no better job informing themselves of and following local customs in the US than Americans do in their countries.

> know the local laws

I've been to Singapore. There's the ones everyone knows about like the drug laws, not spitting, littering, or chewing gum. The one people don't mention is that cars also have the right of way over pedestrians, so be extra careful when crossing the street.

Pedestrians have right of way at pedestrian crossings. Cars have right of way elsewhere.

https://sso.agc.gov.sg/SL/RTA1961-R24?DocDate=20190131#pr4-

This is pretty standard, and Singapore is way safer for pedestrians than virtually any Asian country outside Japan.

In many states of the US, cars are never granted right of way over pedestrians. Instead pedestrians are required to yield the right of way to cars outside of crosswalks.

It's an important distinction because it places a legal burden on the driver to attempt to avoid hitting a pedestrian.

Pedestrians generally have right of way. Singapore is pretty exceptional in this. Further, loads of Asian countries are pretty poor safety wise. I don't think a comparison to other Asian countries is beneficial. Singapore probably also benefits that owning a car is quite expensive, plus sort of ok public transport (a bus is terribly slow though!). Singapore still heavily favours a car. A public transport ride can be easily 2x-3x the time as a car trip.

From your link: > Elderly pedestrians accounted for two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities. (1 in 2 accidents involving elderly pedestrians was due to jaywalking)

Singapore does seem safe in a deaths/100k comparison. There's some EU figures where the best country does about ~20/million (so around ~2.0/100k). Singapore has 2.2/100k.

Things such as "jaywalking" is not a thing in loads of countries.

Also, the traffic lights are horrendous. You need to wait way too long. See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4 for various examples of way quicker lights.

On the other hand, one of the laws that nobody bothers to enforce in Singapore is jaywalking.

I’m unsure why you’re being downvoted. But it’s true. Unless you’re jaywalking in a busy area and causing distribution to traffic. The police don’t really mind if you jaywalk providing it’s safe for you to do so.

Edit: I guess the truth doesn’t matter on HN.

It's especially funny considering I'm a Singaporean citizen.

There's a blind corner near the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Giant "no crossing" signs. Pedestrians get hit all the time. It used to be standard for the police to write tickets to the person who got hit if they lacked life threatening injuries.

Then one time the person who got hit died in the hospital from a pre-existing condition, so they stopped writing the tickets.

So it's like Chicago, but clean?

> learn the local laws

I'm local to America, and I can assure you no human being is capable of learning my local laws. How many federal laws are there? No one even knows!

http://kowal.com/?q=How-Many-Federal-Laws-Are-There%3F

What hope do I have of learning local laws somewhere else? What hope does a foreigner have in America? The best you can hope for is to get a cheatsheet of some big common differences and then keep a low profile.

I don't know why you brought up "don't be a dick". It's unrelated to the matter at hand.

We don't know whether they were a dick or not. Even if they were, they didn't deserve to be jailed.

What we know for sure is that they went to jail because of a bad online review.

This is like telling a rape victim to not be a dick. Like wtf. Why is it even related?

As a Thai, we hope foreigners will help Thailand come up with better consumer protection. Thailand don't protect consumer as much as it should, and that's fucking sad.

Well, being dick shouldn't put you in jail.

There's a difference between being a dick, and trying to negatively affect a business's revenue with multiple, fabricated negative reviews posted over several weeks.

Over the fact you didn't want to pay corkage for bringing in outside alcohol (a pretty normal thing).

Is that really the level of being a dick that should land you in a foreign prison?

"Should" is a dubious word to use here. That's what the law is there, and what you or I think "should" happen isn't relevant.

It's relevant for other tourists who want to know the level of risk they are subjecting themselves when visiting. The Thai resort really Barbra Streisand'ed this.

Really? I should abandon my ethics and morals when I look to a different jurisdiction? If "what the law is there" is unjust, immoral, unethical, I should STFU, because that's what the law is there? That's an 'interesting' world view. It's a convenient one, because standing up for morals and ethics is inconvenient, but not everyone swings that way.

I don't see why not. The net damage might be equivalent to stealing significant money.

Stealing implies one party enriches themselves at the expense of another.

A better term for this situation would be "costing."

I was specifically referring to damage.

Perhaps, but as America has a reputation for putting people in jail for quite a few ridiculous reasons, we should be the last people to pass judgment on other countries' arrest policies.

Harassment might though, if the hotel is to be believed in this story.

I would not be surprised one bit if Singapore punished being a dick with N lashes in a public square.

I've lived in Singapore and they have a strong legal system, they don't just punish you for "being a dick". They do have a lot of strict laws, however.

They do kind of punish you for being a dick though, very very harshly: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-robe...

I was actually there when this was going on earlier this year. Could have easily been me. They just picked on these poor people to make an example of them because they faced a backlash from locals (many of whom did similar things in other areas)

But again, that's breaking laws, not being a dick. They have laws and they enforce them.

Unless you're a live in maid right?

Sure, my comment was meant to further demonstrate how different nations have different laws foreigners must respect when within their borders.

I've read multiple articles over the years about foreigners being caned in Singapore over relatively minor actions, hence my not being surprised if they did such a thing.

Here's one such example:

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/26/us/us-student-tells-of-pa...

Singapore strikes me as an interesting mix of an archaic kingdom with a modern culture and economy. I'm not necessarily against their use of corporal punishment and strict laws, it seems to be a generally nice place.

> I've read multiple articles over the years about foreigners being caned in Singapore over relatively minor actions, hence my not being surprised if they did such a thing.

The Michael Fay story was reported with a heavy bias in the US — the media conveniently left our significant parts of the story.

I have friends who were expats in Singapore at the time, and this is (approximately) their version:

- He was caught vandalizing multiple times.

- The first time he was given a stern warning.

- After successive events, his family was warned that their son was in grave danger, and their status in the country was at risk.

- After one or more additional events, they suggested to the family that Michael should leave the country immediately. His parents found that inconvenient due to their jobs being in Singapore.

- After another event, it was suggested to the family that both they and their son should leave Singapore immediately. Again, they chose not to leave.

- Finally, after multiple warnings, and one or more additional transgressions, they threw the book at him.

- According to my friends, most of the expats thought he was a rotten kid, and they thought he deserved it.

Note that this jibes with how I have seen a lot of law enforcement happen (esp. with Americans) in Japan, Korea, and HK. Specifically, warnings often happen before the hammer comes down, and that usually solves the problem. But if and when the hammer comes down, the outcome will be very bad for the recipient. When I have discussed this matter and this type of justice with folks from Japan, Korea, and HK, they all think it is fairly reasonable, and they don’t know of anyone personally who was not given a reasonable chance (obviously small sample size, and obviously the system isn’t always reasonable, but the consistency of the answers was surprising to me).

All that said, I suspect that some folks from developing countries may reasonably disagree with my assessment of Japan. I haven’t had the chance to speak with specific parts of those communities, so it’s hard to know what the reality is.

Otherwise +1, but they actually went comparatively easy on him: he could have been sentenced to 3 years in jail plus 8 strokes of the cane, but he got away with 4 months and 6 strokes, and even that was commuted to 4.

That said, caning in Singapore is no joke, even those 4 will scar for life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore

I remember that! I went to the same school as that student. Blast from the past. It was a big news deal amongst the expats of the time. Although clearly he did a little more than simply just being a dick.

Which by the way might a perfect way of punishing dicks - nothing like pain and public humiliation to cure inflated egos.

That seems like a decent enough idea when you're 14 or so, but you need to understand how these things pan out IRL.

When Fill-In-Political-Party-You-Don't-Like takes charge, lobbies to expand the definition of dickery, adds criticism of corporal punishment policies to the list, and rules that you are a dick... now it's just about the worst idea.

> Which by the way might a perfect way of punishing dicks - nothing like pain and public humiliation to cure inflated egos.

That's a sub-human system of torture and brutality that you're cheering for, which would be rife with false accusations and witch-hunting style assaults by the mob as large groups of people would increasingly lust to harm outcasts and persecute smaller collections of minorities.

Are we burning people with inflated egos today? Stonings? Pulling finger nails out? That person over there, they've got an inflated ego, I saw them taking a selfie on Tuesday!

It would be the perfect way to run a stalinist gulag perhaps.

That’s a very Western point of view and not held by much of the world.

Sorry, but Americans are not the worst, no matter what you as the stereotypical self-deprecating American may think. If you asked Thai people who the worst are, they'd probably say Chinese tourists.

Living here, they usually do single out Chinese tour groups. It’s not a cheap vacation for Americans to just go to Thailand. The raucous Americans that just want to get stupidly drunk on a hot beach while harrassing local women usually go to Mexico, Central America, or the Carribean. In Thailand you can usually pick out the Americans for being eager to eat spicy food on the streets in an attempt to ‘live like a local’ instead of at the stereotypical Western pubs. There’s a selection bias on the accessiblity and cultural interest that causes generally better-than-average, non-stereotypical Americans to find themselves in Thailand specifically.

What if “they” didn’t think stereotypically and instead were open to the idea that individual people might think individually, regardless of race, culture, or nationality?

Agreed. But interesting how the "American tourists are the worst!" comment is currently upvoted and the "Nope, actually the Chinese are the worst" is downvoted.

Even if you believe it true that a pattern of a grouping of people is more often true than not doesn't mean it's something you should go around proudly stating.

Ironically, this is an extremely Western mindset you're what-iffing. And you don't need to rely on stereotypes for a population to have a preference(or viewpoint) on something.

If you say pizza is Americans favorite food, because 60% of individuals you ask say pizza is their favorite food, then no stereotype is in play.

That would solve so many problems.....

Chinese tourists do have quite a reputation for creating a nuisance. But in most of Asia the tourists who have the worst reputation for most outrageous behaviour has to be the Russians and Australians. Russians and Australians going to Asian tourist destinations, getting extremely drunk and starting fights is pretty much a cliche.

say what cunt? wanna go

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait to HN. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The basic idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

Hmmmm. Just to point out, that specific comment is Australian humour.

It's not good Australian humour, but it's humour. It's taking the piss out of (mocking) a "stereotypical Australian" reaction, as commonly found in pubs and other (cheaper) drinking establishments.

Sure, but the issue is https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=throwawaynothx, not that specific comment.