Recently, Weibo topics such as "Restaurants with low ratings may be more delicious" and "Young people retaliate to crowd 3.5-point restaurants" have appeared on the hot search, and the topic has been read more than 200 million times. Many netizens said that some "high-scoring stores" on the review platform frequently stepped on thunder, while other "low-scoring stores" were pleasantly surprised. Young people's reverse "planting" of low-rated consumption is not a "rebellion", but a silent counterattack to the false praise of the current online platform, reflecting the loss of credibility of Internet platforms and the lack of business integrity of some businesses.
When the Internet was just emerging, whether it was online shopping or dining out, opening the App to see the buyer's scores and evaluations before deciding whether to buy or not to go has become the standard action of many consumers. In the usual impression of ordinary people, the merchants and products with higher rankings and higher scores on the Internet platform mean that consumers have received more satisfactory goods or services here than other places, which often means that they have better quality and service.
However, with the passage of time, some unscrupulous businesses, driven by profits, do not rely on delicious food to conquer diners, but rely on "off-the-plate tricks" such as writing good reviews and giving small gifts, enjoying low-priced packages, etc., to brush up to inflated reviews, and even artificially create "high-scoring stores" with thousands of reviews by inviting food bloggers to experience the store and third-party operations to "brush up on good reviews". The original ideal state has been distorted by unscrupulous merchants, and the online review platform is no longer a platform to provide consumers with objective and neutral evaluations, but has become a tool for merchants to attract traffic. And those restaurants that have a good taste of the dishes, but have simple decoration, no bright spots, and will not use the Internet to attract traffic, will become the pearl of the catering industry due to low ratings. Therefore, "the more beautiful the praise, the more it is not necessarily true", has long been a tacit secret between restaurateurs and customers.
If false positive reviews on Internet platforms are allowed to overflow, "high-scoring stores" will be disappointing, "low-scoring stores" will exceed expectations, and "low-rated stores may be more delicious", which will form a "lose-lose" situation for platforms, merchants and consumers in the long run. On the one hand, the chaos of swiping high scores will inevitably lead to a continuous decline in the credibility and reference value of review apps, and consumers can no longer get positive feedback on review online platforms, and review online platforms will also lose their foundation for existence due to the loss of credibility. On the other hand, for merchants, relying on "good reviews" rather than dishes and flavors to attract customers' attention can only win a momentary interest, after all, the reputation of restaurants depends on "eating" after all.
The essence of young people's popularity of low-scoring restaurants is nothing more than the desire for authenticity and fairness and justice after the majority of consumers have been surrounded by various so-called "strong pushes" and "praises" for too long in the era of digital economy. In the information society, the role of the platform is very important, to a certain extent, the platform has the ability to make the store live or die, which requires it to cherish its own influence, so that those really good and trustworthy businesses stand out, so that serious businesses can benefit from the search ranking. Administrative law enforcement agencies should also actively act, when it is time to take action, combined with complaints and report information, in increasing the market rectification and purification, urging the Internet platform to improve the evaluation and display mechanism of catering enterprises at the same time, guide consumers to objectively look at the scoring and scoring, so that more "treasure stores" emerge, so as to better serve the market demand.