Hot on the heels of an Illinois court ruling that negative reviews are (in most cases) protected free speech, the Arizona State Legislature has proposed Senate Bill 1001, which would focus on preventing “extortion” through negative reviews, making certain negative reviews a criminal act.

Wait, what?

Yeah, don’t worry, we feel the same way.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard about influencers trying to get free meals, free hotels, free perks in exchange for the “publicity” a business would get after said influencers posted about and from whatever trendy business they happen to latch onto. Or maybe you’ve just seen the South Park episode where Cartman becomes a Yelp Elite and attempts to bend every restaurant in town to his greedy, voracious whims, lest they fall on the bad side of his reviews.

I can’t claim to be a business owner, but I’d hazard a guess that, unless you happen to be the purveyor at the waterfall adjacent, boutique hotel/hand-made organic cupcake eatery, then you aren’t being bombarded with young people wanting free things or else!

But I guess it’s happening enough to scare some politicians and business owners in Arizona. You know, the state where they do things RIGHT!

The Details

Arizona Sen. Vince Leach, R-SaddleBrooke, introduced the bill, which could see reviewers charged with a class 2 felony and a minimum 3 years in prison. The fear is that individuals are extorting business owners by threatening to leave negative reviews.

“I want a free X or I will leave a bad review,” Emmert said, “that by definition is theft by extortion.”

According to the Arizona Mirror, several area chambers of commerce support the bill, and Jan Newton, owner of a Mesa Nothing Bundt Cakes store spoke before the Arizona House Judiciary Committee on her experience with the issue.

Newton explained that “a one-star Google review can be extremely disastrous to us,” while also admitting that “she has not seen a loss in revenue from this issue.”

Now stop if you’ve heard this before— the bill passed along party lines. But not before Democratic senators voiced their concerns, which ranged from worrying “that changing the law would sweep in people who were not bad actors,” to pointing out that effective laws already exist, and finally suggesting that the focus should instead be on educating businesses of their rights, rather than adding new laws. Sen. Leach himself “admitted that existing state law against extortion likely covers the issue.”

What do I really need to know?

Let’s take a look at the nitty gritty of it. Here’s part of the current statute:

A person commits theft by extortion by knowingly obtaining or seeking to obtain property or services by means of a threat to do in the future any of the following:

…

6. Expose a secret or an asserted fact IN A SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGE AS DEFINED IN SECTION 16-901 OR IN ANY OTHER MANNER, whether true or false, tending to subject anyone to hatred, contempt or ridicule or to impair the person's credit or business.

The blue text is what has been added in this bill. The bolding is mine.

And just so we’re all on the same page, here is their definition of a social media message:

"Social media messages" means forms of communication, including internet sites for social networking or blogging, through which users create a personal profile and participate in online communities to share information, ideas and personal messages.

So in layman’s terms, you extort a business when you say “Free dessert or you’re getting slapped with a one star review, Tucson Tommy!”

I’m not one to say threats aren’t serious, but threats of one star reviews aren’t on par with threats to:

1. Cause physical injury to anyone by means of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument or cause death or serious physical injury to anyone.

2. Cause physical injury to anyone except as provided in paragraph 1 of this subsection.

3. Cause damage to property.

Which all appear on the statute just above where “social media messages” would be added, should this bill pass.

I guess time will tell what happens, and maybe, just to be safe, get yourself a VPN and post all your future one star reviews from Illinois.