Comment on A top-rated, exclusive London restaurant on TripAdvisor turned out to be a fake — and it shows how easy it is to game the system

A top-rated, exclusive London restaurant on TripAdvisor turned out to be a fake — and it shows how easy it is to game the system

Sergi Alexander/Getty Images for Haute Living A fake restaurant managed to become London's top rated spot on TripAdvisor in November. A London-based writer, Oobah Butler used shaving cream and bleach tablets to create fake photos of the cuisine and recruited friends to leave five star reviews. Butler bought a burner phone to receive reservation calls and reject "customers," explaining the restaurant's booked schedule. TripAdvisor eventually caught the fake restaurant, and said it didn't prove much about manipulated site reviews. A London-based writer has illustrated how easy it is to manipulate review sites like TripAdvisor, by pushing an entirely nonexistent restaurant to the top spot in all of London. Vice writer Oobah Butler — who also recently impersonated a designer for Paris Fashion Week — already had a bit of experience with gaming review sites, having previously been paid to write fake reviews by a shady PR service. That inspired him to create The Shed at Dulwich, which was, literally, the backyard cottage he calls home.

 

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