A decent outcome here would be if Glassdoor revealed all employers that attempt to go after former employees with alerts like the current one on the Zuru page.
Foo Technology unambiguously did not exist as a separate company in any form.
Thing is, Foo was the unlikely company where the line workers were more satisfied than the Technology employees - the company overall was very decent but the technology org was toxic.
Accordingly, Foo Technology had lousy ratings and negative reviews, while Foo has largely positive reviews and a strong rating. The difference was on the order of Foo~=4.0 while Foo Technology~=2.0, both derived from a significant number of employees.
You can imagine the pitfall this could create as a prospective technology employee contemplating a stint at Foo.
As a disgruntled Foo “Technology” employee I contacted Glassdoor to notify them that a nonexistent company was distracting many genuine reviews away from a legitimate company.
Glassdoor notified me that they would not provide any corrective action unless the formal owner of the Glassdoor account for Foo agreed to it.
This told me that accuracy of reviews on Glassdoor comes in a few positions shy of their top priority.
Although in full disclosure, a year or two later the 2 separate “companies” did get merged on Glassdoor. I don’t know what the impetus finally was, but they certainly didn’t give a shit when I notified them of the snafu with their system.
That said, it seems like negative reviews can easily end up violating one of the many other terms of use[1] around review content. Specifically that a user will not: "Post Content that is defamatory, libelous, or fraudulent"... and "Act in a manner that is [...] otherwise objectionable (as determined by Glassdoor)". That's really broad, and negative reviews can easily be framed as "defamatory" or "objectionable" even if they are factual...
[0] https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Can-employers-pay-Glass...
They could easily be telling the truth there, but still be effectively selling a good rating. They'd just have to sell a service to help monitor the reviews in some way for violations of ToS. Suddenly ~all of the bad reviews are "spam", "libel", etc. It's amazing how broadly things can be recognized as abusive if your pocketbook depends on it.
I have _no_ idea if they're actually doing this or not, but it's along the lines of the scam many review sites use.
I have worked at several companies that received a lot of poor reviews and often what happens if you keep track of those reviews over several months is that they "mysteriously" disappear. Of course by that point the person who left the review has probably moved on to a new job and can't be bothered writing another review that is sufficiently vague as to avoid potential removal. One company I worked at even had its overall rating significantly messed with (over 0.5 change within a month), as those old reviews disappeared and "mysteriously" a bunch of vapid positive reviews appeared.
All that said, I still check Glassdoor before every job I interview for. You just need to be mindful - especially for larger companies who can afford the time to curate their reviews - that the score is perhaps a little inflated, and that the reviews that remain are as tactfully-worded as possible to avoid deletion.
they will present is as a review optimization strategy.
this is how yelp did it back in the day.
i dont know if glassdor does or did it, just pointing out other review sites did do it and never posted it on their "pricing" or "services" page for employers...
Yelp no longer does this?
Just passing along rumors I have no particularly informed insight here or verifiable reason to believe this is true, though I do believe it's in the plausible-to-likely range.
The companies they'd be outing aren't valuable to glassdoor.
Another comment here suggests the following Google query:
"Glassdoor Alert: Employer Legal Action" site:glassdoor.com