


































Economics, Law and Policy 
ISSN 2576-2060 (Print) ISSN 2576-2052 (Online) 

Vol. 8, No. 1, 2025 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elp 

127 
 

Original Paper 

Legal Regulation of Harassment over Food Delivery Reviews 

Ying Liu
1 

1
 Dalian Ocean University, Dalian 116023, China 

 

Received: April 12, 2025        Accepted: April 28, 2025      Online Published: April 29, 2025 

doi:10.22158/elp.v8n1p127               URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elp.v8n1p127 

 

Abstract 

This study uses literature and logical analysis to explore the legal regulation of the harassment of poor 

reviews of takeaways. The study finds that the right to bad reviews has the attributes of both 

supervisory rights and personality rights, and its protection is of great value to the market order, 

personality dignity and platform governance, but faces the dilemmas of ambiguous legal 

characterisation, unclear platform responsibilities and difficulties in defending rights, which are 

manifested in the problems of cross-criminal and civil identification, inconsistent application of laws 

and imbalance of evidence. In this regard, we propose a “legislation-platform-rights protection” 

trinity programme: refining the legal qualitative standards, perfecting the platform responsibility 

system, and innovating the evidence and rights protection mechanism, which will provide a reference 

for consumer protection and platform governance in the digital economy. 

Keywords 

consumer protection, Internet privacy, legal regulation 

 

1. Introduction  

In recent years, with the popularisation of mobile internet and smart terminals takeaway platforms have 

risen rapidly and gradually become an important part of the modern consumer ecology, during which 

consumers play an important role in market regulation through the statutory right-the right to 

evaluation, which is explicitly stipulated in Article 39 of the E-Commerce Law, but along with the 

intensification of market competition However, along with the intensification of market competition, 

the impact of bad user reviews on their ratings, rankings and orders is becoming more and more 

prominent, and merchants on the platform are facing significant operational pressure. In order to avoid 

the negative effect of bad reviews, some merchants take improper means such as harassment, threat and 

even privacy leakage to interfere with the user’s right to evaluation, which has become a new type of 

network infringement, such behaviour is a direct infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of 

consumers, and is even more destructive to the platform’s credit mechanism, which will exacerbate the 



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crisis of trust between the users and merchants, so there is an urgent need to carry out a systematic 

study at the theoretical and practical levels. The “2024 Evaluation Transparency Report” released by 

VWDianping shows that the platform intercepted 20,717,200 non-compliant evaluations and dealt with 

1,562,700 times of harassment of bad evaluations in the whole year (Volkswagen Dianping, 2024), 

which not only reflects the effectiveness of platform governance, but also highlights the complexity 

and challenge of evaluation ecological construction. This study takes this as an entry point to explore 

the balance of rights and interests in the online evaluation system and the governance mechanism, 

which not only aims to reveal the pain points and blockages in the current evaluation ecosystem, but 

also aims to build a set of comprehensive governance solutions that take into account the protection of 

consumers’ rights and interests, the maintenance of legitimate interests of merchants and the healthy 

development of platforms. At the theoretical level, this study will expand the theoretical connotation of 

consumer rights protection in the era of digital economy; at the practical level, the research results can 

provide useful references for the platform to optimise the governance rules, and the regulatory 

authorities to improve the policies and regulations, and ultimately promote the formation of a truthful, 

transparent and healthy online evaluation ecosystem, so that the benign cycle of consumers dare to 

evaluate, merchants focus on the service, and platforms are good at governance becomes possible. 

 

2. The Need for Legal Regulation of Harassment of Poor Takeaway Reviews 

2.1 Guaranteeing Consumers’ Freedom of Evaluation and Human Dignity 

Consumers make use of the blockchain online evaluation system with evaluation content integrity, 

tamperability and traceability to provide truthful and fair evaluations, and report false or misleading 

reviews through the reporting and screening mechanism, which can achieve the virtuous cycle of the 

evaluation system (Shi, P. P., Sun, G. Q., Shi, W. P. et al., 2025, pp. 149-163), and when merchants 

implement harassment, intimidation or even retaliation against consumers due to bad reviews, 

consumers’ freedom of evaluation and human dignity are vulnerable to infringement, and the law’s 

regulation of such behaviours is conducive to the protection of individual rights and interests. The 

regulation of such behaviour is conducive to the protection of individual rights and interests. The 

protection of consumers’ freedom of evaluation and human dignity is embodied in the following 

aspects: first, respecting consumers’ true will and guaranteeing that evaluation is not coerced. 

According to Article 39 of the E-Commerce Law, consumers have the legal right to objectively 

evaluate goods and services, and legal regulation of harassment due to poor user reviews not only helps 

to ensure that consumers can freely evaluate based on their real experience, but also ensures that the 

evaluation mechanism will not be reduced to a form. Secondly, strengthen the responsibility of 

platform supervision and enhance the transparency of the evaluation system. Dong Jingbo believes that 

the state’s supervision of online platforms should achieve coordination between policy and platform 

autonomy, adhere to the principle of “network neutrality” and the principle of transparency of platform 

rules, and promote the realisation of regulatory goals by regulating platform technology (Dong, J. B., 



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2022, pp. 70-82), thus, the law should establish a transparent mechanism for displaying and appealing 

against bad evaluations, and give play to the important role of takeaway platforms in safeguarding 

consumers’ freedom of evaluation. The law should establish a transparent mechanism for displaying 

and appealing against bad reviews, and give play to the advantage of takeaway platforms in protecting 

consumers’ freedom of evaluation. Third, balance the power contrast between merchants and 

consumers to maintain a fair trading environment. Merchants often occupy information and resource 

advantages in consumer relations, while the mechanism of bad reviews is one of the few checks and 

balances for consumers, and legal regulation is a strong guarantee for the correction of this inequality, 

and merchants should not be allowed to suppress bad reviews through harassment, which may lead to a 

further imbalance in the status of the two parties. 

2.2 Maintaining the Normal Market Order and Integrity System 

Maintaining market order and a fair and transparent market environment requires every businessman to 

adhere to the principle of honesty and ensure the truthfulness of the services provided, which can be 

derived from ensuring the truthfulness and objectivity of the evaluation in the online evaluation 

mechanism. Meng Fanxin to enhance the level of governance of network service trading platform, 

aimed at effective governance mechanism construction, the deception and opportunistic behaviour in 

the service transaction to effectively constrain, stop and necessary punishment, so as to achieve the 

high-quality development of the network service trading market (Meng, F. X., 2023, pp. 32-42). The 

regulation of bad review harassment behaviour is the guardian of market integrity and transparency. 

First, to ensure the truthfulness and objectivity of evaluation is the basic respect for every consumer. 

Online consumption era, evaluation is not only a simple scoring and message, but also between 

consumers to pass the bond of trust, a real bad evaluation, can remind other consumers to avoid risk, 

when the invisible and intangible online takeaway service tends to be transparent, consumer rights and 

interests are further safeguarded. Secondly, when the word-of-mouth attribute of bad reviews is 

revealed, businesses can be forced to improve their services, thus forming a good atmosphere for 

upward competition. When individual merchants through harassment means to “eliminate” bad reviews 

and improve the ranking, other law-abiding operators will be forced to follow, otherwise it will be at a 

disadvantage in the algorithm recommendation, which will lead to the destruction of the market order, 

so that the regulation is also a sense of security to the business. Third, evaluation authenticity directly 

affects the efficiency of resource allocation. Legal regulation through clear behavioural boundaries and 

disciplinary standards, can rebuild “quality service-real praise-traffic reward” market positive cycle, so 

that the focus of business competition to return to the quality of service rather than public opinion 

manipulation. 

2.3 Promoting Service Innovation and Industry Upgrading 

To promote service innovation and industry upgrading in order to better meet consumer demand and 

thus promote economic development, takeaway platforms and merchants need to continuously carry 

out service innovation and improve service quality and efficiency. The legal regulation of the 



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harassment of bad reviews of takeaways not only has a negative defensive value, but also promotes the 

innovation and upgrading of the catering and local life service industry in a positive way. Firstly, it 

forces service upgrading. When the law explicitly prohibits businesses from interfering with consumer 

evaluations through harassment, businesses will be forced to shift the focus of competition to 

improving the quality of food, delivery efficiency and after-sales service, which will in turn promote 

service innovation and healthy development of the industry. Second, bad reviews drive optimisation. 

Bad reviews themselves are real feedback in the market demand, when the business can not be 

suppressed through harassment of bad reviews will naturally be more proactive in analysing the content 

of the bad reviews, through the identification of shortcomings in the service and then promote product 

improvement or process re-engineering, this model of bad review-driven innovation is the original 

intention of the evaluation mechanism is also a healthy market should be a virtuous cycle. Third, 

regulate competition in the industry. From the perspective of the industry as a whole, the legal 

regulation of bad review harassment is equivalent to the establishment of a “competitive bottom line”, 

through the establishment of a “competitive bottom line” can prompt the industry to shift from low-end 

price wars or brushing marketing to high-quality competition centred on user experience, thereby 

promoting the transformation and upgrading of the entire service industry. The establishment of a 

“competitive bottom line” can prompt the industry to shift from low-end price wars or brush marketing 

to high-quality competition centred on user experience, thereby promoting the transformation and 

upgrading of the entire service industry. 

 

3. The Real Dilemma of Legal Regulation of Bad Review Harassment Behaviour 

3.1 Difficulty in Characterising Behaviour 

In judicial practice, the legal characterisation of bad review harassment faces a number of dilemmas, 

which are first reflected in the ambiguous area of civil tort determination. When merchants frequently 

call consumers or send harassing information due to bad reviews, it may involve the infringement of 

the right to privacy, the right to reputation and the right to peace of mind, etc. However, the current 

Civil Code does not clearly define the boundaries of these rights, which are generally divided into two 

situations: one is simple telephone bombing, which may constitute an infringement of the right to peace 

of mind, and the other is that it may be accompanied by verbal abuse and threats, which may 

simultaneously infringe the right to reputation, and this phenomenon of competing rights has a 

significant impact on whether judges can accurately apply the law when adjudicating the case. This 

phenomenon of competing rights makes it difficult for judges to apply the law accurately when making 

decisions. Secondly, it is often difficult to quantify the damage caused by the infringement, and the 

damage suffered by consumers mainly manifests itself in mental suffering and daily life, with mental 

suffering including anxiety, fear and other negative emotions caused by the continuous harassment, and 

interference in daily life manifesting itself in the form of reduced concentration at work, limited social 

activities and other specific aspects. These damages are obviously subjective and persistent, and are 



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difficult to be verified by objective means such as medical examination and the lack of uniform 

assessment standards, in judicial practice, the quantification of damages caused by infringement of 

rights has always been faced with significant difficulties, which can be seen in the harassment of 

takeaways in the case of bad reviews is a difficult point. Finally, the anonymity of the network has 

increased the difficulty of proof. Consumers will face technical obstacles in proving that the harassing 

calls actually came from the poorly rated merchants, and in reality, even if the harassed consumers 

inquire about the number through the operator, they may also encounter the merchants using the “black 

card” or the virtual number as a means of circumvention, so the difficulty of proof is a cause for 

concern. 

In terms of criminal identification, the harassment of bad reviews may constitute offences such as 

provoking trouble and infringing on citizens’ personal information, but there are still gaps in the 

existing law in terms of behavioural characterisation, rules of evidence and the appropriateness of the 

offence. Firstly, there are disputes over the application of the criminal law offences of provoking 

trouble and insults to the harassment of bad reviews, and it is difficult for general telephone harassment 

to meet the “aggravating circumstances” criterion, unless it results in extreme consequences such as 

consumer suicide. Secondly, it is difficult to grasp the scale of the determination of threatening words, 

the so-called “I know your home address” of the merchant may be deemed to be just a statement of fact 

rather than a clear threat, and it is yet to be confirmed whether the public security authorities have filed 

a case against such grey words. Finally, criminal investigations are faced with the problem of evidence 

collection and evidence fixing. In daily life, consumers often lack the awareness of evidence collection 

and do not record harassing phone calls, which leads to the loss of evidence, and even if there are 

recordings, they are often unable to form a complete chain of evidence due to the ambiguity of the 

content. What is more problematic is that when the harassment behaviour is scattered in multiple minor 

actions, the behaviour from the constituent elements of the analysis do not constitute a crime, but 

overall it causes serious distress to consumers, so the poor evaluation of the harassment behaviour in 

the criminal law level of the legal qualification is also particularly difficult. 

3.2 Lack of Accountability Mechanisms for Platforms 

Currently, there is an obvious lack of responsibility mechanisms for takeaway platforms in the event of 

harassment by bad reviews, which is mainly reflected in two aspects: the legal gap of the platform’s 

prior prevention obligations and the delayed response to complaint handling and information blocking. 

Although Article 39 of the E-Commerce Law stipulates in principle that platforms should provide 

consumers with evaluation channels and prohibit merchants from interfering with them, there is a lack 

of detailed requirements on how to build an effective harassment prevention mechanism, and the 

platform, as a rule maker that holds the right to review the qualifications of the merchants, the right to 

distribute order information and the right to display evaluations, should, at the level of information 

protection, block the merchants “access to the consumers” private information through technological 

means as well as However, in reality, most platforms ignore these preventive measures, focusing on the 



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fact that the complained merchant can continue to obtain consumer information by changing its account, 

which shows that the effect of the existing mechanism on preventing merchants from continuing to 

obtain consumer information through other means remains to be seen. 

More critically, the law does not specify the presumption of liability of platforms in the case of bad 

review harassment, leading to platforms often shirking their responsibilities on the basis of 

“technological neutrality”, and the ambiguity of this preventive obligation essentially condones the 

growth and spread of harassment behaviour. In the aftermath, the platform’s complaint handling and 

information blocking mechanism has a lag, when consumers complain to the platform after 

experiencing harassment, the complex evidential requirements and lengthy review process often 

discourage defenders, for example, consumers to find the complaint portal often due to the platform’s 

design is hidden in the multi-level menus and spends time, and in addition, when complaining, 

consumers are required to collect their own call logs, text message screenshots, and other evidence. In 

addition, it is clearly unfair to shift the burden of proof entirely to the victim. At the same time, the 

platform’s disciplinary action against merchants mainly takes measures such as deducting credit scores 

and issuing warnings, and rarely implements more binding dispositions such as downgrading the shop 

or temporarily taking it offline. To sum up, platforms have failed to play a key role in protecting 

consumer rights and interests as well as technical means, and the takeaway industry urgently needs 

platforms to prevent and punish bad reviews and harassment through technical and rule-based means, 

so as to complement or replace the government’s external supervision. 

3.3 Barriers to Proof of Rights and Remedies 

Consumers are prone to encounter technical difficulties in the process of obtaining evidence, especially 

for the traceability of nuisance calls and SMS, there are obviously objective obstacles for individual 

consumers without technological support, especially in the case of harassment by merchants using 

virtual numbers or non-real-name registered communication tools, even if consumers save the call 

records and the content of the text messages, it is difficult to establish a direct link with a specific 

merchant. The asymmetry of information makes it difficult for consumers to establish a direct link with 

a particular merchant even if they keep call records and SMS content, while the call records provided 

by the operator usually only show the number without confirming the identity of the actual user. In 

addition, the voice information and text records of instant messaging software are easy to tamper with, 

and their evidentiary validity may be challenged in judicial determinations. These technical factors 

objectively increase the difficulty for consumers to prove their case. On the other hand, there are also 

concerns about the cost-benefit ratio of judicial remedies. When consumers defend their rights through 

formal legal channels, they usually need to invest considerable time and economic costs, including 

litigation fees, attorney’s fees, and loss of lost time due to court appearances, etc., and the remedies that 

can be obtained are often based on cessation of harassment and compensation for moral damages, 

which may be unbalanced between the amount of compensation and the investment in defending their 

rights. Balance, at the same time, the time span of the litigation process may be up to several months, 



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and this time cost further affects consumers’ motivation to defend their rights (Yang, Y. N., 2024, pp. 

60-77). 

 

4. The Path to Improvement of the Legal Regulation of Bad Review Harassment Behaviour 

4.1 Substantive Law Level: Building a Multilevel Liability System 

It is proposed to improve the regulation system of bad review harassment in three aspects: first, to 

refine the legal norms, issue a judicial interpretation of Article 39 of the E-Commerce Law, clarify the 

identification criteria of harassment behaviours, such as more than three consecutive contacts in 

non-normal time periods, the use of insulting and threatening language, etc., and set up a provision on 

the right to make bad reviews in the Protection of Consumers Rights and Interests Law, so as to 

establish a gradient of legal responsibility; second, to optimize the liability determination mechanism, 

apply the “knowingly or should have known” standard to the platform, and require it to set up a 

conspicuous complaint portal and respond within 24 hours. The second is to optimise the liability 

determination mechanism by applying the “knowingly or should know” standard to platforms, 

requiring them to set up conspicuous complaint portals and respond to complaints within 24 hours, and 

applying the principle of “presumption of fault” to merchants, as well as establishing a multi-layered 

compensation mechanism that includes actual losses, moral damages, and punitive damages; the third 

is to strengthen the convergence of the laws by including serious harassment as an act that disrupts the 

social management order in the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, promoting 

collaborative law enforcement by the departments, and encouraging pilot projects in localities. 

Ultimately, the E-Commerce Law and the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law will serve as 

the core of a regulatory system covering the entire civil, administrative and criminal fields. By 

clarifying the boundaries of behaviour, lowering the threshold for defending rights, and strengthening 

law enforcement coordination, the systematic management of harassment by bad reviews will be 

formed. 

4.2 At the Level of Procedural Law: Optimising Mechanisms for Defending Rights 

It is proposed to build a comprehensive mechanism for the management of bad reviews and harassment: 

first, to strengthen the front-end disposal of platforms, requiring takeaway platforms to set up a 48-hour 

rapid response channel, take measures such as temporary shielding and account restriction, and 

mandatorily save order data for at least six months; and at the same time, to improve the rules of 

electronic evidence, lower the threshold of evidence for consumers, and recognise the effectiveness of 

legally documented communication records. Second, optimising dispute resolution procedures, 

developing a special module for online mediation, promoting simplified trial procedures, and 

supporting judicial confirmation of mediation agreements; introducing a litigation anti-harassment 

order, clarifying the platform’s obligation to assist in enforcement, and imposing credit penalties on 

merchants who refuse to enforce the law. Thirdly, it has improved the collaborative governance system, 

established a data-sharing mechanism between administrative organs, judicial organs and platforms, 



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standardised the process of transferring criminal cases, and formed a three-tier linkage mechanism of 

“platform disposal-administrative mediation-judicial adjudication”, so as to realise a closed-loop 

procedure of prevention, mediation and disciplinary actions. Procedural innovations have improved the 

efficiency of rights protection, and a technology-enabled, multifaceted and common governance 

procedural safeguard model has been constructed. 

4.3 Platform Governance Level: Improving Technical Defence and Control 

To improve the legal regulation of bad review harassment at the platform governance level, it is 

necessary to give full play to the dual advantages of the platform as a market gatekeeper and 

technology controller, and to build a modern governance system that is prevention-oriented, 

technology-enabled, and multi-party collaborative. It is suggested that a comprehensive management 

system for bad reviews and harassment should be built from three dimensions: technical prevention and 

control, credit management and government-enterprise coordination. At the technical level, the 

platform should establish a “virtual number relay station” anonymous communication mechanism, 

assigning a temporary virtual number to each order, which will be automatically invalidated after the 

order is completed, and supporting the development of an intelligent semantic recognition system, 

which will monitor insulting and threatening language in the content of communications in real time, 

and automatically trigger early warning and archiving. At the same time, it has invested R&D resources 

to build an intelligent risk warning system, which can monitor abnormal communication patterns and 

achieve the function of “one-key protection”, etc. It is also equipped with a professional dispute 

handling team to conduct manual review to ensure the accuracy of technical judgement. In terms of 

credit management, the platform needs to establish a scoring system for merchants’ behaviour, 

incorporate bad reviews and harassment into the credit evaluation index, and implement step-by-step 

disciplinary measures: warning and mandatory training for the first violation; lowering search rankings 

and restricting promotions for the second violation; and suspending business or permanently going 

offline for the third or more violations. In the merchant shop page set up “integrity file” column, the 

public record of violations and the results of processing, to protect consumers’ right to know. These 

credit disciplinary measures should be connected with the credit supervision system of the market 

supervision department to avoid a regulatory vacuum. In terms of collaborative governance, the 

platform should regularly report complaint data and handling to the regulatory authorities, promptly 

transfer suspected illegal clues to the public security authorities, and open the data interface for random 

checks and inspections by the regulatory authorities. The establishment of a joint interview mechanism, 

the problem of outstanding business areas or categories, by the platform and the regulatory authorities 

to jointly interview merchants. 

The above implementation path suggests a pilot first strategy, first in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou 

and other developed cities in the digital economy to select key platforms to pilot, after maturity, 

through industry standards and other forms of industry-wide promotion, and ultimately the formation of 

technology prevention and control, credit constraints, government and enterprise coordination of 



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three-dimensional governance pattern. 

 

5. Conclusion  

Through the systematic analysis of the harassment behaviours of bad reviews on the seller platform, 

this study reveals that there are three core dilemmas in the current legal regulation: the difficulty of 

judicial application due to the ambiguity of behavioural qualification, the vacuum of governance 

formed by the lack of platform responsibility, and the obstacle of relief caused by the poor mechanism 

of defending the right, and the results of this study show that it is necessary to construct a “trinity” 

solution for the improvement of the legal regulation of the harassment of bad reviews. The research 

results show that to improve the legal regulation of bad review harassment, it is necessary to build a 

“three-in-one” solution: to refine the recognition standard and legal responsibility of harassment at the 

level of substantive law, to optimise the electronic evidence rules and dispute resolution mechanism at 

the level of procedural law, and to strengthen the technical prevention, control and credit discipline at 

the level of platform governance. The future needs to further improve the legal regulation system for 

bad reviews and harassment, improve the consumer rights and interests protection mechanism, and 

strengthen the platform governance responsibility, so as to build a fairer and safer online trading 

environment. 

 

References  

Dong, J. B. (2022). Research on the Regulatory Issues of Platform Autonomy—Taking the Dual 

Identity of Platforms as a Perspective. Business Economics and Management, 2022(07), 70-82. 

Meng, F. X. (2023). Research on the governance framework and mechanism of network service 

transaction platform under the perspective of digital economy. E-Government, 2023(03), 32-42. 

Shi, P. P., Sun, G. Q., Shi, W. P. et al. (2025). The internal logic and realisation mechanism of 

blockchain-enabled platform governance—Based on a three-party evolutionary game perspective. 

Management Review, 37(03), 149-163. 

Volkswagen Dianping. (2024). Evaluation Transparency Report. Shanghai: Meituan Company. 

Yang, Y. N. (2024). On the optimisation of cost-sharing mechanism of civil public interest litigation. 

Research on Administrative Law, (06), 60-77. 

  


