x.com/jmkettle/status/2051681549276336498
1 correction found
Giving a restaurant a three star review is illegal in Germany.
This overstates German law. Germany does not ban three-star restaurant reviews; star ratings are generally treated as protected opinions, though specific reviews can still be unlawful in narrower cases such as false factual allegations or fake/non-customer reviews.
Full reasoning
The claim says that giving a restaurant a three-star review is illegal in Germany. That is not what German law says.
German constitutional law protects the expression of opinions. Article 5 of the Basic Law states that everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate opinions, subject to limits such as general laws and personal honor. So German law does not make ordinary negative opinions about a business automatically illegal.
German courts have also treated star ratings themselves as opinions, not as automatically unlawful factual claims. In OLG Köln, 26.06.2019 – I-15 U 91/19, the court said a commentless 1-star rating was classified as a "Meinungsäußerung" (expression of opinion). The same decision also said such a rating is not, by itself, generally to be treated as impermissible abuse. That directly contradicts the idea that a lower star rating is simply "illegal in Germany."
What German cases do show is something narrower: a review can become unlawful in specific circumstances, for example if it contains false factual allegations, is insulting/defamatory, or is posted by someone with no actual customer experience where the platform requires one. In other words, some reviews can be removed or found unlawful on their particular facts, but that is very different from saying that a three-star restaurant review is illegal per se.
So the blanket statement in the post is false: Germany does not have a rule making three-star restaurant reviews illegal.
3 sources
- Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Artikel 5
Art. 5: "Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten ... Eine Zensur findet nicht statt."
- Rechtsprechung: OLG Köln, 26.06.2019 - I-15 U 91/19 - dejure.org
"Die Sternebewertungen als solche stuft das Gericht mit der ganz herrschenden Meinung in der Rechtsprechung nicht als Tatsachenbehauptung, sondern als Meinungsäußerung ein"; "die kommentarlos abgegebene 1-Sterne-Bewertung [wurde] wegen der rein notenmäßigen Beurteilung als Meinungsäußerung eingestuft."
- Oberlandesgericht Köln, 15 U 309/19
The court explained that if there is no indication the author was not actually a guest, no review-check duty is triggered, and noted that a business could not simply treat a word-for-word review by an actual guest as unlawful. The case turned on whether the reviews came from real guests, not on low star ratings being illegal.