There are three differences between what Osman Unincorporated and the companies that you describe have done.
# Number one is scope:
- They do not have the same amount of readers, evangelists etc. that could harass the person making the erroneous claim
# Number two is positioning:
- Reviews can be, by their very nature, points of discussion, therefore meaning that anything underneath a review, including a comment from the company that makes the product, is a point of discussion and thus necessary to protect in order to have a free and open dialog.
# Number three is punching power:
- William Osman published a fraudulent job application and got someone to sign a contract while promising him that he moving up in the world, only to pull the rug out from underneath him and instead shock him with the fact that he is now going to be harassed due to his uninformed "trolling" (which happens plenty of times from informed professionals even on Hacker News). This kind of bait and switch is mentally devastating, and the person is undoubtedly shocked from such an act of bullying which could be argued to be traumatizing. All of this happened because the guy spoke out of line on a specific technical issue on which both people were wrong.
# Number one is scope:
- They do not have the same amount of readers, evangelists etc. that could harass the person making the erroneous claim
# Number two is positioning:
- Reviews can be, by their very nature, points of discussion, therefore meaning that anything underneath a review, including a comment from the company that makes the product, is a point of discussion and thus necessary to protect in order to have a free and open dialog.
# Number three is punching power:
- William Osman published a fraudulent job application and got someone to sign a contract while promising him that he moving up in the world, only to pull the rug out from underneath him and instead shock him with the fact that he is now going to be harassed due to his uninformed "trolling" (which happens plenty of times from informed professionals even on Hacker News). This kind of bait and switch is mentally devastating, and the person is undoubtedly shocked from such an act of bullying which could be argued to be traumatizing. All of this happened because the guy spoke out of line on a specific technical issue on which both people were wrong.