Workers rated their former employers anonymously. Until a boss went to court

The idea is relatively simple. A job aggregator site that is also a community where employees and former employees anonymously share their reviews of employers, break down salaries and point out the pros and cons of the job there.

However, the space ended up gaining another purpose as well: a forum where former employees atoned for their grievances and used their anonymity to undermine the reputation of former employers, many even motivated by new jobs at competitors.

It was with a similar argument that a consultancy based in São Paulo managed not only to take comments off the air, but also to access the names and emails of its detractors.

Now, almost a year after the first provisional decision in favor of the company (later confirmed by the Court; the action has already been closed), the information obtained by the website also began to be used in labor claims. According to investigation by SheetGradus Consultoria used this data in at least two lawsuits filed by former employees against the company.

In one of them, the consultancy asked for the disqualification of a witness who, according to its lawyers, was a former employee who, after changing jobs and going to work for a competitor, left negative reviews about the company on Glassdoor – which the company said. company considered a smear campaign.

In the disqualification request, the former employee was identified by an email that was not the usual one – it was the one used in the record of his evaluation of the former employer. That’s when former employees learned that their confidential comments were not protected.

One of them noticed, around the same time, that his comment had been deleted from the company page.

When questioning the platform, Glassdoor’s legal team responded: “Despite winning the vast majority of cases of this type in Brazil in recent years, we lost this one. Like you, we are very disappointed and share your frustration with this outcome.”

Gradus was not the first to go to court against Glassdoor or LoveMondays, a Brazilian company with the same profile, purchased by the American in 2016. But it was one of the first to get a favorable ruling in Brazil.

The defense of Gradus says that it cannot comment on the matter, as the process was carried out in secrecy of Justice.

Glassdoor was contacted through its public relations department in the United States, but did not respond. The Brazilian office that represents her in court declined to comment.

Justice is still ambiguous in data protection, says expert

For José Renato Laranjeira, from Coalizão Direitos na Rede, the Glassdoor case shows how ambiguous justice has been in the sphere of data protection. The delivery of names, emails and IPs is disproportionate and could have been restricted to connection data, he says.

The Marco Civil da Internet, of 2014, provides for access to connection or access records, but establishes that the request must demonstrate signs of illegality, justify the usefulness of the records for investigation or instruction and define the period to which they refer.

The fragility in decisions like this involving Glassdoor occurs because, according to Laranjeira, the framing of this sign of illegality is not so simple.

“When we talk about a company, there is no subjective honor, only objective honor. And then there is a need for a clear and objective demonstration that the broadcasting of that [os comentários] violated her objective honor, something that is very difficult”, says Laranjeira, who is also the founder of Lapin (Laboratory of Public Policies and Internet).

In court, Glassdoor argues that the determination to break the confidentiality of the comments is in “nonconformity with the precedents” of the TJ-SP (São Paulo Court of Justice), which barred similar attempts to access data.

Glassdoor presents itself, on its website, as a “career community that depends on the opinion of professionals like you about companies”. The message, which appears as soon as the user registers on the page, has an addition: “It’s confidential and takes only a minute”.

Laranjeira, from Coalização Direitos na Rede, sees in the decision the risk of weakening this type of space for manifestation. The comment about an employer is made in a context of subordination, in which the writer is in a more fragile situation. Anonymity, in this case, protects this weaker side.

In the appeal with which it tried to reverse the opening of data, Glassdoor defended that the comments were not in fact anonymous, even if they were not identified. However, the disclosure of names and other registration data depended on the conditions set out in the Marco Civil, something that, for the company, had not been demonstrated.

The company also defended that comments posted on company pages go through a moderation team, which controls the content. Comments made by employees and former employees may also be responded to by companies.

Gradus’ lawsuit against Glassdoor was carried out in secrecy in the first instance. Appeals at the TJ-SP (São Paulo Court of Justice), however, remain open.

Gradus asked for an injunction to access all the data of the profiles responsible for 12 comments, the access logs and the connection data of the authors of these comments.

According to data from the lawsuit, the company raised the suspicion that there would be a smear campaign in the middle of the platform. The company supported the hypothesis in a profile change of reviews published in March, April and May 2021.

Websites manage in court to guarantee confidentiality of former employees

For Glassdoor’s defense, there is no doubt that this was a breach of data confidentiality that violates the Marco Civil da Internet.

In other actions that were processed in the TJ-SP, Glassdoor and LoveMondays managed to block attempts to access the data of workers who shared their opinions on the network.

In one of them, an educational institution in Minas Gerais tried to identify the authors of the comments that it considered “offensive and proportionate” and asked for moral damages of R$10,000.

Judge Edna Kyoko Kano, from the 18th Civil Court of São Paulo, considered that comments such as “coercive work environment”, “a mess”, and “people with dubious character” were just criticism and expression of thought.

In another, a company in the technology infrastructure sector also failed to take down the comments of former employees and former interns.

“It is understandable that the plaintiff wants to preserve her image, but freedom of thought is revealed in the evaluations published on the defendant’s website”, wrote Judge Guilherme Fernandes Cruz Humberto, of the 9th Civil Court of Campinas, in the decision that denied the request.

For Judge Paulo Henrique Ribeiro Garcia, from the 1st Civil Court of the XI Regional Forum of Pinheiros, the space for comments was “free expression of thought”. In a decision that denied the request made by a laboratory, he considered that there were no legal requirements for breaching data confidentiality.