> How does this tool ensure that reviewers are actually tenants, and not landlords trying to boost their rating?
I have only ever felt the need to tell other people about my landlord when they were really terrible. I had a landlord that I liked once, but “getting to hang out with a cool dog sometimes” wouldn’t have compelled me to seek out and contribute to a review website.
I would simply treat anything on the site that’s even slightly more effusive than “I have had little to no reason to interact with my landlord” as patent garbage.
This is how I pretty much treat all reviews these days. There is relatively little incentive to lie in a negative review (a competitor could try to trash on you, but I've yet to see that become a big problem and it would be potentially actionable), but there are lots of reasons why someone would want to manufacture positive reviews. So I typically just read through the negatives these days and see if there's a common theme.
I have only ever felt the need to tell other people about my landlord when they were really terrible. I had a landlord that I liked once, but “getting to hang out with a cool dog sometimes” wouldn’t have compelled me to seek out and contribute to a review website.
I would simply treat anything on the site that’s even slightly more effusive than “I have had little to no reason to interact with my landlord” as patent garbage.