YouTuber Shuts Down A Restaurant With His False Review

A popular food and restaurant reviewer on YouTube called HayanTree has been criticized for leading to the shut-down of a restaurant with his false review.

In December, the Youtuber, who at that time only had more than 700,000 subscribers, posted a video reviewing a Daegu-based all-you-can-eat soy sauce-marinated crab. At one point, the Youtuber refills his plate and notices that his marinade has grains of rice, raising the suspicion that unsold food is being reused by the restaurant to serve its customers.

The review quickly became viral. And in just a few days, it gained more than 1 million views. The accused restaurant was impacted severely. And a few days later, it had to be shut down.

In an interview with The Korea Herald, the restaurant owner said that, in no more than two to three hours after the video was uploaded online, the staff of the restaurant left the explanation multiple times in the comment section. According to the explanation, the restaurant doesn’t reuse food and they could provide the security camera footage. However, the comments of the staff were blocked so that other people couldn’t read them.

The security footage showed that the rice grains that the YouTuber had noticed appearing on his marinade actually came from his previous dish. And they were on the dish before he refilled it. HayanTree had to post a video acknowledging his mistake and apologize. He also removed his negative review. However, it didn’t help the restaurant at all.

By the time the YouTuber came back to the restaurant for another video, it had already closed.

The restaurant expressed his frustration after the incident and said that he had already posted a national petition on the website of the Blue House, asking the authorities to step in and regulate YouTubers’ powers so that other businesses won’t suffer the same fate.

Although the subscriber count of HayanTree has gone down to 645,000 from 700,000, he hasn’t suffered any real consequences.

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