A series of five-star employee reviews posted online for specialist LGBTQ+ publisher Pink News have been taken down after a complainant alleged they were “AI-generated”, Press Gazette can exclusively reveal.
The reviews were removed after they were reported to Glassdoor, a platform that allows current and former employees to leave anonymous reviews of their workplaces.
Pink News, founded by Benjamin Cohen in 2005, describes itself as “world’s largest and most influential LGBTQ+ led media brand”.
It has faced criticism over its business practices and workplace culture following allegations first raised in 2024 by an anonymous social media account called Pink News Whistleblowers and a BBC documentary.
Cohen and chief operating officer Anthony James have rejected the allegations as groundless and defamatory.
In February, an ex-employee of Pink News reported nine reviews posted to the publisher’s Glassdoor page to the platform’s internal trust and safety team.
The complaint, which Press Gazette has seen in full, raised concerns that the reviews were written by AI and did not match the staff makeup of certain departments within the company.
The identified reviews, dating back to September 2025, were all five-star and ticked boxes recommending the company, approval of the CEO and business outlook.
Pros within the different reviews included “having the freedom to pursue creative ideas”, “freedom to shape projects creatively” and “opportunities for creative expression”.
Cons included “fast-paced work environment fosters adaptability and quick-decision making” and the “fast-paced environment can be stressful, yet it keeps the job interesting and fulfilling” and “projects can be fast-paced, yet team support keeps motivation high”.
The complainant said the reviews were at odds with their own experience.
They highlighted one review that was apparently written by a current employee with more than three years’ experience in a specific department but said no one working in that department at the time of the review had been at the company for that length of time.
In response to the complaint, a member of Glassdoor’s trust and safety team said the site takes “fraudulent activity very seriously”, adding: “Our Community Guidelines state that we will reject reviews when we have sufficient reason to believe they were written by the same person.
“Please know that we have looked into all of the content for Pink News. If we had determined that there was fraudulent activity, we would have removed the content from our site.”
All nine of the reviews raised in the complaint were subsequently deleted from the Pink News Glassdoor account.
Speaking to Press Gazette, the anonymous complainant said they raised the report given the state of the job market across the publishing sector as they believed the reviews were “obfuscating the reality” of Pink News.
They said they believe Glassdoor deleting the reviews “just plainly says they were fraudulent in some fashion”.
“Whether they were posted by Pink News or not, someone out there feels the need to write fake five-star reviews,” they said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Pink News denied the reviews were created by internal staffers or AI.
“Pink News does not post on, commission or solicit reviews on Glassdoor, and does not engage with or monitor the platform,” a spokesperson for the publisher told Press Gazette.
“Glassdoor is a third-party anonymous site where claims cannot be verified for accuracy, and any queries relating to its content should be directed to Glassdoor.”
In response to a query about the reason for the reviews being deleted, a spokesperson for Glassdoor said: “While we don’t provide details on our moderation of individual employer pages, Glassdoor takes the integrity of reviews on our platform very seriously.”
The spokesperson added that before a review appears on Glassdoor it “goes through a multi-tier review process that can include both technological and human review”.
“Once reviews are live, we allow any user – individuals or employers regardless of client status with Glassdoor – to flag a published review if they feel it is inconsistent with our Community Guidelines,” they added.
“The content moderation team will then re-evaluate the review to ensure it meets our policies.
“Employers who attempt to ‘game’ the platform and/or hire third parties that promise to do so may have a Glassdoor Alert placed on their account page until fraudulent activity has ceased.”
Currently, following the deletion of the nine reviews, Pink News has a 2.3 out of five star rating on Glassdoor based on 37 company reviews, with 25% recommending to a friend and a 17% approval rating of Cohen as CEO.
In March, the publisher made its website editorial team of four journalists redundant, saying it was “moving away from having a reporter-led newsroom”.
Disclosure: the author of this article formerly worked at Pink News as a senior reporter.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
