This is eye-opening…I never knew that self-authored published reviews were so easy to get removed.
It brought to mind a booking request I once got, from a man who had reviewed 2 or 3 hosts from previous stays. In one of the reviews, he complained that the noise rules at the complex pool were enforced too regularly. He also complained that in the unit, he could hear people walking around upstairs, and said he even knocked on their door to ask them to tip-toe around the house more quietly.
I denied his request to book and suggested to him that our place was not a good fit, as our complex pool rules are also enforced regularly, and we also have residents above our unit that might walk around.
So now I understand that to avoid getting his requests thwarted in the future, this guest could have gotten his own review removed, in which case I would have never recognized that he was not a good match for my place. That would have been unfortunate for both of us.
After thinking about it, though, I can understand from a legality and privacy point of view that one should be allowed to remove one’s own content from the web.