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TripAdvisor is probably paid money to promote businesses. I suspect that these warnings were automatically deleted by their servers and that TripAdvisor employe
by jostmey 9y ago
TripAdvisor is probably paid money to promote businesses. I suspect that these warnings were automatically deleted by their servers and that TripAdvisor employees did not make a deliberate decision to endanger people. Still, this is terrible
The problem is that people want everything for free. No one wants to pay for the news. No one wants to pay for reviews. Lots of people download stuff for free. Well, if you are not paying for it, you are not the consumer. You are the one being consumed. Maybe some savvy entrepreneurs can build a business model off of providing genuine reviews
Edit: Maybe some clever person could create a decentralized, distributed review system, like bitcoin, but for online reviews
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- user5994461 9y agoTripAdvisor receives a commission on the bookings.
- anigbrowl 9y agoIt doesn't matter who's paying or not. If you lead people to believe it's an egalitarian review site - and burying caveats in some 20,000 word ToS contract doesn't count - then stealth-editing out bad information is deceptive, and deception is a form of fraud. The problem is not that people want everything for free. People were perfectly happy buying tourist guidebooks when they went somewhere and choosing accommodations or activities based on collected information from backpackers, tour guides etc. As in many other contexts, companies like TripAdvisor blew a hole in that market by offering what appeared to be free, instant, and open-source trip-sharing information, while quietly monetizing it in the background and using their monetization strategy to wreck any genuine open source competition. It's a business model we've seen deployed over and over again, and it's turning out to be a rather shitty one.