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It it just me, or does the mob mentality of this scare anyone else just a little? With no real evidence and certainly no trial, a one-sided tale told on reddit
by plusbryan 16y ago
It it just me, or does the mob mentality of this scare anyone else just a little? With no real evidence and certainly no trial, a one-sided tale told on reddit led to the destruction of a small business.
- cracki 16y agocalling it a "small business" invokes images of a struggling entrepreneur out to improve the world. this is a scam. threats of litigation. withholding of property. unlawful contracts. you used "mob mentality". that's a big red flag to me. are you perhaps the owner of that small business?
- ceejayoz 16y agoYou totally missed plusbryan's point. The evidence of this being a scam is that someone posted an e-mail the owner allegedly sent. That e-mail could be a total sham, or it could be exaggerated, or there could be a huge other side of the story. There are absolutely scammers out there, and this business might be one of them. There's no hard evidence either way, though.
- duck 16y agoYeah, it is kind of scary if you own a small business. Basically there is no trial, but rather just a guilty verdict.
- alttab 16y agoMy experience tells me those who are defending this business out of principle have never been truly, truly scammed.
- derefr 16y agoOther, similar phrases: - "Anyone who is defending this child molester was never molested as a child." - "Anyone who is defending this racist has never been the victim of prejudice." Some events overtrain our minds, such that we can never emotionally react to them in a genuinely rational way again. However, we can stop ourselves from doing this, by holding fast to the one principle that has always, always worked: Innocent until proven guilty, please.
- ceejayoz 16y agoYou'd have to accept the inverse, then - "no one attacking this business without concrete evidence has ever been falsely accused by an asshole customer."
- duck 16y agoMy experience would tell me either you don't own a small business or you haven't had a bad customer. We could argue how rare bad customers are and it varies drastically across business types, but it just takes one. I have no clue on this particular case and that is the exact point - neither does anyone else on here unless you have actually used them.
- protomyth 16y agoSo, because you got scammed by party A, then any unproven accusation against party B must be true and all those who still respect "innocent until proven guilty" are just ignorant? I think you really need to reexamine your perspective as it will seriously make working with other people on projects quite difficult.
- derefr 16y agoI'm fascinated that the votes here reflect rational, rather than kneejerk, responses to your posts. Do you think it is because HN users are specifically empathetic to small businesses, or do you think we are actually avoiding the cognitive bias responsible for holding up the minority that strikes against the hated outsider? To put that another way, in an isomorphic situation with forged evidence of, say, spousal abuse (pretending that that has some relevance to HN for some reason, and wouldn't get flagged), do you think the votes here would go the same way on your, the parent's, and the grandparent's comments, even if there were many people here who had been victims of spousal abuse (like I am assuming that there are many people here who have been conned by a business at some point)?
- lotharbot 16y agoNot long ago, there was an alleged sexual assault at a tech conference. Rather than going to the police, the alleged victim blogged about it, including the alleged perpetrator's name in the post, which hit the top of HN before being removed. The same pattern was visible there -- most of the highest-point comments were along the lines of "this is serious if true, so go to the police, not the internet" and "let's wait for an investigation before destroying the guy's reputation". On the other hand, when a magazine was shown to have lifted content and then told the original author she should be grateful for the portfolio assist, HN did pile on. In that case, the evidence of wrongdoing was clear and widespread: an admission by the publisher that she'd lifted content, links to the original which was clearly older, and links to content lifted from other publications. This led to the opposite pattern in comments, with evidence being highly upvoted and "let's not jump to conclusions" sitting at only a few points. I don't think "sympathy for small business" is the driving force. I think it's a focus on evidence rather than narrative (which happens to help us avoid that particular cognitive bias.) We are, after all, Hacker News, and the hacker ethos is one of making stuff that works, A/B testing, and following the evidence.
- Alex3917 16y agoThe only one we for sure is in the wrong is Yelp, because they are letting people who have never been customers post bad reviews.
- ceejayoz 16y agoHow on earth could you expect Yelp to automatically catch that?
- smackfu 16y agoThey do actually filter reviews automatically using some secret algorithm.
- ceejayoz 16y agoFrom what I've heard, that algorithm is essentially if($customer->has_paid && $review->score < 4) { delete_review(); }
- kls 16y agoEven though you jest, I have to agree. I really wish Google would buy out Yelp or would enter into direct competition. They would bring a level of credibility to an even playing fields for all parties involved. There are no many companies that carry around the kind of credibility needed to asway all concerns that people are not buying there way out of reviews.
- kls 16y agoDon't know why I got down-voted on this one, it is a serious concern. Yelp credibility in providing a level playing field has come into question on more than one occasion. Like it or not, Google brings a level of credibility to the table. When disagreeing with someones position please refrain from using the down-vote button for "I disagree" when a simple rebuttal would suffice.
- 16y ago
- dandelany 16y agoIt's not just the one e-mail, there appear to be other bad reviews from people who have actually used them, although it's impossible to tell whether or not they're real. "They quoted me $155 and ended up charging me over $500 and STILL wanted me to pay for some dumb protection service at $85 per year. AND THEY DID NOT EVEN FULLY RECOVER THE FULL DATA!" "John retrieved the images as promised, but once he did he held them hostage demanding more money!" "This place is extremely unprofessional. They charged WAY more than the original quote, and then demanded payment before returning my item. Also, they accused me of "harassing" them when I called to discuss the difference in price from the quoted cost." "Wish I'd skipped them. My laptop hard drive crashed and I needed to recover some Word & Excel docs. A month later they haven't recovered all of my data and are completely unresponsive to calls/emails. Now I'm out $460, I don't have the data that I paid to get back, and John still has my hard drive, so I'm stuck." "The data recovery was more expensive than quoted by Tekserve (by $200). Actual price was way over estimate (by $400). Communications were unclear. Terms were nebulous. Service was always late."
- tedunangst 16y agowhy is it a scam? the original review, while generally giving poor marks, wrote "All the said, he recovered every single file from my external hard drive." And where was the withholding of property?
- ceejayoz 16y agoThe review that started all this states that the hard drive is missing a circuit board that the owner of the company refuses to return.
- tedunangst 16y agoi can't find the word "circuit" on the page... help?
- ceejayoz 16y agoThe original review can be found here: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=KgzadQp3TZbn_yLGjka6dw http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=KgzadQp3TZbn_yLGjka6... > As of this time, I still haven't gotten my circuit board back.
- tedunangst 16y agooops, i found a different "original" review. thanks.
- sown 16y agoIt seems as if the lesson here is to finesse the mob and don't fight it.
- gabrielroth 16y agoI had a similar feeling about the recent Cook's Source episode. It's very likely that, in both cases, the charges against the business owner are accurate, and if so I feel fine about them losing their businesses, if that's the outcome. But how long will it be until some savvy internet user successfully riles people up against an innocent competitor or a personal enemy?
- dtf 16y agoBut how long will it be until some savvy internet user successfully riles people up against an innocent competitor or a personal enemy? Remember John Engle vs Stockart? http://blog.iso50.com/5778/save-jon-engle/ http://blog.iso50.com/5778/save-jon-engle/
- zacharypinter 16y agoFurther evidence (though the Comcast situation is obviously more complex than innocent competition): http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/edq8x/breaking_the_new_york_times_just_reported_that/ http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/edq8x/breaking_the... > J-Ro is a professional political activist; he's paid to influence online opinion (or has been, on some past issues; no idea whether he's specifically paid on this one), and he's primarily concerned with getting people outraged, not with accuracy in discussion; hence his entirely false claims here.
- jdp23 16y agoThis seems different on a couple of levels to me. J-Ro's headline was a pretty accurate summary of what the NY Times reported in the context of the overall Net Neutrality debate. And the top-ranked response on Reddit pointed out his agenda and dissented, while on Yelp the two "Elite" posters both criticized the business.
- gabrielroth 16y agoI think there's a slight difference between an intrinsically public matter, like the Comcast issue, and a relationship between, say, a business owner and a customer. In political fights, people on all sides make their best case to the public. Sometimes that best case is deceptive or manipulative and that's a problem, but the fact of activists trying to shift public opinion just goes with the territory and long predates the Internet. We're used to it; we have filters for it. The other thing is more complicated. If a business owner rips me off, that's bad. In the past, my only redress was the courts, which is a slow, cumbersome, expensive process. Now there's this new avenue where I can try to make the Internet hate the business owner. This can be a useful corrective, but it's very vulnerable to abuse.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoI think you're on to something very important. Playing along with this idea a bit, everybody says that Facebook is bad because the stupid things you do when you're a kid can haunt you forever. Well this just takes it up another level, doesn't it? Ever have a bad day, get pissed at somebody? Maybe say some things you probably shouldn't? Of course you have. Everybody has. But now, through the marvels of modern technology, your words stay with you forever. That means -- and I don't advocate doing this at all -- that if I'm running a business that's in competition with you, I don't have to perhaps develop the best product or service. Nope. Instead I can develop a just-average product, and then do a little digging to find out what sorts of shitty things you've done or said on the internet. Wait for the right moment, use a social network and a trusted poster as a conduit, and voila! I just helped you trash your own business. And my fingerprints are nowhere on it. I'm not saying that this is what happened. For all I know, the guy might be a jerk. What I'm saying, along with plusbryan, is that there is no way to know from the information available if you are being purposely manipulated for a response or just being honestly told a story That's kinda scary.
- jokermatt999 16y agoWell this just takes it up another level, doesn't it? Ever have a bad day, get pissed at somebody? Maybe say some things you probably shouldn't? Of course you have. Everybody has. But now, through the marvels of modern technology, your words stay with you forever. I just hope that one day this becomes a universal revelation, and we as a society become much more forgiving. The combination of harsh judgement, poor decisions being easy to make, and a public permanent record of anything you say on the internet can have potentially life ruining consequences, and it's easy to find plenty of examples today. In the past, only people who were in positions that would be in public scrutiny (politicians, CEOs, PR people, etc) really had to watch what they said all the time. Now that we have the internet, which doesn't really forget, it's easy for past mistakes to come back to haunt you. I just hope society becomes more lenient about foolish mistakes...
- nitrogen 16y agoI hope that the Wikileaks dumps have a similar effect of making people more forgiving and less likely to be offended. Diplomatic relationships shouldn't hinge on the use of a single wrong adjective in a thousand word conversation.
- aneth 16y agoEven if the email is real, and the guy is a bit of a head case, I don't see how that justifies people who have never done business with him posting reviews based on what are essentially rumors. Although I accidentally downvoted you because HN sucks on an iPhone, I completely agree that this is a scary mob mentality.
- kls 16y agoSome of the posted the story as a proxy the the customer because the customer signed a document saying that they could be sued for a bad review. The fact that that is in a contract is a huge red flag. It would be interesting to see if that is remotely enforceable in court.
- jdp23 16y agoI don't see a mob mentality when I look at the Yelp thread. I see a couple of "Elite" posters, one of who talks about reviews elsewhere on the internet. I see a bunch of people who don't seem like they have a lot of posting history saying very similar things. It might be orchestrated, or it might be a bunch of people annoyed about a bad actor but I think "mob" is an overreaction.
- kls 16y agoWell in this case, it is in his contract in black and white and there are no shortage of people reporting the same issue. Quoted low price that gets reprojected to nearly triple the price, personal property held for ransom, Threats of lawsuits and actual lawsuits being files against customers that post reviews. I think this is a bad case to highlight mob mentality as this is beyond an owner being rude because his dog died that day. This guy is engaging in serial fraud against consumers and trying to legally bind them from discovering the serial nature of his actions. I don't see what the big deal is, if you are reputable it comes out, others will post that it was not there experience if you get a bad review. The only way that I see it potentially being damaging is if you are new and get a series of bad reviews right of the bat. That being said, I thing entities like yelp need to provide a mechanism to owners to air there side of the story. Sure there are bad consumers looking to get something for free. But there is a critical threshold where it is not just bad consumers, it's a pattern of behavior by business owners. The balance of power has shifted and in certain ways that is a good thing.