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Yelp to place “alert” on businesses accused of racism
- manigandham 6y agoAnother step towards a terrifying social dystopia.
- disambiguation 6y agoobviously just a "socially acceptable" way to punish small businesses even more if they don't fall in line
- lettergram 6y agoSeems like a lot could go wrong here...
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIf it wasn’t Google that killed Yelp, the libel suits aren’t going to help.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoThey’re counting on libel laws not existing anymore after the UN takes over the country during the contested election. Dumbfuck.
- rudedogg 6y agoThat's what I was thinking. Also, why would you want to go through the trouble of trying to vet the accusations - it would be a nightmare. There have been multiple incidents already where different clips or angles of video totally change the narrative.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sigmaprimus 6y agoI think Yelp is trying to do the right thing with this but can't help but feel this might be crossing a line. Yelp has always seemed to me, to be a sort of protection racket for businesses' reputations. Now they are going to flag certain business as possible racists during a time of social unrest? How long will it take before one of these places gets targeted and burned down after a "Peaceful Protest" due to the Yelp warning? In civil law it is a balance of probabilities so wether or not it can be proven 100% that the flag made them a target, Yelp may still be found partially liable in court.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoI never stop being astonished by how you retards fail to see the bigger picture.
- maallooc 6y ago“accused”
- mttyng 6y agoMaybe I overlooked it, but what’s to prevent a person (or group of people) from filing false claims of racist behavior? They noted it had to be a “first hand experience”, but what sort of proof does that entail? In a perfect world this is a noble endeavor, but we don’t live in a perfect world and this could just as easily be leveraged by trolls and/or competing businesses.
- marcinzm 6y agoThat’s a bonus for Yelp, they then get to charge the business to have it removed.
- strbean 6y agoHey now, you mean they get to charge the company for "advertising", and then "lose" the complaint.
- onedognight 6y agoWhat’s to stop someone from filing false claims of bad service? Add racism to the list. Rooting out false claims is pretty much Yelp’s main service. Or maybe getting kickbacks to hide real claims of bad service is their main service? It’s an imperfect system, but a person looking to avoid aggressive or even passive racist treatment might like to error on the side of caution. An extra partially noisy bit of data seems worth it.
- awakeasleep 6y agoI still wonder if there could be any negative externalities or consequences that would counterbalance the benefit of helping those cautious folk.
- Pet_Ant 6y agoBeing accused of racism is much more deleterious than of bad service.
- 6y ago
- borghives 6y agothis will be abused. How does one verify a business is indeed practice racism? How does the business owner rectify the allegations?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y agoIt seems that these things are done under the principle of "it's alright if we get a few false positives in the name of progress". Will there be an appeal process? How do you clear your name after an accusation has been made? Who's to review the evidence?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoBenjamin Franklin helps
- webmaven 6y ago"Benjamin Franklin" as in $100 bills? Or something else?
- baggy_trough 6y agoI saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!
- pb7 6y agoYelp continues to do what Yelp does best: extorting businesses.
- just-juan-post 6y ago10 comments and I'm quite sure none read the article. This is for when a racist incident makes large national / international news and people (who don't frequent the business) flood the page with negative reviews.
- rudedogg 6y agoYeah this is a PR disaster. The choice of title and language used by Yelp is really poor. Why didn't they just say: "We're going to lock reviews for x days when a business receives news or social media attention to prevent reviews from non-customers." Twitter is full of people saying they've deleted the app, etc.
- sprayk 6y agoThe page made it sound like that's a thing they already do. The new thing seems to be > Now, when a business gains public attention for reports of racist conduct, such as using racist language or symbols, Yelp will place a new Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert on their Yelp page to inform users, along with a link to a news article where they can learn more about the incident. While this is not quite as abusable as other commenters have claimed, there is definitely still some potential for abuse given how imperfect journalism (like all things) is at always reporting facts.
- glup 6y agoThis is my reading. By including a link to an outside article, they think they can lock things up to prevent a flamewar / flood of non-firsthand reviews. This seems like it will make everyone mad.
- LegitShady 6y agohttps://www.businessinsider.com/inside-yelp-phoneix-insiders-allegations-racism-sexism-drugs-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-yelp-phoneix-insiders... Someone at yelp should get on this
- macinjosh 6y agoIs Yelp on Yelp? I have something to report.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoIt is interesting and slightly horrifying how Puritanism continues to echo throughout American culture, ostensibly by people who claim to be non-religious. Thankfully augmented reality hasn’t quite taken off yet. Can you imagine being branded “undesirable” by an unaccountable tech giant, then having facial recognition tech display this mark of witchcraft everywhere you go?
- konjin 6y agoI figure that the businesses accused of racism would try extra hard to be nice so visiting them exclusively would be a net positive. Much how working for woke companies usually leads to a 20% drop in salary because you're getting paid in good feelings.
- geofft 6y ago> Much how working for woke companies usually leads to a 20% drop in salary because you're getting paid in good feelings. Can you provide an example? Usually I see the label "woke companies" applied to places like Google and Stripe and Netflix which are also known for their particularly high salaries.
- konjin 6y agoHaving worked for Exxon and Raytheon the salary premium for the same position was substantial compared to Google and Facebook, to the point I was getting paid one level above what I would have otherwise. F&G make up a lot of the compensation in stocks so total comp looks great. The benefits in Exxon (and Raytheon) were insane, car, house and international schooling were paid and I ended up in hospital for unrelated reasons and paid $0 on a >$500k bill.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoIf that is true, how much better would the salary and perks be for working for a systematically racist corporation?
- jimbob45 6y agoCan we just admit that nobody uses Yelp anymore? They force you to make an account just to look at reviews and there's been numerous times where people have been caught brigading. I don't know a single person that relies on or even uses the site.
- zerocrates 6y agoThey don't (yet) make you make an account to see the actual content if you're viewing on desktop or in desktop mode on a phone. Their mobile site though, file it alongside Reddit as one that's designed to have the appearance of something functional while really just being a funnel to the app. Yelp's worse about it, in fact.
- austincheney 6y agoGiven so much reported behavior over the summer this feature, while well intended, sounds horrible. In several isolated incidents people were making all kinds of noise about racism if people or businesses didn’t vehemently express agreement with certain opinions. That’s not racism. I remember seeing the mayors of Chicago and DC call out some of those specifically.
- geofft 6y agoWell, that's the whole point of this feature - to prevent a store from being flooded with negative reviews while the alert is active.
- curiousllama 6y agoIt also links to the news article(s) in question. It’s a feature that says: “rather than letting mobs review-bomb places, we’re going to temporarily block all reviews and just link to the article because that’s the relevant thing”
- Fellshard 6y agoThe optics backfire, though. Instead of saying, 'This establishment is likely to have manipulated reviews', the appearance to the average user is, 'This establishment has been accused of racist behaviour' - the latter sticks out far more than the former.
- thrill 6y agoWill it be a big red letter 'R' ?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y agoI propose they go one step further and start issuing R badges that owners of racist establishments have to display on their person at all times. /s
- curiousllama 6y agoKey phrase: “where we can link to a news article” There’s not going to be an “accuse of racism” button. This feature is “if a business is being publicly accused of racism in a credible newspaper, we’ll note it on the page.” Which is a lot more reasonable, imo.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago> credible newspaper Does such a thing exist anymore?
- curiousllama 6y agoYes? Especially for local news.
- giantDinosaur 6y agoYou're joking right?
- curiousllama 6y agoWhat’s the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ever done to you? Or the Altoona Mirror?
- konjin 6y agoWhat's a reasonable newspaper? The NYT has lost its mind over the 1619 project. If I can trust the NYT to get basic facts of history right who can I trust in media?
- fred_is_fred 6y agoIn what way?
- gwright 6y agohttps://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140
- protomyth 6y agoI'd actually believe Yelp gave a crud about racism if they included the tribally owned businesses on the reservation I work at. It would also be nice if they set up programs for other minorities.
- geofft 6y agoMisleading, editorialized title. The original title is: > New Consumer Alert on Yelp Takes Firm Stance Against Racism The important bit is the alert disables reviews, and posts this message: > While we understand the desire to warn others about racist behavior associated with a business, all reviews on Yelp must reflect an actual first-hand customer experience. We have temporarily disabled the ability to post here as we work to investigate the content. This is good for businesses who worry about being falsely accused.
- la6471 6y agoThey are opening themselves up for lots of defamation cases.
- racl101 6y agoI don't see this as good. This will result in disaster in this way: - It will give violent protesters targets to go and harrass or attack - It will be a beacon for actual racists to congregate - Who's to stop a disgruntled reviewer from labelling a place as racist? Just no.
- swang 6y agowhat happened to not editorializing articles?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoHow the hell is this not libel? Yelp is just inviting lawsuits by doing that. It's one thing to host other peoples libel. But when you're the entity dishing it out, you're basically saying either one of two things: "Were only trying to shut down small businesses because of one person" Or "Were so big that we can't fail therefore you must kowtow"
- mitchtbaum 6y agohttps://www.biblewheel.com/GR/GR_Database.php?bnum=43&cnum=8&vnum=7 https://www.biblewheel.com/GR/GR_Database.php?bnum=43&cnum=8...
- mitchtbaum 6y agohttps://www.preservedword.com/content/bible_text/ https://www.preservedword.com/content/bible_text/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript#Earliest_extant_manuscripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript#Earliest_e... https://www.allaboutthejourney.org/bible-manuscripts.htm https://www.allaboutthejourney.org/bible-manuscripts.htm
- jungletime 6y agoBLM protestors, just went into "Trader Joe" in Seattle to call them out for being Racist https://youtu.be/-UF1foStzKw https://youtu.be/-UF1foStzKw (starts at -46 min) The Yelp reviews are already coming in .... power to the mob! At some point all these Billions from Tech companies funding increasingly fringe woke ideas, will backfire, when the equity for all mob takes power, and aims directly at the billionaire tech oppressors. The mock guillotine outside Jeff Bezos home earlier this year, was a taste of things to come.
- djsumdog 6y agoI like to think of this as "The Yelp Struggle Sessions" With such Orwellian newspeak/doublespeak as "Silence is Violence," this is just a taste of the dangerous hyper-normalization to come. I don't freedom of speech doesn't cover business entities, but libel and defamation does. I don't see how this doesn't open up Yelp to massive litigation.
- onedognight 6y agoI wonder if this is coming up now because of the show _Lovecraft Country_ on Apple TV+ which seems to be (I’ve only just started it) about the authors of _The Negro Motorist Green Book_, a historical guide highlighting safe places to patronize on a road trip. I could even see Apple nudging Yelp to make this change. Good for them, if so. [ Disclaimer, I work for one of these companies on things unrelated to this topic. ]
- millstone 6y agotl;dr: If you are a customer and encounter racism, then Yelp will mark the business with "Racist Behavior Alert". This alert will notify customers of the accusation while simultaneously blocking those who are not customers from leaving bad reviews, based on the viral media reports. I don't have much to say except that Yelp shouldn't exist. Local reviews have become nationalized or even globalized. I wish the stakes could be lowered.
- mitchtbaum 6y agoOn a related note, someone flagged my comments here. I don't know who. I don't know how to respond. Take that for what you will.
- Simulacra 6y agoThis is horrible!
- Yetanfou 6y agoRacism. What does that mean nowadays? The term used to have a very specific meaning but it seems to be used as a more general-purpose smear nowadays, often based on nothing more than a dislike of a person or institutions politics. So now Yelp will add a label to businesses accused of this term. Don't buy from racists! In German that translates to Kauft nicht bei Rassisten!. Here is to hoping this nonsense will end soon and will end well because this -ist/-ism mania has the potential to go down into history as the next incarnation of what drove the Salem Witch trials.
- webmaven 6y agoThis seems likely to backfire for Yelp. Focusing on positively noting businesses that are explicitly non- (or anti-) racist, akin to the Green Book[0], and letting users filter for that, as they are doing with their Open For All® effort, is more likely to produce positive change. Racism-specific alerts are probably going to exacerbate the problem they call "media-driven" reviews and feedback, despite their mitigation efforts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book