Yelp to place “alert” on businesses accused of racism

Maybe 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?<p>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&#x2F;or competing businesses.

BLM protestors, just went into &quot;Trader Joe&quot; in Seattle to call them out for being Racist<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-UF1foStzKw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-UF1foStzKw</a> (starts at -46 min)<p>The Yelp reviews are already coming in .... power to the mob!<p>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.<p>The mock guillotine outside Jeff Bezos home earlier this year, was a taste of things to come.

Given 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.

Key phrase: “where we can link to a news article”<p>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.

It is interesting and slightly horrifying how Puritanism continues to echo throughout American culture, ostensibly by people who claim to be non-religious.<p>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?

Yelp continues to do what Yelp does best: extorting businesses.

I don&#x27;t see this as good. This will result in disaster in this way:<p>- It will give violent protesters targets to go and harrass or attack<p>- It will be a beacon for actual racists to congregate<p>- Who&#x27;s to stop a disgruntled reviewer from labelling a place as racist?<p>Just no.

Racism. 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.<p>So now Yelp will add a label to businesses accused of this term. Don&#x27;t buy from racists! In German that translates to <i>Kauft nicht bei Rassisten!</i>.<p>Here is to hoping this nonsense will end soon and will end well because this <i>-ist&#x2F;-ism</i> mania has the potential to go down into history as the next incarnation of what drove the Salem Witch trials.

Misleading, editorialized title. The original title is:<p>&gt; <i>New Consumer Alert on Yelp Takes Firm Stance Against Racism</i><p>The important bit is the alert disables reviews, and posts this message:<p>&gt; <i>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.</i><p>This is <i>good</i> for businesses who worry about being falsely accused.

Seems like a lot could go wrong here...

this will be abused. How does one verify a business is indeed practice racism? How does the business owner rectify the allegations?

This 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.<p>Racism-specific alerts are probably going to exacerbate the problem they call &quot;media-driven&quot; reviews and feedback, despite their mitigation efforts.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book</a>

I 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.<p>[ Disclaimer, I work for one of these companies on things unrelated to this topic. ]

Can we just admit that nobody uses Yelp anymore? They force you to make an account just to look at reviews and there&#x27;s been numerous times where people have been caught brigading. I don&#x27;t know a single person that relies on or even uses the site.

I think Yelp is trying to do the right thing with this but can&#x27;t help but feel this might be crossing a line.<p>Yelp has always seemed to me, to be a sort of protection racket for businesses&#x27; 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 &quot;Peaceful Protest&quot; 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.

On a related note, someone flagged my comments here. I don&#x27;t know who. I don&#x27;t know how to respond. Take that for what you will.

Is Yelp on Yelp? I have something to report.

How the hell is this not libel? Yelp is just inviting lawsuits by doing that. It&#x27;s one thing to host other peoples libel. But when you&#x27;re the entity dishing it out, you&#x27;re basically saying either one of two things:<p>&quot;Were only trying to shut down small businesses because of one person&quot;<p>Or<p>&quot;Were so big that we can&#x27;t fail therefore you must kowtow&quot;

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;inside-yelp-phoneix-insiders-allegations-racism-sexism-drugs-2020-9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;inside-yelp-phoneix-insiders...</a><p>Someone at yelp should get on this

10 comments and I&#x27;m quite sure none read the article.<p>This is for when a racist incident makes large national &#x2F; international news and people (who don&#x27;t frequent the business) flood the page with negative reviews.

I&#x27;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.

obviously just a &quot;socially acceptable&quot; way to punish small businesses even more if they don&#x27;t fall in line

what happened to not editorializing articles?

They are opening themselves up for lots of defamation cases.

tl;dr: If you are a customer and encounter racism, then Yelp will mark the business with &quot;Racist Behavior Alert&quot;. This alert will notify customers of the accusation while simultaneously blocking those who are <i>not</i> customers from leaving bad reviews, based on the viral media reports.<p>I don&#x27;t have much to say except that Yelp shouldn&#x27;t exist. Local reviews have become nationalized or even globalized. I wish the stakes could be lowered.

Will it be a big red letter &#x27;R&#x27; ?

This is horrible!

“accused”

Another step towards a terrifying social dystopia.

I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!