Yelp Says It Will Mark Pages of Businesses Accused of Racist Conduct (nytimes.com) 270
AmiMoJo writes: Yelp, the local search and review site, said it would post alerts on the pages of businesses where customers or employees have reported incidents of racism, the latest attempt by a U.S. company to introduce a tougher response system to confront discrimination after the police killing of George Floyd in May. The company, which offers a platform for users to rate places like restaurants, small businesses and popular tourist sites, said in a statement Thursday that it would use a "business accused of racist behavior" alert when there was "resounding evidence" that a business owner or employee had taken racist actions, including the use of racist slurs or symbols. This alert will always link to a news article from a "credible media outlet," Yelp said, without elaborating on which news organizations they considered to be credible or how it defined "resounding evidence." Yelp's announcement raised questions about how the company will enforce the initiative -- and how it will ensure that businesses were not falsely associated with racism or the target of defamatory reviews, which can significantly damage a business. Companies like Google and Facebook have also grappled with the difficult issues of moderating users on their online platforms.
Yelp has never been misused. (Score:5, Insightful)
We certainly want to make it more convenient to cast racism without proof.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:5, Funny)
A good business opportunity would be "Racism-as-a-Service" or RAAS.
For a fee, you accuse competing companies of racism, get them blacklisted by Yelp, and thus drive more business to your client.
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A good business opportunity would be "Racism-as-a-Service" or RAAS.
For a fee, you accuse competing companies of racism, get them blacklisted by Yelp, and thus drive more business to your client.
I have a better idea. DDoS the hell out of every business on Yelp with racist accusations. I mean obviously if Yelp has to go to these extremes that means racism is everywhere, so might as well make Yelp accurate.
Also helps make a fucking point as to the stupidity of it all.
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"My teacher gave me detention because he hates me!!!!"
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Telling you to go shut up is not stifling shit you absolute mouth breathing knuckle dragging moron. It IS free speech. You get to spout your crap, I get to tell you to shut your pie hole and go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw. I'm just giving you a suggestion, not holding a gun to your head. Threats of violence are your side's thing. Which is why the FBI says that right wing terrorists are the biggest threat our country faces.
You idiots all think the same way: there should be an in group of people like
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointing out what the tool is in no way implies a need to stifle the backbirth in question from giving his two cents. It is however not a tool limited to commies but to authoritarians. See the fascist nee communist political party that is the CCP. As a general rule, authoritarian fuckwitted morons of all stripes love to stifle speech.
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I wish I had mod points. +1, Insightful.
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Just to be clear, we are in agreement that calling someone a moron, or telling them to shut up, is not stifling free speech, right? That's just more speech. No one is forcing hem to shut up.
I feel that a lot of people think "free speech" means "consequence-free and response-free speech." But it has never meant that at all.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:2)
Weird words you use to desribe psychopath capitalism there.
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Too much politics in our country consists of, "blame the other team," as opposed to blaming the common root causes.
+1.
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We certainly want to make it more convenient to cast racism without proof.
I know that reading the summary is passé, so I cut this bit out for you.
Even in the USA an article like that against a business is subject to libel proceedings if it's false. Seems like a reasonable idea to me.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:2)
Either way, this can open Yelp up to liability for libel. They're just gambling that they can shake down little guys who have less in terms of legal resources.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:3)
Either way, this can open Yelp up to liability for libel.
Depends on how they do it. If they are just using information from third party sources, which is what it sounds like, they're protected by 47 USC 230.
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They say they will always link to their source, so I guess the lawsuit would be aimed at the source rather than them.
Of course journalists and news outlets are used to people accusing them of libel so if they publish it they are quite likely to have made sure they aren't going to lose. They are fairly well protected anyway in most democracies, such is the importance of having a free press.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:2)
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I was thinking the same thing. Usually when reputable news sources report stuff like this they don't take sides, they just report the facts and who is saying what. So if they really intend to require such a high standard of proof they will almost never meet it.
I expect it's really just an extortion scam anyway.
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They've managed OK so far even with some reviews that reveal that the reviewer has never actually seen the place they trashed in the review.
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On one hand you don't expect people on slashdot to read the summary/article.
But on the other you don't see a problem with yelp saying "these people are rayciss!" then expecting the consumer to go through the effort of reading an article from a 3rd party for a thorough and honest discussion on what transgression lead to the revocation of their social credit?
in practice, the wokesters will see that 'evil, vile, racist' badge and move on to the next item on the list -- who has time to verify anything?
Overall t
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Libel won't protect you.
If the flag just says that they've "received reports of racist conduct" that remains true even if the user reporting it is lying.
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You don't have to intentionally lie.
Libel also includes reckless disregard of the truth [findlaw.com].
So, even if true, a report that they've "received reports of racist conduct" could be libelous if the reports are coming from an unreliable source and they make no attempt to verify them.
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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would cover that. If they're making no attempt to verify/disprove them, they have a safe harbor. It is a section of the law that has been under attack this year, but has not yet been erased from law.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:2)
"credible" is whatever fits the posters agenda the best.
Nobody links to anything that does not agree with his views. Anyone who worked on Wikipedia has daily.proof of that.
Re: Yelp has never been misused. (Score:3)
First, define "credible media source".
Second, so yelp credibility now becomes no more than the least credible source on the above list.
Third, what happened to innocent till proven guilty? We seem to be moving from "better 9 guilty people go free, than one innocent go to jail", to "better 99 innocents have their lives ruined than one guilty get away with something".
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or that it wont be used as an extortion racket the way bad food reviews were used to get discounts.
Due Process (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sue them for libel. Should be easy since they're dumb enough to put it in writing.
Re:Due Process (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
they are all sheilded by Section 230 of the CDA:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/1... [cnbc.com]
Having been a small business owner, I can tell you I wish there was a way to report abusive customers. the number of times my staff have ad to put up with all kinds of abuse, rants and tirades from the the public. Once we even had someone complain about something you couldn't even buy at our business!
Yelp, TripAdvisor, et al, are nothing more than petty little shakedown outfits using clueless member of the public to be their unwitting online thugs, while entire shielded from any sort of accountability or recrimination by the law.
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Re:Yelp has never been misused. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean anything. What's a public news article in today's world of citizen journalism? What's a credible media outlet in today's society where trust in the media is at an all time low? Who gets to decide what's credible? Chances are that 10 random people have very different ideas on the credibility of CNN, MSNBC, FOX, Breitbart, NPR and so on. It's all subjective and will never survive scrutiny.
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We certainly want to make it more convenient to cast racism without proof.
It's not like proof of racism means anything gets done about it anyway.
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That was my first thought. Just what we need. That and the problem that SOME accusations of racism are not actually racism at all, but no amount of rational explanation can ever get that particular stink off.
I hereby accuse Yelp (Score:5, Insightful)
...of being racist. Yelp, please be sure to update your webpage to reflect this.
Thank you
Watch out for the slander (Score:2)
Yelp is planning on making some lawyers very happy.
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Too slow off the mark to get first post, and didn't read the summary.
Nice try but no.
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I hereby provide a link from a credible news source [slashdot.org] verifying the claim.
Yelp Says: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nice business you have there. It would be a shame if you had any claims about racism against you.
How much did you want to spend on your paid Yelp page again?"
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Alternatively, how long before shadowy "services" show up that will, for a fee, host or otherwise circulate fabricated articles accusing your competitors of racism? More or less, inverse SEO: bury your competition instead of elevating yourself.
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Read all the way to the article - they require a published, public article before they'll enable this flag on a business.
obviously (Score:3)
Nothing can go wrong with this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Challenge: Worse idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Give a flag for "known kiddy fiddlers?" Or a flag for "known animal torturers?"
I suppose though that's just on the same level.
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They could merge with GrubHub.
Re: Challenge: Worse idea? (Score:2)
They could start selling krokodil+heroin+dmt-filled babies if they were Kinder eggs, for rape, then eating, then a surprise inside.
. . .
You said worse. :-P
Don't challenge my imagination! I'm fueled by traumata you cannot imagine!
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Not in the US. You can buy them at import shops, sometimes, but you'll never aee them at a general supermarket, because the toys inside are considered a choking hazard.
Sad, since I spent a large chunk of my childhood living in your very wonderful country and enjoying kinder eggs and fireworks, which are verboten where I now live.
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This is pure capitalism. Leftism would require the state to take some action.
Re:The fruits of leftism (Score:5, Insightful)
The most difficult part me to process is that while so many of these things might be well-intentioned (highlighting black-owned businesses, calling out racist businesses, every corporation in America sending me an email telling me they care about black lives, etc.), the end result is that EVERYBODY is hyper focused on race and our differences.
The belief that all humans are equal and the same and that race should basically just be ignored (think Star Trek TOS) is just gone.
If systemic racism is a problem today, will it still be a problem in 30 years when my children are adults? Will we still need to high black-owned businesses? When is it appropriate to "turn off" affirmative action and other race-based quotas or focus points? Will it ever be appropriate?
I don't know have an answer to this, but I am less optimistic about the future than I have ever been in my life.
Re:The fruits of leftism (Score:5, Insightful)
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California wants to do away with equal opportunity employment for government jobs. Prop 16. https://ballotpedia.org/Califo... [ballotpedia.org]
So progressive we are.
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LOL you think Yelp is enacting "leftism", whatever the hell that is?
It's just more leverage for that sweet protection money.
Already happening off of Yelp (Score:3, Insightful)
In Minnesota, the publication City Pages posted a piece on a local apple orchard [citypages.com]. They condemned the orchard of blatant racism because they referred to C19 as the "China virus" on Facebook and refused to apologize. That's all it takes to get the attention of a large local paper. For a while, this Facebook post managed to be more egregious and important than the actual problems that have been happening in Minneapolis lately, like the riots, crime waves, homeless people living in tents as winter approaches, and so on.
That said, the post resulted in positive attention for the orchard. Many residents drove out of their way just to support the farm because they felt that the attacks were ridiculous and unjustified.
I feel that the same sort of thing will happen with businesses on Yelp if they do this. Some users may actually be attracted to the "racist" businesses if they feel that the label is being misapplied and will go out of their ways to support them. I also wonder if this new label will result in physical altercations at these businesses which could result in lawsuits against Yelp.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh wow, that's random. I'm about 90% certain I've been there too--stopped on a trip to the North Shore (not a Minnesotan, so my extremely limited grasp of MN geography is more or less Twin Cities:, Duluth/North Shore, and some other stuff!).
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It's all just part of the culture war, and it's already evolving. I'm now seeing fake attacks on Twitter designed to get people to donate money, basically a "help I'm being mobbed" scam. Mostly just in it for the money I think but sometimes it's a trap, trying to build support for something before dropping the real bombshell about it so that all the people and orgs who piled in to help get covered when shit hits the fan.
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"Troll" rating? Seriously?
I hope that gets fixed by other mods and in metamod (is metamod still a thing?)
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Xi reopened the wet markets and then allowed wild animal butchering in them.
Xi/CCP ran the program studying bat corona viruses including 'gain of function' research. They then ordered all genetic sequencing and samples from the initial covid 19 outbreak destroyed and anyone warning about it arrested.
I'm sure that's normal and completely above board... I mean, they warned everyone
however (Score:2)
wonder if this another extortion attempt by yelp. just like they allegedly do with bad reviews, too many businesses claim they got calls from yelp saying they will remove poor reviews for a price.
Another example of drive-by business assasination (Score:2)
I hoped we'd be past this (Score:4, Insightful)
Scarlet letters and other forms of public shaming are long in the past, and good riddance too. Nice to see Yelp not learning from out collective past mistakes.
Happened to a local farm (Score:5, Informative)
A local farm owner started getting all kinds of horrible reviews on yelp accusing him of all kinds of things.
This is a friendly small business owner who has been in business for years, running this very small family farm in the middle of nowhere.
What happened? He wore a "45" t-shirt to work one day. Someone decided to call him a racist on Facebook, and that set the outrage mob loose. Now yelp is filled with negative reviews from people in other states claiming they drove many hours to get to this tiny local farm and were treated horribly by the racist owner. People are just horrible bullies when they can get away with it.
Re:Happened to a local farm (Score:4, Insightful)
Link to the Yelp page? Google turns up nothing.
Re:I know I'm going to get modded into pulp for th (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed (Score:3)
Yeah, that was a while ago, but I keep hearing talk of the "Good 'ole Days".
This isn't about sowing division, but nice strawman. This is about Trump actively encouraging Racism for political gain and a significant number of people being OK with it because they're not personally impacted.
The Civil Rights Movement wasn't a one time thing that erased all traces of racism. It was less than 100 years ago. We can easily regress. We've got judges approving forced labor for pr
Re:I know I'm going to get modded into pulp for th (Score:5, Interesting)
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But I've got Karma to burn...
After all Trump has done... the "Good People" comments, telling a group with well documented ties to white supremacists to stand by during an election, the well documented pull back of federal law enforcement's efforts to investigate white supremacists even though the data clearly indicates they're the #1 perpetrators of terrorism on US Soil so much so they've killed more than Muslim extremists even including 9/11 , the constant Dog Whistles about the Suburbs....
Where was I? Oh Yeah, after all that and everything else I can't be bothered to remember or look up right now maybe if you're still backing "45" you're not racist, but at the very least racism isn't a deal breaker.
Full credit, I saw that on a protest sign and it's spot on.
I stopped reading at the "Good people" (actually "fine people") hoax.
Oh Darn, you're right! (Score:2)
Seriously, the Unite The Right Rally was chock a block full of white supremacists, a veritable who's who of the community, and the only thing besides Trump's comment that anyone remembers is "JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!".
Yes, Trump left just enough plausible deniability to let his supporters squirm their way out, but no honest person looks at that doesn't read it as an endorsement.
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It was "Very fine people". And he back pedaled it a few days later so we're all good brah.
Here, from the bbc news: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
According to a transcript of a press conference on 15 August, President Trump did say - when asked about the presence of neo-N*zis at the rally - "you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
During the same press conference, Mr Trump went on to say "I'm not talking about the neo-N*zis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally."
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The "fine people" thing is not really ambiguous. Trump could simply have clarified, but has not. And when last at the first presidential debate if he would condemn white supremacy he declined to, and instead asked the Proud Boys to "stand by". Again, he could clarify, but has not.
On the preponderance of evidence it certainly looks like he considers them allies and good people.
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The "fine people" thing is not really ambiguous. Trump could simply have clarified, but has not.
And that IS the hoax. He did clarify, same interview, when he went on to say "I'm not talking about the neo-N*zis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally."
Just read the transcript, there is no ambiguity at all:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri... [whitehouse.gov]
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after all that and everything else I can't be bothered to remember or look up right now maybe if you're still backing "45" you're not racist, but at the very least racism isn't a deal breaker.
Does that standard apply to supporters of Joe Biden?
"Unlike the African-American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly diverse attitudes about different things." [politico.com]
"You got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man." [cnn.com]
"Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t bl [cnn.com]
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You know, the one where he said 'I'm not talking about the white supremicists'. Or do you know he said that in the same breath and you're lying, too?
Even the BBC ran a piece debunking that whole narrative in the past week.
And for folks who don't know - the dispute at the time was what to do with statues deemed racist by a vocal minority. (being a minority is unrelated to whet
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He wore a "45" t-shirt to work one day.
Help? What is racist about a "45" shirt? Is it the sport jersy number of someone we don't like? A date like 420? Some sort of working-man code, like 45 is the product of working from 9 to 5?
Honestly, one day I'm going to wear the wrong color of pants to work and get fired because I don't follow hashtag trends.
It's a Trump reference. 45th president.
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Yep. I had to ask someone else what the fuck that was all about.
Most people now seem to assume you have nothing better to do than read Twitter or Facebook. Slashdot and SN are my sole concessions to social media. The rest are for people who need to have their thoughts curated for them.
Extortion (Score:5, Insightful)
Yelp isn't healing racial division, they are creating it. No problem is going to be solved by Yelp doing this. In the real world this is simply going to become a route for people to extort small businesses. It isn't going to take long before someone sues Yelp as an accomplice to the extortion. RICO statutes could also be used as they will be profiting from the extortion. Lots of small businesses have already had problems with extortion over racism threats from mobs during riots. Here's a few examples:
https://www.theblaze.com/black... [theblaze.com]
https://thepostmillennial.com/... [thepostmillennial.com]
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog... [thehill.com]
https://www.lawenforcementtoda... [lawenforcementtoday.com]
https://thepostmillennial.com/... [thepostmillennial.com]
This kind of accusation can kill your business far faster than something like an accusation that order was late or mixed up. You can rest assured that this will lead to further violence as malicious people look to abuse this as another tool to extort small business owners and some of them stand up and fight back. Sooner or later people will die from one these violent encounters. Yelp needs to be responsible and permanently remove this before people start getting killed - immediately.
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The Green Book dates back to 1936. You can act like Yelp is doing some horrible modern thing, but you're forgetting the other side of the coin. Black people don't always know where it's safe to go.
I have no love for Yelp, but this at least has the potential for good. Especially since individual reviewers can't enable this flag on their own.
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The Green Book was very different in form though. It listed businesses that were friendly to blacks. Typically they were either owned by blacks or whites that were sympathetic to blacks. Being in the Green Book was typically something that you wanted to have if you were okay with blacks, especially if you were in the south.
This is threatening to paint a proverbial scarlett 'A', or should I say 'R' on a business for which there is no recourse. All it takes is a new article accusing a business of being racist
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This is threatening to paint a proverbial scarlett 'A', or should I say 'R'
These days, you could probably just go with (R)
Look at the Breonna Taylor narrative for a prime example of a news story that completely fell part once a grand jury looked at the evidence instead of the media.
The members of the grand jury are still in dispute with the state over information that has still been blocked from being released and manipulation of that jury by the state's attorney general. You can't look to either source for an informed answer.
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Re:Shouldn't be a partisan issue. (Score:4, Informative)
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Well this is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, anyone else remember The Green Book [wikipedia.org]? That was a real thing. My guess is somebody at Yelp thought it was a good idea to make a digital version of it.
I can say this, a black buddy of mine was an over the road Truck driver and I remember him telling me that his driver manager didn't like sending him down south because he knew the cops would hassle him for 1 mile over the limit. So it always took longer for him to do the runs than the more, shall we say, "Fair Skinned" types. I'm in a pretty liberal place but again, I've heard stories of places you don't wanna go if you're not the right color, and that information is valuable.
But Yelp, given their history of questionable business practices, is not the one to do it.
Some are just dreaming of (Score:2)
And seize their place in history as the purveyors of the scarlet letters
Past experience with a local bakery (Score:3)
A local bakery is owned by a Frenchman who is more than happy to talk to anyone about anything, for as long as the other person is willing. Apparently he made a comment about rioters/protestors/BLM to a person who was not amused (and I have no idea what his actual transgression was), but this annoyed customer made a Facebook post in one of the larger community groups and people wents NUTS.
Within 24 hours this guy's Yelp reviews were gettin spammed with all kind of reviews from people that had obviously never set foot inside his shop. One star review because he had sign that said "This property protected by Smith and Wesson". One star review because as a black woman a different customer "felt uncomfortable" (no other reviews on this Yelp account). etc.
I reported every review that was posted after the Facebook blowup and that truly seemed like they had never been there and Yelp removed each review. I was actually impressed that Yelp removed them.
I guess now he would just get the Racist badge and oh well.
Oh I get it (Score:2)
If I hate a business I just get onto yelp and check the rascist box instead of leaving a negative review. Yelp is really enabling!
Will they also do it with a yellow star? (Score:3)
You know, so the mirroring is complete.
Because apparently it is an unwritten iron law today, that if you see something despicable, you must strive to mirror it completely. Even if what you saw wasn't real in the first place but merely your prejudice. As long as you say you defend some victims, it is a-OK. (Even if those themselves disagree.)
Bur hey, what do you expect from a society that says murder is alright if you first concivince yourself well enough that your victim is a murderer (too)? (Funny, given how many millennia we already teach that that is wrong )
Accusations... (Score:2)
If that is all it takes to tag someplace as chocked to the gills with racists, then eventually pretty much every place will be tagged.
From now on... (Score:2)
I’ll only patronize business who, according to Yelp, have been accused of racism.
We should make it more obvious (Score:4, Funny)
...like making them wear a star on their clothes, or something.
Then they can't escape our judgement, anywhere.
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Notes from conversation with Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Hennepin County Medical Examiner [mncourts.gov]
"Fentanyl 11. He said, “that’s pretty high.” This level of fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were 2-3x their normal weight at autopsy. That is fatal level offentanyl under normal circumstances.
"AB said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no
other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death."
Flloyd was delibera
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And they've just copied their business model from the BBB. Where you'll find F-rated businesses because of one minor complaint, and A-rated businesses with many, many complaints where the owner has paid to be a member and respond.
Re: Can we ... (Score:2)
Would ne trivial to program. Have a greasemonkey-type script that once gets all businesses, then only the non-"racist" ones, and then subtracts the latter from the former before injecting them in place of the results.