Yelp has a new label to warn users about businesses accused of racism following an uptick in reports of discrimination.
The review platform says the alert will help consumers decide whether they’ll be welcome at a particular business — but its already receiving criticism by people who say it will be used to “destroy” merchants with false allegations.
That’s true, however. Anyone – a competitor – could report someone. Quite a few of the Black Lives Matter members are shakedown artists and if the store owner doesn’t ante up, they could report them.
Yelp says it will place the notice on the profiles of businesses that see an influx of reviews after getting public attention for reports of “racist conduct” and direct users to a news article with more details about the allegations.
Black Lives Matter is the impetus.
SYSTEMIC RACISM (WHICH IS NON-EXISTENT)
The platform will now add a more specific “Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert” when the allegations involve overt racism and Yelp can link to a relevant news story about them, Malik wrote. The company says these alerts can appear for days or weeks and will be removed on a case-by-case basis.
“As the nation reckons with issues of systemic racism, we’ve seen in the last few months that there is a clear need to warn consumers about businesses associated with egregious, racially-charged actions to help people make more informed spending decisions,” Noorie Malik, Yelp’s vice president of user operations, wrote in a Thursday blog post announcing the move.
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But Yelp’s announcement drew fire from conservative commentators who say the San Francisco-based company is opening the floodgates for false allegations of racism by aggrieved customers.
It’s a race-baiters dream.
“Yelp is really giving race hoaxers a specific tool to destroy any business they want on a whim,” conservative blogger Matt Walsh wrote on Twitter.
Republican lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon argued Yelp was “weaponizing defamation” and opening itself up to lawsuits.
Some commenters praised the company for trying to protect consumers from racists and slammed critics’ knee-jerk reactions.
“The whites [seem] really pissed about this, but as a black man, I wanna eat where I’m safe and not a threat,” Shawn Rosell tweeted. “Good for Yelp.”
“Yelp really pissed every single racist off and it’s mind-blowing how absolutely idiotic they all sound, not making a lick of sense,” wrote Airika Nicole.
Those are ridiculous comments.
Don’t go to Yelp to get a review.
wpDiscuz
