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Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

sfgate.com

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Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#41

Post by timmytokyo »

1024core wrote: post #24

> Dean began documenting her findings, starting with serial offenders from the Facebook groups. In a list of 17 people who reviewed SavantCare on Yelp, she found what she called “a suspicious pattern”: 10 of them had reviewed the same dentist’s office in Los Angeles, nine had raved about the same California wedding DJ company and five claimed to have visited the same Mountain View tattoo parlor. Five of the accounts,…

It's amazing the lengths someone will go to in order to avoid doing something when the incentives run in the opposite direction.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#42

Post by chasebank »

arbuge wrote: post #33

While on the subject, are there any review sites anywhere, not just for locations but also of products, that can be trusted? It seems to me that all of them can be and actively are gamed. Googling using the extension site:reddit.com caught on for a reason.

Not that I'm aware of. Reddit/HN has been compromised for years but I guess it's better than the alternatives. Whoever solves trustworthy, honest reviews will be a very, very rich person.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#43

Post by annoyingnoob »

wccrawford wrote: post #20
ryaniscool wrote: post #5

First and only Yelp review I ever left was three stars for an Indian restaurant in 2011. It was quickly hidden because "it didn't pass the bot filter" or something. I've never used it since as a reviewer or to find places. It lost all credibility on my first interaction with it.

My wife left a bad review for a restaurant and was stalked and harassed by the restaurant owner for years afterwards. Since she couldn't get Yelp to help with that, it makes every review suspect. It doesn't take much of that behavior to convince people to only leave good reviews, and then they're basically useless.

I had a restaurant owner out me by name in response to a Yelp review. I pointed out that her attitude toward customers like me tells the world everything they need to know. That place went out of business, guess it wasn't just me.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#45

Post by gautamdivgi »

dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

Isn’t this cause for defamation? Or is it protected under article 230?

Even if it’s not yelp doing it the fact that they are publicly advertising the reviews should make them culpable.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#46

Post by lacy_tinpot »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory

of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#47

Post by emodendroket »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

Yeah I find it a bit hard to believe. If you really think reviews are inauthentic it’s not hard to click on their profiles and see. I find it hard to see much evidence for astroturfing. If anything I think it’s fairly generous about not putting negative feedback front-and-center.

That, and, as the article details, and I’ve seen in my own personal experience, business owners are extremely aggressive about trying to get you to take down negative reviews, which I’m sure not only gets people to take them down but also discourages people from writing them in the first place.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#48

Post by emodendroket »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #46
nickstinemates wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.

I mean, this isn’t the CIA here. It’s a tech company people are probably filing in and out of in about two years. And the salesmen are all meant to be in on it?

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#49

Post by TimPC »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #45
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

Isn’t this cause for defamation? Or is it protected under article 230? Even if it’s not yelp doing it the fact that they are publicly advertising the reviews should make them culpable.

It's section 230 not article 230 but yes it's somewhat protected. You could go after the end user for defamation and you could probably use the legal system to force yelp to turn over identifying information from their logs if a judge agreed a comment was defamatory. But you'd have to go after the poster not after Yelp.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#50

Post by BonoboIO »

irskep wrote: post #34

Edit: I would have loved to add to the conversation, but people do love their pitchforks and I should be working instead of commenting on HN. :-) Admitting you worked for Yelp on HN: not even once

What can you say about these accusations brought up in this thread?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36329248

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