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

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

#81

Post by brnaftr361 »

emodendroket wrote: post #60
brnaftr361 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if pay incentives are there, and we're talking sales... They're not necessarily people of the highest esteem. And if the hiring party puts a little pressure on the candidate, I could definitely imagine a tight ship. A scrupulous person wouldn't join the Gestapo, y'know?

Most tech companies leak like sieves and the incentive isn’t there after you’re no longer being paid. It seems hard to believe it could be that airtight to me.

I dunno, man. I've seen lots of FRA, OSHA, MSHA, corporate, and food safety violations over the years - but they benefit me and my peers because they're shortcuts to the metric target. It's a win-win and everybody keeps it quiet, and everyone is on to it. And these are businesses that aren't selecting for privity.

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

#82

Post by bombcar »

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,…

Yelp and friends DO catch tons of this, but the people doing it keep working and working until they get past the filter.

Whereas if 1024core or bombcar posts a review, and it gets blocked/shitcanned/shadowbanned/ignored/never posted, we give up and move on with our lives, we have better things to do.

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

#83

Post by angry_moose »

schnable wrote: post #35
angry_moose wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Maps integration seems to be most of what's propping them up these days. It's especially infuriating because you can only see about 2 reviews before you're prompted to download the Yelp app for "full access". I thought Apple was supposed to be working on their own review system or switching to a different service, but I haven't seen anything come of that.

Sometimes they show TripAdvisor reviews instead of Yelp.

Huh. Wonder if it's a regional thing?

I don't recall ever seeing that and I just checked about 25 places in my city and none of them had TripAdvisor.

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

#84

Post by CoastalCoder »

Solvency wrote: post #67
emodendroket wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ge…

I am friends with 3 different businesses in my town. A baker, a cafe, and a small restaurant. All three of them have experienced the exact same thing. I've seen it happen first-hand on their accounts.

If this is sufficiently widespread, seems like there's an opportunity for a honeypot operation.

I.e.:

(1) Guess at what information triggers this kind of shakedown by Yelp for a new business. E.g., credit-card sales data for new restaurants.

(2) Set up a fake business that pushes all of those buttons. E.g., register a new restaurant business in the state; temporarily rent a space and maybe put up signage; generate realistic credit-card purchase data and/or cell-location data for fake customers.

(3) Wait for the Yelp reviews to come in. [Possibly legal offence #1]

(4) Wait for the Yelp sales call. [Possibly legal offence #2]

(5) Turn down the sales offer.

(6) Wait for the negative reviews. [Possibly legal offence #3]

(7) Ask prosecutors to pursue criminal charges, and/or file a civil suit. Either way, get to the point of legally compelled discovery.

I wonder if this would be a fun first project for a newly minted government prosecutor.

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

#85

Post by bombcar »

gnicholas wrote: post #2

A bit of a side note, but this is super rare: > Meanwhile, Dean took SavantCare to small claims court over the letter and calls she later received, and won a $275 judgment in March 2018 for “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” NIED claims are nearly impossible to win. In law school we were taught to point them out on issue-spotting questions, but that they were basically unwinnable.

Judges in small claims court are much more lenient with petitioners (and defendants) than they are in "big real court".

And it could have been a default judgement.

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

#86

Post by jstarfish »

111111IIIIIII wrote: post #51
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?

> You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years... I wouldn't think so. In a society so rife with obvious scams everywhere you look, at every level in public and private sector orgs, it would be patently idiotic to trash your own career on account of a dishonest restaurant review operation. I wish we lived in a world where such bravery were meaningfully valued, but we don't. For any might-be…

The thing about whistleblowers is that nobody actually likes them. "Whistleblower" is to white-collar crime as "snitching" is to anything street-level.

We "appreciate" them when they call foul on others, but you appreciate them a hell of a lot less when you have such moral crusaders in your own ranks. They aren't loyal to anybody but their own sense of self-righteousness and can't be trusted to keep their mouth shut if you piss them off after they discover dirt on you. They're only ever a liability.

On the flip side, barring being vindictive it's not worth it to blow the whistle on anything unless you can prove it beyond all doubt and intend to pivot to motivational speaking for the rest of your career. Outside of the defense industry (the DoD does pay generously to anyone tattling on Snowden/Teixera types), there is literally no incentive to speak out, and a lot of potential retribution you invite.

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

#87

Post by wayne »

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?

It's possible the sketchiness is caused by a restaurant's competitors (writing negative reviews, falsely flagging positive reviews, spamming) rather than Yelp proper.

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

#89

Post by zaphar »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #79
jollyllama wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITT: people who have never heard of NDAs

IANAL, but can an NDA legally bar someone from reporting a suspected crime to law-enforcement?

No, But do you want to fight that out in court?

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

#90

Post by CoastalCoder »

zaphar wrote: post #89
CoastalCoder wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but can an NDA legally bar someone from reporting a suspected crime to law-enforcement?

No, But do you want to fight that out in court?

I dunno. Guess it depends on how pissed off I was.
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