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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

#131

Post by treve »

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 worked at Yelp in 2018, and the allegations were there, I would be extremely surprised that a secret like this could be kept if it were true. It was generally a pretty open culture which lots internal open cynicism. There was just 0 evidence or even rumors internally this is true. I believe it's way more likely that the system is large enough to generate outliers that believe they're being targeted.

However, hyper aggressive sales reps were there and while I don't have specific details, I know their methods were the cause of at least some people not comfortable staying there. They however would not have access to things like reviews.

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

#132

Post by in_cahoots »

axus wrote: post #105
crazygringo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the part I don't get too. It's normal for a new local restaurant to get a bunch of good reviews because locals are trying it for the first time and want to help. Then it's normal for reviews to drop off because every local who would leave a review, has. Then it's normal to start attracting negative reviews from people who have never visited because local competing restaurants have realized where the downt…

Apparently Yelp will remove positive reviews that have been posted before, and save up negative reviews for publication after the advertising pitch; to be unpublished if advertising is paid for. They may not actually be writing the reviews, simply choosing when to publish or unpublish them, and in what quantities, and which to count for the overall rating. It doesn't matter who's casting the reviews, but who's counti…

If that’s the case shouldn’t there be at least one screenshot of this behavior happening? I’ve heard dozens of anecdotes over the years. You think that at least one restaurant owner would screenshot their rating and the number of reviews as soon as Yelp reaches out to ‘suggest’ advertising.

The fact that this seems to be commonly-accepted knowledge without a single piece of evidence is strange to me.

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

#133

Post by Tycho »

Reviews are just text associated with a date and a place. Seems like someone should be able to build a simple app or website that the public can use and trust for reviews, that doesn't cost much to run. We don't need huge businesses liek TripAdvisor (which mysteriously doesn't let you sort results any more). There's a few challenges. Fake reviews is one. Also the self-selection bias - people generally only feel compelled to leave a review after a bad experience. Or, being supportive, will be overly generous with the rating.

Perhaps if the review site could somehow prompt recent patrons of a set of establishments to not rate but rank the establishments, then some algorithm could convert that into a global score/ranking. You, an otherwise disinterested citizen, receive an email or text asking you to rank restaurants A, B, C which you have recently visited. You are incentivised to respond by a prize draw or something. Would this work? The hard part I suppose is getting the contact details of the potential reviewers.

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

#134

Post by mock-possum »

jstarfish wrote: post #86
111111IIIIIII wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

what? I like them.

I don't get this automatic assumption that everyone is a hypocrite and no one is willing to face accusations of doing things wrong in their own life. I mean, is that how you operate? That's not how I do things. If I'm doing something wrong I love finding out about it - otherwise, how will I eve do things right?

if your goal for relationships with other people is to prevent them from discovering dirt about you then... I dunno man, I'm not sure how it's possible to live happily around other human beings with that kind of attitude. what kind of person does that make you?

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

#135

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jollyllama wrote: post #95
CoastalCoder wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think Yelp's practices constitute a crime in the USA. The crime of a hypothetical Mafia is when they threaten violence for not paying. Yelp just changes what their site says about your business, which isn't a crime unless you can prove slander (very difficult).

Spreading falsehoods is libel. Pretending they can't know the truth doesn't shield them from culpability. Especially when their entire business depends on suppressing negative reviews.

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

#136

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

A relative of mine owns an Air company that is as transparent and honest as they come (they've sent technicians who have no idea I'm related to the owner) and he was telling me they were a scam, but I had no idea that is how they work. I wonder how long until someone sues them for extortion.

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

#137

Post by 0_____0 »

mywittyname wrote: post #109
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…

This has been known for like 10 years now. I can't believe anyone actually still uses or trusts Yelp reviews. There were lawsuits in the early 2010s over trying to reveal the identity of negative reviewers because so many restaurants were claiming they were fake/extortion.

Known to whom? You might be a sophisticated consumer but go hang out at the DMV and ask yourself how many of your fellow countrymen would really question yelp reviews.

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

#138

Post by hwayne »

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,…

IIRC Dan Luu had a post about this: sites do catch a lot of this but there's just so much out there that they can't catch it all, not without accidentally flagging genuine reviews and getting everyone mad at them.

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

#139

Post by rfwhyte »

Online reviews have become one of the dankest cesspits of misinformation and deceit on the entire internet. Amazon's reviews are so thoroughly gamed as to be functionally useless and Amazon knows this and tacitly supports it through their inaction. Yelp and Google Places review are being gamed en-masse by bad actors and scammers and have become so distorted that by relying upon them you're now more likely have a bad experience than a good one. Review websites are stuffed full of advertorials and universally have such super shady advertising / sponsorship policies it's functionally impossible to know whether the review you're reading was paid for or not, and all the big tech sites are so dependent on advertising revenue, they almost never post critical review for fear of upsetting their advertisers. It's a unspoken rule in the industry these days that negative reviews are simply not published. Not to mention damn near every single product review video on YouTube, IG Reels, Tiktok, or wherever else now is either straight up sponsored content where the "Reviewer" is receiving monetary compensation for their so called "Review" or at minimum is receiving the product for free, which creates yet another perverse incentive, as anyone who posts a negative review will simply stop getting free products to review in the future.

There are literally dozens of 100+ person companies in China and India who's entire business model is faking online reviews.

The entire industry is broken, and the average consumer can't find literally a single source for unbiased, trust-worthy reviews of anything anymore, which I for one believe is the system working exactly as designed and intended. Never forget the rich will sacrifice literally anything that's generally considered to be part of the "Public good" if it means they'll get rich faster, which is exactly what's happening here.

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

#140

Post by hospitalJail »

angry_moose wrote: post #18
whalesalad wrote: post #11

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

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.

Why would you use Apple maps though?

I havent used since I missed a turn. Why not use google maps?

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