Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 331 posts

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

#161

Post by morkalork »

acumenical wrote: post #145

In the future, reviews will be automated, thus immunizing them from unsavory practices such as paid reviews. Your GPS-enabled wearable compute device will determine which establishment you patronized and for how long, and biometric data will determine whether you enjoyed your time there. These data will be "anonymized" and aggregated. "90% of [brand] Watch wearers like You experienced heightened happiness scores at t…

Hello, [restaurant name], this is Alice from [brand] calling. Would you be interested in our premium marketing package? Features include enhanced filtering of "anomalous" (negative) happiness-score(tm) readings. The subscription costs only 1,337 credits/month.

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

#162

Post by janalsncm »

xyst wrote: post #118

I am surprised a yelp/google alternative has not been created with a feature to establish provenance of a review. Perhaps something like a receipt which contains a unique link and that person can provide a review through the link. The review will be posted as "verified transaction" on the site and overall score of the restaurant is determined from there. "Anonymous" reviews can still be posted but won't be factored i…

Additionally, once you start creating a paper trail it starts to look more and more like a concerted criminal fraud operation. Yours is a good idea.

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

#163

Post by emodendroket »

Solvency wrote: post #104
emodendroket wrote: post #57

> Before Fake Review Watch and all her research, Dean used review sites often, she said. But now she tells everyone she knows to stick with good old word-of-mouth — especially with recent additional hits to the online system, like the surge of reviews spurred by COVID-19 policies and new reports of AI chatbot-written Amazon reviews. Kind of sick of reading this advice. If I knew someone I trusted to recommend me a co…

This is where NextDoor comes in. I guarantee your entire town is likely already on there talking about contractors they've used. The app is slow and sluggish but it's legitimately where most homeowners and "regular townsie folk" are these days.

I am on some Facebook neighborhood groups which I think are similar enough to Nextdoor, but there are plenty of scammers about and also, it’s hard to trust people’s judgment given how many idiotic posts you see floating around.

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

#164

Post by emodendroket »

stronglikedan wrote: post #158
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…

> which I’m sure not only gets people to take them down but also discourages people from writing them in the first place. I leave negative reviews for places that deserve them, and there's nothing they could ever do to get me to take it down, or discourage me from doing it. I doubt they could ever do anything that would make most people feel differently from me about that. In fact, I'd be pissed and just start leavin…

Well, sure, some will react that way. But some guy kept calling my wife and trying to intimidate her over my review. That probably works at least some of the time. And how many people want to go to court to defend themselves over a review? Seems like it’s not worth the effort.

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

#165

Post by emodendroket »

jaktet wrote: post #75
Solvency wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So just to be clear, you unselected the default “yelp sort” and sorted by either review date or best or worst and they don’t show up?

Sorry, not sure I understand the question. Part of what I’m saying is the default sort tends to be fairly generous to the business.

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

#166

Post by scythe »

grumple wrote: post #126
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?

Could be individual salespeople doing it, and probably without Yelp truly "knowing". I worked at a nationwide gym once upon a time, and it was common for salespeople to trick people into signing long term contracts.

This theory is better than most, considering that other organizations have used similar tactics to get the benefits of bad behavior while dodging responsibility, such as HomeVestors of America (aka "We Buy Ugly Houses"):

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-...

Amazon also somewhat infamously uses contracting organizations with scandalous labor practices.

But to the contrary, these allegations have been levied against Yelp for nearly a decade, and yet no real clear evidence of this happening deliberately at least once has appeared. Meanwhile, people have switched to Google Reviews, which also have a pay-to-play element (for visibility) and dubious corporate backing.

One rather mundane explanation might be that people who click on restaurants near the top of the search results are just friendlier reviewers overall, while people who search to the fifth page are more picky.

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

#167

Post by OkayPhysicist »

gnicholas wrote: post #146
hospitalJail wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use Apple maps though? I havent used since I missed a turn. Why not use google maps?

I use Apple Maps and do have some complaints, but I like when it tells you which lane(s) to be in as you approach freeway interchanges. Sometimes it's obvious where you're supposed to be (far right), but sometimes when consecutive exits are close together, you actually need to be 1 or 2 lanes over.

Google maps does that too?

"Use the left two lines to take exit 12 towards Buemont Street"

"Use the second from the right lane to continue on Sepulvada Drive"

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

#168

Post by NegativeK »

dfxm12 wrote: post #130
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?

Who will they blow the whistle to? If they go to the media, even if they are 100% on the whistleblower's side, it'll be a week (at most) of slightly negative PR. People will forget, if they noticed in the first place. Is there a government body that will act on this? What will they do? A small fine? Would this actually go to court?

The point isn't that whistleblowing might put a sudden end to it; it's that nobody has ever blown a whistle, with evidence that isn't hearsay, ever.

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

#169

Post by schnable »

angry_moose wrote: post #83
schnable wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I think so.
Post reply on HN