It's a protection racket. Total scam. If you have 20 minutes I did a show about it 2 years ago https://youtube.com/watch?v=e9rmh8O_ksM . I guess you can 2.0 speed that and get it done in 10.
Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
181–190 of 331 posts
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…
I hesitate to suggest that this may indicate there aren't that many 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants. Even great resaurants in my area struggle to break the 4.5 barrier.
Changing the zoom level will typically show these missing results. For example, I just checked my neighborhood. There are 5 restaurants within a few hundred feet of each other rated 4.5+ stars. With my filters set to 4.5+ stars, when I zoom out a bit, 4 of the 5 restaurants disappear, and I instead see a handful of 4.1 and 4.3 star restaurants. One of the 4.3 star restaurants is literally next door to a 5 star and 4.5 star restaurant, which are hidden at that zoom level.
I thought maybe it's some kind of weighted rating, because it's showing me the 4.3 star restaurant with 1,100 reviews, instead of the 4.5 star restaurant with 600 reviews. So, perhaps Google thinks the additional number of reviews make up for the lower rating, and they rank it higher, even though I'm specifically asking to not see those results. However, it also shows a 4.4 star restaurant with 40 reviews, while hiding a 4.5 star restaurant with 90 reviews.
This is par for the course when it comes to modern recommendations though. Do you want to see Netflix movies released in the past 3 years? Or what about a simple list of top rated movies? Too bad, you can watch what we tell you to watch. It's a complete lack of respect for the user.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#183Go Kay Dean! Yelp should hire her and give her a team. It's a win-win. She is clearly passionate about the problem, and effective. Yelp gains added trust of their bread and butter, the review system.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#184In 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.
Good point if the app was independent like Yelp. I envisioned this as a first party product from a more powerful company, which makes the Watch as well, that could then directly integrate the consumer/review data into their Maps app on their Phones and other devices.
Alice from [brand] would then have to find a way to get customers to take off their watches or somehow artificially inflate their happiness scores. Or, funnel naturally happier people to their establishment, similar to lead sourcing.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Oh, I thought you were talking about anonymous reviews, where the the businesses can respond but not contact me directly. I wouldn't leave a review where they would be able to contact me. And even if they did, I'd handle that scenario a bit differently. Sorry that happened to you.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
On my iPhone, I either use Apple Maps or Waze. I'm pretty sure Waze doesn't offer this, though I haven't updated the app in a while.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#187> A Yelp post from December 2017 was the first crucial clue. “Melissa R.” wrote, “I was offered money to leave a positive review for Savant Care Clinic. Must be a shady company.” The user attached Craigslist screenshots of the apparent offer, which Dean took her own screenshot of just before Yelp removed the post for violating its terms of service. Why would Yelp forbid people from talking about this? While it is cer…
It's not in Yelp's interest to publish content that undermines the credibility of their entire product.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Maps is terrible for hiding results. I'll use the filter to show restaurants with a 4.5+ star rating, and it hides dozens of places 4.5+ stars while instead showing results 4.0 - 4.4 stars and even some that have no reviews at all. I find the arrogance insulting. You want to see 4.5+ star Japanese food restaurants? Well, I don't think that's best for you, and I'm going to replace some of those results with 4.1…
I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search 'restaurants' -- nothing. It'll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant's actual name will bring it up. But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing…
Just wait until they control AR/XR. You'll see only what they want you to see.
Search-based interfaces with ranking, controlled by someone else, are all screaming to be gamed and monetized. We should hate this but we don't.
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#189Who does really use Yelp? I've seen no one. Is it just US-only thing, or?
Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted
#190A 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.
I've heard a judge in CA say that emotional distress claims were not permissible in small claims court.
That's either not the case (this was in California), or is for something "worse" than negligent infliction. As a sibling comment pointed out it's possible that this was a summary judgment so perhaps it isn't technically emotional distress.