Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list • Hacker News Board

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#101

Post by freehunter » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

varelse wrote: post #23

If they had the guest list beforehand, they had a responsibility to inform you of this issue before the trip. Putting you on the spot forced you into making a crappy decision either way you went with it. I personally would have yanked all the students out and explained why and exactly why you were all leaving to someone in authority if this couldn't be cleared up, further that it was going to go up on the Internet, b…

Think about what benefit that would give the other class members, though. None. All they would be feeling is that they missed a lecture they wanted to be at and should be at.

It's sad for the student who could not attend, that is obvious. That's Yelp's fault. But these kids aren't kids. If they wanted to stand on principle and leave the presentation, they could make that call. But the decision to pull the whole class from the conference shouldn't be up to the teacher of a college class populated by adults.

Throw a shitstorm at Yelp, yes, but if I were in that class and the teacher told me to get back on the bus, I'm under no obligation to listen to him. And I likely would have stayed, almost equally as upset at the poor behavior of the instructor. The way Chris handled the situation was about as good as you can get under the unfortunate circumstances.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#102

Post by lwat » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 2:23 AM UTC

feydr wrote: post #45

waterlesscloud wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name on a list, sure, fine. Pretty standard practice in big office buildings. Running the guest list against some database of banned names, not so standard. One reason it's not standard is that properly operating a list of banned names is very difficult, for the reason pointed out here in this post.

I didn't get this context from the post when I read it first - I guess this begs the question - was this a former employee of yelp or was it a true mixup?

It's a student, definitely not a former yelp employee or homeless person.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#103

Post by pretz » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 2:41 AM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #89

pretz wrote: post #85

I work for Yelp, and it sounds like we screwed up. Apologies that we weren't able to get this woman into the MySQL event. We're obviously reviewing our security procedures to make sure they are more sane and sensitive for next time.

You're a mobile engineer at yelp, do you have authority to speak on this publicly? Is this Yelp's official response?

You can consider this an officially sanctioned response.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#104

Post by Uchikoma » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 4:16 AM UTC

So the teacher decided it was the best overall to let the students in, abandon the one student, it's best for him to listen to the talk (!) and go with the policy. I know it might just be me, but with this behavior I have the feeling he is supporting this policy.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#105

Post by philwelch » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 4:43 AM UTC

antihero wrote: post #27

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity? Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.

I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.

Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#106

Post by zoevkay » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 4:58 AM UTC

Hey guys! I am the student in question. As someone else said, we are all adults (in our 20's and 30's) and I wasn't hurt/isolated/crushed/etc. when our teacher didn't come with me. In fact he's a wonderful teacher and person, and instead of protesting against security (who doesn't care), he posted this, which gained a lot more attention.

It turns out someone causing problems at numerous Yelp events has the same name as myself and they were on the "no-fly" list. I'd say the security needs some improvement, as they couldn't tell the difference between us after checking my government-issued ID.

Thanks for all the discussion.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#107

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 7:03 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #94

pyre wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they > might be doing something bad if people want to do > them bodily harm. They don't have to be doing something wrong for people to want to harm them.

Most of the time, if people want to physically hurt you, you're either doing something really bad, or really good. I don't think Yelp falls into the "really good" category.

Or you might just be hurting business of bad people. Not every owner of the restaurant is a nice and smart person who can accept negative feedback (aka. bad review) as a sing that he/she needs to change something.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#108

Post by throwaway53211 » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 7:11 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #21

I attended a meetup that was held at Yelp and I can confirm that entrance to the building is weirdly extra secured compared to meetups at other SF companies I've attended.

This entire story seems quite obvious, really.

AFAIK, the CONSENSUS is they run a racket. "Sures is a nice restaurant, would be a reeeel shame if some negative reviews happened to it, wouldn't it" is their business model. (not exaggerating here - Google startup extortion, this is the only company that comes up. They've been sued.)

If you're running an extortion ring, you're not gonna be letting a whooole lot of po'd people in your office.

I would be extremely curious about the specific name. I bet it is someone they have tried to illegally strong-arm by showcasing negative reviews.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#109

Post by keithpeter » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 8:06 AM UTC

"But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside. "

I'm a teacher, and if this happened to one of my students on an official College trip (which, in the UK, would have been documented and approved in advance with a risk analysis &c, and yes even for adult students) I would probably be on the phone to the principal.

Given they way things sound in this case, I would have had to consider options. I'm assuming the teacher in this case was also driving the transport.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#110

Post by MortenK » Fri, Jul 27, 2012, 8:08 AM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #43

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #7

> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to attend it out of principle?

and how old are these students? Pointing someone in the direction of public transportation and telling them to go sounds irresponsible. I get the author was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Certainly there was a better resolution... Of course, there is no context in the story, so it is hard to say...

Probably old enough to take public transporation, if they are attending a talk on how Pinterest scales their product :-)