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

Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

chriszf.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 122 posts

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#81

Post by pyre »

cschmidt wrote: post #19
briandear wrote: post #3

Yelp reviews are a big point of anger from many business owners and there's some valid security risks. However a name based policy is rather dumb.

I guess that is the underlying issue. Yelp is fundamentally a protection racket. "Those are some real nice reviews you have there - it would be a real shame for something to happen to them." I imagine that there are lots of business owners that would be a security risk. I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they might be doing something bad if people want to do them bodily harm.

  > 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.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#82

Post by mnicole »

morsch wrote: post #72
mnicole wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the teacher-blaming here. Imagine you're a student in that class; you're stoked to see this talk, but one of your classmates can't get in. You feel terrible but you've been looking forward to this. If the teacher decides to "stick it to the man", you and 8 other of your classmates miss out and possibly become bitter towards the excluded one because of Yelp's security measures. His having to direct her to…

What kind of students are we talking about here? I assume they're not explaining how Pinterest is scaling to eighth-graders. If we're talking about adults here -- and apparently just 10 of them --, why not let them quickly huddle together and figure it out?

Regardless of age, I'd assume they'd rather take notes [on her behalf] than not attend.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#83

Post by brigade »

dfxm12 wrote: post #61
brigade wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why is everyone in the comments assuming (contrary to the article and chriszf's comments) that this student wasn't on the guest list?

chriszf says nothing to the contrary in the article. We are given the facts: 1) You may only get in if you are on the list (of names) and 2) Student X did not get in.

There are certainly more than two facts in those 500 words. Some relevant ones:

1. chriszf wasn't aware of the guest list requirement at the gate

2. No one at Yelp told him of this in response to his inquiries

3. Yelp was provided with a guest list

4. The security guard said "undisclosed security risk", not "not on the list"

5. Everyone except this student got in without a hitch

6. chriszf came to the conclusion that, since the only information Yelp had on her was her name (due to the guest list), that that was why they had barred her.

Fact 6 implies that chriszf did check the guest list (as later confirmed here). I'm just wondering at how, especially in spite of facts 2 and 4, so many people decided that the most logical conclusion was that chriszf is an idiot that is unable to confirm whether a student's name appears on a guest list.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#84

Post by dfxm12 »

brigade wrote: post #83
dfxm12 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chriszf says nothing to the contrary in the article. We are given the facts: 1) You may only get in if you are on the list (of names) and 2) Student X did not get in.

There are certainly more than two facts in those 500 words. Some relevant ones: 1. chriszf wasn't aware of the guest list requirement at the gate 2. No one at Yelp told him of this in response to his inquiries 3. Yelp was provided with a guest list 4. The security guard said "undisclosed security risk", not "not on the list" 5. Everyone except this student got in without a hitch 6. chriszf came to the conclusion that…

chriszf is an idiot Your words, not mine.

There are many reasons for a name to not be on a guest list. I never implied anyone was an idiot. Not one of the items listed confirm whether or not student x's name is on the list.

chriszf was able to come to the conclusion you state because chriszf had more information than was written in the blog post.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#85

Post by pretz »

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.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#86

Post by nnnnnnnn »

pyre wrote: post #81
cschmidt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that is the underlying issue. Yelp is fundamentally a protection racket. "Those are some real nice reviews you have there - it would be a real shame for something to happen to them." I imagine that there are lots of business owners that would be a security risk. I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they might be doing something bad if people want to do them bodily harm.

> 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.

But it helps!

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#88

Post by edward »

Yelp.com is blocked from my home Comcast connection in San Francisco (76.126.140.7). I just get "403 Forbidden". I assume somebody else in my neighborhood on Comcast tried to crawl the site and they denied access for the entire IP block.

I tried e-mailing them, no response.

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#89

Post by MichaelApproved »

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?

Re: Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

#90

Post by csense »

Ultimately, a private company should be able to ask anybody to leave their property for any reason.

The checks and balances against abuse of this power are basically that, if Yelp's a jerk, they get bad PR, as is happening in this case.

Post reply on HN