We at The Daily Rail have long railed (pun intended) against the power Yelp has over operators in our industry. Even small changes in your Yelp rating can have serious implications for your financial success. So, when they announced they were adding a new alert category that will mark a restaurant as having a racist incident associated to them, we damn near lost our minds.
This is a terrible idea and we all need to oppose it. This feature gives Yelp and reviewers the power to literally destroy a restaurant even if they make an honest error in the process.
Let’s start with the political side of it. To be clear, we support the message behind Black Lives Matter and we decry racism in all of its forms. However, this decision is less about combatting racism and far more about performative politics. Yelp’s attempt to look woke will ultimately cost some restaurant operators having their business destroyed. Even with the best of intentions, one mistake could be the end for a business without any opportunity to make amends.
Yelp’s Process Full of Holes
You need only look at the absurd way they are sourcing the evidence that a location is guilty of a racist incident, to see where errors can abound and lives destroyed.
Yelp, said it would post alerts on the pages of businesses where customers or employees have reported incidents of racism in their attempt to demonstrate their woke-ness. Yelp said in a statement that it would use a “business accused of racist behavior” alert when there was “resounding evidence” that a business owner or employee had taken racist actions, including the use of racist slurs or symbols.
This alert will always link to a news article from a “credible media outlet,” Yelp added, without elaborating on which news organizations they considered to be credible or how it defined “resounding evidence.” So far, the alert has been placed on “a couple of” business pages, a Yelp spokeswoman said.
First, they site credible news sources, but fail to identify any specific journalistic standard. Second, they are using the reports of customers and employees, but what happens when those folks create a narrative that is untrue? We have certainly seen people who are willing to lie about something they experienced which was carried by credible news outlets. This standard offers no transparency and worse, no way for a business to appeal this “alert” to avoid an error.
It is clear Yelp has failed to appreciate that there is already a system that punishes a business that does things that are openly racist to employees or customer — the customer’s dollar. Restaurants that have been accused of racism, bigotry, or other repugnant behaviors are sufficiently damaged by that negative and viral publicity. In response they either issue a serious mea culpa and don’t reoffend, or are driven out of business by their local community staying away.
Simply stated, Yelp has no place in this process. And let’s face it, this is far different than posting a bad grade from the Health Department. At least with those sanitation grades there is a third-party authority assigning the designation. In their current iteration, they have assigned themselves the role of Judge, jury and executioner with no hope for appeal.
The arrogance of Yelp to assign themselves this responsibility is astounding. Sadly, it has forced me to agree with Donald Trump Jr. -- which is tragic in and of itself. When he heard about this decision he mused on Twitter, “What are the odds that this isn’t insanely abused?”
Let’s hope they come to their senses and realize they should stick to consumer reviews, because they’ve had enough trouble doing that well to be getting on.
