MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Who owns Yelp? Internet slams website for going to war against racism

Yelp will place a new ‘Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert’ on their Yelp page to inform users about businesses that have been accused of racist conduct

Business review company Yelp is creating a lot of noise after it took a “firm” stand against racism. The California-based company posted about a new consumer alert feature to warn people about businesses linked with racially-charged actions so that it can help people make more informed spending decisions. The decision comes months after George Floyd’s death and over this period an increasing number of reviewers have warned fellow users of racist conduct at local businesses, Yelp says. 

Announcing its decision, Yelp posted on its Twitter handle on October 8, through a series of tweets. “Today, we’re announcing a new consumer alert to stand against racism. In the last few months, we’ve seen that there is a clear need to warn consumers about businesses associated with egregious, racially-charged actions to help people make more informed spending decisions.” In another tweet, it wrote, “Communities have always turned to Yelp in reaction to current events, and our User Operations team already places alerts on business pages when we notice an unusual uptick in reviews that are based on what someone may have seen in the news, rather than on first-hand experience.”It further added, “Now, when a business gains attention for reports of racist conduct, Yelp will place a new Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert on their Yelp page to inform users, along with a link to a news article where they can learn more.” 

Yelp's new "Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert" aim to protect businesses from angry artificial reviews and the notices let consumers know what they might be up against before patronizing a store. 

What is Yelp and who owns it

Yelp was founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. Currently, Stoppelman serves as CEO and Jed Nachman is the COO of the organization. Coming to the platform Yelp, it claims to connect people with great local businesses. The company develops, hosts, and markets the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app which publishes crowd-sourced reviews about businesses in entertainment, leisure, culinary and other domains.  

Yelp prides itself on values of diversity, inclusion and belonging and claims to have a zero-tolerance policy to racism. The company gives a lot of importance to these values that it considers key to their users. Its website states on how good and informed reviews have increased visibility of Black and women-owned businesses.“Now more than ever, consumers are increasingly conscious of the types of businesses they patronize and support. In fact, we’ve seen that reviews mentioning Black-owned businesses were up more than 617% this summer compared to last summer. Support for women-owned businesses has also increased, with review mentions up 114% for the same time period.”

Further, the company introduced some initiatives to help users find and support Black-owned businesses. They partnered with My Black Receipt on the launch of a Black-owned business attribute and joined the 15 Percent Pledge to further boost Black-owned businesses. Now their latest feature is also a move in this direction to assist Black businesses and enable informed reviews about them. The new feature of Yelp called ‘Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert’ is an extension of their ‘Public Attention Alert’. The latter alert was rolled out in response to a rise in social activism surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. “If someone associated with a business is accused of, or the target of, racist behavior, we will place a Public Attention Alert on the business page to warn consumers that the business may be receiving an influx of reviews as a result of increased attention” its site says on such alerts. Between May 26 and September 30, the company has placed over 450 alerts on business pages that were accused of racist behavior. 

After the company rolled out this ‘Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert’ feature, the Internet started slamming it. People felt there is no need to tag a business as racist and they can decide for themselves and make choices without such alerts. 
 
A user wrote against the feature, “This is nuts- anyone, anyone can accuse a business of racism & harm employees and their reputations, even if the claim is false. Dangerous for America. Stupid of #Yelp. A user called the move unwarranted, “As a Yelp Elite, I find this unnecessary and devoid of the reason people use Yelp for guidance in making informed decisions on where to dine, obtain vendors, find salons, etc. This is unwarranted discrimination against businesses without even confronting them and asking why.” A user wrote, “Deleting my yelp app now.”

One user came in support of such initiatives, “This is great!! if racism was experienced or noticed at a place of business, is there a formal way to report the business?”