Yelp publishes crowd-sourced reviews about businesses, providing potential customers with all they need to know before they go: star-scaled ratings, pros/cons and even pictures.
But, they’re taking it a step further.
Yelp has created a new label to warn users of racist behaviors following an uptick in reports of discrimination, the New York Post reports.
The platform says the alert will help customers decide whether they’ll be welcome at certain businesses.
But, some fear it will be used to dismantle merchants by false allegations.
Yelp says it will place the notice on the profiles of businesses that see an influx of reviews after getting public attention for reports of “racist conduct,” and will direct users to a news article with more details about the allegations, according to the Post.
“As the nation reckons with issues of systemic racism, we’ve seen in the last few months 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,” Noorie Malik – Yelp’s vice president of operations – wrote in a Thursday blog post.
Yelp said it has placed more than 450 alerts on business pages that were accused of or targeted by racist behavior between May 26 and September 30.
According to the Post, Yelp already adds a “Public Attention Alert” to certain profiles and temporarily blocks users from posting reviews on them while the service confirms whether the posts were based on first-hand experiences.
But, the platform will now add a more specific alert: “Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert.”
While this may seem like a great addition to some, the announcement received criticism from conservative commentators who fear that the company is making businesses more vulnerable to receive false allegations by angry customers.
“Yelp is really giving race hoaxers a specific tool to destroy any business they want on a whim,” conservative blogger Matt Walsh wrote in a tweet.
Honest to God I read this tweet without looking at the account and thought it was a parody. But no, it's real. Yelp is really giving race hoaxers a specific tool to destroy any business they want on a whim. https://t.co/8G51LQfCQZ
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 9, 2020
Republican lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon argued Yelp was “weaponizing defamation” and opening itself up to lawsuits.
This is bullshit, @Yelp. You are weaponizing defamation. More work for me, more litigation for you. https://t.co/dGsUfaSH01
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) October 9, 2020
This new tag comes amid the Black Lives Matter protests that have been sweeping through the nation since May.
