What an INSANELY stupid idea --> Yelp goes WOKE, creates alert system so users can accuse businesses of 'racist conduct'

Because this won’t backfire, Yelp. Nope, not at all.

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.

— Yelp (@Yelp) October 8, 2020

A new consumer alert so users can target businesses that make them mad and claim they are racist. Anyone else have visions of ‘The Salem Witch Trials’ going through their minds with this? Imagine what will happen to any business hit with this sort of alert?

What a terrible decision.

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 a first-hand experience.

— Yelp (@Yelp) October 8, 2020

Maybe just rate how a business does on service, pricing, product, value, etc?

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. https://t.co/1K2bJ46uM8

— Yelp (@Yelp) October 8, 2020

Holy crap.

From blog.yelp.com:

At Yelp, we value diversity, inclusion and belonging, both internally and on our platform, which means we have a zero tolerance policy to racism. We know these values are important to our users and 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.Communities have always turned to Yelp in reaction to current events at the local level. 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. Yelp’s 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 or on social media, rather than on a first-hand experience with the business. Now, when a business gains public attention for reports of racist conduct, such as using racist language or symbols, 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 about the incident.