<p>Yelp, the local search and review site, said it would post alerts on the pages of businesses where customers or employees have reported incidents of racism, the latest attempt by a US company to introduce a tougher response system to confront discrimination after the police killing of George Floyd in May.</p>.<p>The company, which offers a platform for users to rate places like restaurants, small businesses and popular tourist sites, said in a statement Thursday that it would use a “business accused of racist behaviour” 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 said, without elaborating on which news organizations they considered to be credible or how it defined “resounding evidence.”</p>.<p>Yelp’s announcement raised questions about how the company will enforce the initiative — and how it will ensure that businesses were not falsely associated with racism or the target of defamatory reviews, which can significantly damage a business. Companies like Google and Facebook have also grappled with the difficult issues of moderating users on their online platforms.</p>.<p>“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,” said the statement from Yelp, which is based in San Francisco.</p>.<p>The company has already rolled out a lower-level “public attention” alert that flags businesses whose employees have been accused of racism or were the target of racist behaviour. A team of moderators investigate a business if they see a flurry of user comments on its Yelp page, the statement said.</p>.<p>Yelp’s initiative aims to help its customers find businesses that align with their values, a factor of increasing importance to users, the company said, citing a 617% increase in reviews mentioning Black-owned businesses this summer compared with last summer.</p>.<p>Yelp has waded into issues of social justice before. In 2017, the company said it added a feature so users could filter results by the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms. The site invites users and business owners to identify places that offer single-stall bathrooms available to people of any sex.</p>.<p>In recent years, crowdsourced review sites like Yelp have grappled with how to effectively moderate posts so that bogus reviews and misleading news articles do not unfairly hurt businesses.</p>.<p>In one example in 2018, diners at a popular New York City restaurant emptied out in the hours after HuffPost published an article saying that the restaurant owner’s sister was a firebrand Twitter user who frequently attacked Islam. The owner’s wife said at the time that she and her husband had little contact with her sister-in-law and that her views did not in any way represent theirs or the business.</p>.<p>Still, the restaurant received vitriol from the right and the left on Twitter, Facebook and in one-star reviews on Yelp.</p>
<p>Yelp, the local search and review site, said it would post alerts on the pages of businesses where customers or employees have reported incidents of racism, the latest attempt by a US company to introduce a tougher response system to confront discrimination after the police killing of George Floyd in May.</p>.<p>The company, which offers a platform for users to rate places like restaurants, small businesses and popular tourist sites, said in a statement Thursday that it would use a “business accused of racist behaviour” 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 said, without elaborating on which news organizations they considered to be credible or how it defined “resounding evidence.”</p>.<p>Yelp’s announcement raised questions about how the company will enforce the initiative — and how it will ensure that businesses were not falsely associated with racism or the target of defamatory reviews, which can significantly damage a business. Companies like Google and Facebook have also grappled with the difficult issues of moderating users on their online platforms.</p>.<p>“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,” said the statement from Yelp, which is based in San Francisco.</p>.<p>The company has already rolled out a lower-level “public attention” alert that flags businesses whose employees have been accused of racism or were the target of racist behaviour. A team of moderators investigate a business if they see a flurry of user comments on its Yelp page, the statement said.</p>.<p>Yelp’s initiative aims to help its customers find businesses that align with their values, a factor of increasing importance to users, the company said, citing a 617% increase in reviews mentioning Black-owned businesses this summer compared with last summer.</p>.<p>Yelp has waded into issues of social justice before. In 2017, the company said it added a feature so users could filter results by the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms. The site invites users and business owners to identify places that offer single-stall bathrooms available to people of any sex.</p>.<p>In recent years, crowdsourced review sites like Yelp have grappled with how to effectively moderate posts so that bogus reviews and misleading news articles do not unfairly hurt businesses.</p>.<p>In one example in 2018, diners at a popular New York City restaurant emptied out in the hours after HuffPost published an article saying that the restaurant owner’s sister was a firebrand Twitter user who frequently attacked Islam. The owner’s wife said at the time that she and her husband had little contact with her sister-in-law and that her views did not in any way represent theirs or the business.</p>.<p>Still, the restaurant received vitriol from the right and the left on Twitter, Facebook and in one-star reviews on Yelp.</p>