Yelp made a highly risky and extremely optimistic move: the company announced that it is launching a feature whereby users can report companies for not following the covid-19 security protocols, which will be reflected in the notifications on the company page. Will people prove that they are measured arbitrators of justice? Yelp puts a problem population to the test.
Yelp announced the move today on a Press release noting that “multiple user responses” from connected Yelpers are necessary for a company to suffer an orange question mark, connoting that “social distance may not be applied according to most users” and / or “the team may not use masks according to most users. ”(Truly flagrant offenders can receive both orange marks of shame.) On the other hand, if enough customers congratulate a restaurant for doing well, the company can receive up to two checks green declaring: “Social distance imposed according to the majority of users” and / or “staff wear masks according to the majority of users. “
The obvious immediate observation is that this seems perfectly designed to facilitate personal vengeance online! But again, this is not entirely different from what Yelp has always been.
Yelp is not entirely blind to this situation. “To prevent people from potentially manipulating the system, we did not disclose the number of responses needed,” said a Yelp spokesman in a statement shared with Gizmodo. The company said it “implemented advanced technology” to prevent potential abuse, but how that technology works remains a mystery.
The function leads one to wonder if Yelp has seen many complaints from companies bearing the covid-19 rules. The company so far seemed to prioritize protecting business from damage analyzes related to covid-19 and business allowed report your own safety precautions and socially distant options. But those were the first days, when not everyone appreciated that business owners as disturbed as customers who wears his absence of mask as a medal of honor anyway.
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Yelp is still launching the feature, which now only appears in a few hundred companies. Even if it gets out of hand, Yelp’s faith in us is deeply inspiring.