Yelp Introduces Anti-Racist Tools

The American platform decided to introduce two solutions to combat racism and support minorities. Yelp has partnered with the Open to All Consortium to create a training program to improve inclusiveness in SMBs – to enhance employee diversity.

The second, more controversial, initiative concerns a consumer alarm that would warn against companies accused of racism.

The Internet protects the rights of minorities.

Users use Yelp to provide feedback on businesses. The rated entities can, of course, contribute to their pages: add basic information and the offer and photos of goods or services. The website is particularly active in Poland in two cities: Krakow and Warsaw.

Now the platform is introducing a warning that will be of particular importance in the United States. In it, we read: “There have recently been reports accusing this company of racist behavior …”. The window will also send us information about a specific event affecting such an assessment.

Importantly, when such information appears, Yelp disables the ability to add new reviews to the page. This is to prevent the business from being flooded with political or ideological comments from the people involved who would like to explain the accusation or offend any of those concerned.

Yelp also notes that any reports must be based on direct consumer experience.

How is it working?

If Yelp gets a lot of negative comments about a business, the team will look at each case on a case-by-case basis and review the profile. An alert will be triggered when the activity is due to racist incidents documented by a reliable source.

The question remains: are such measures even needed? However, after looking at what Yelp’s behaviors are targeting, the answer is yes. An example was a situation in 2018. The thing happened in Starbucks, Philadelphia, where an employee called the police about two black customers waiting for a friend, and the case received wide media coverage. Such events are elementary to verify, and should they occur, Yelp will respond with a new alert.

It remains to be hoped that such a tool will turn out to be useless in Poland.

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