Reference: https://www.theepochtimes.com/yelp-launches-alert-flagging-businesses-accused-of-racism_3532506.html
Yelp, which is some sort of on-line restaurant review outfit, just announced that it will flag businesses accused of racism. According to the above article, “[t]he crowdsourced web and mobile-based review service said in a blog post that members of Yelp’s User Operations team will apply the new label, called the Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert, on businesses ‘when there’s resounding evidence of egregious, racist actions from a business owner or employee, such as using overtly racist slurs or symbols.’. . . Escalation to a racist alert will come after Yelp determines the presence of such ‘resounding evidence.’ Prior to that, if someone associated with the business has been either accused of racism—or been the target of racist behavior—the company will apply a more general Public Attention Alert.”
“Yelp also said that it has ‘rolled out a number of initiatives to help users find and support Black-owned businesses,’ which includes partnering with the 15 Percent Pledge project, which calls on major retailers ‘to commit a minimum of 15 percent of their shelf to Black-owned businesses,’ on the premise that blacks in the United States make up nearly 15 percent of the population.”
OK, so blacks in Massachusetts, for example, make up only about 7% of the population. But Target and Walmart, etc., have to stock 15% from black businesses? What about places in the South where blacks are, say, 50% of the population? Or Detroit, or Chicago? Is 15% sufficient there?
This assumes, of course, that any statistical disparity always equals racism, which any statistician will tell you is just absurd. Is Massachusetts more racist than Alabama or Mississippi because fewer blacks live there? C’mon. It’s often said that there’s nothing common about common sense, and this approach certainly verifies that truism.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 29 U.S.C. sec. (c)(2)(A) provides blanket liability protection for internet service provider such as Yelp for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”. The original impetus of this statute was to protect children from internet porn, but its reach is much further, as anyone who’s ever tried to sue Google, AOL, etc., has found out.
The result is Yelp can basically do whatever it wants in terms of labelling conduct like it has proposed and it will suffer no legal liability. That is, the victim of such foolishness can’t sue Yelp for defamation; he or she will have to try to find out who provided the information to Yelp, which isn’t going to be easy to do unless the accuser self-identifies. How much faith do you have in the ability of these Yelp holier-than-thou parasites to accurately label businesses? Well, if they don’t have any liability, they don’t care. A Yelp “investigation”? Please. “Resounding” evidence? Please. And who decides that? Yelp, that’s who; judge, jury and executioner.
One angry customer, that’s all it would take. Might not even be a customer, could be a neighbor, could be a former classmate or lover of an owner or employee with an ax to grind, could be the fellow renting an upstairs apartment who doesn’t like BBQ smoke. And evidence, of course, be damned. An accusation is quite enough to go and cancel yet another business or life. And once there is a single such flag, even if completely fabricated, then the crazies will come out of the woodwork and that business is done for.
If the Yelps of the world are going to start making these types of value judgments and taking it upon themselves to wreck peoples’ lives and businesses, then they do not deserve the protection they have and they should be liable to victims and have to pay up. It’s up to Congress to change the law, but if the progressive freaks have their way that just isn’t going to happen because, like them, Yelp is woke. And knee-jerk wokeism is all the rage these days.