The stories are similar in substance, but Gizmodo’s headline is fair and accurate, and does not mislead.īoth stories detail some of the actions taken by Yelp to combat this type of review activity, with MIT Technology Review noting how Yelp responded to these reviews on the Yelp page of Marshall Smith’s Bar Max in Denver: In fact, Yelp was early to implement and enforce extensive trust and safety measures to combat such malicious actions by reviewers.įirth needs to look no further than Gizmodo, which also covered this story over the weekend following MIT Technology Review, but with an accurate headline that doesn’t contribute to the misinformation propagated by his own publication. We will update this post when he responds to that question.īased on the headline alone, readers are misled to believe that Yelp allows this type of review vigilantism, despite the story reporting on the ways Yelp actually mitigates this problem, while Google does not. We asked Firth if he believes that blaming Yelp instead of Google in the headline is fair, noting the misalignment with the substance of the story and the misinformation it’s now spreading on social platforms. So why did MIT Technology Review News Editor Niall Firth insist on a misleading headline that singles out Yelp for this problem, while Google is not mentioned in the headline at all? That is a mystery to us. On the other hand, according to her story, Google takes no action to protect businesses and mitigate this malicious review behavior, and the company did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Basu details the extensive measures Yelp takes to protect business owners from these types of reviews. We believe the reporter did a thorough job accurately reporting on this issue, which Yelp takes very seriously. Over the weekend, MIT Technology Review ran a story by Tanya Basu that looks at the problem of anti-vaxxers weaponizing online reviews to harm local businesses that are trying to re-open safely by requiring masks or vaccinations.

Technology review mit