Yelp Prison Review Faxbot | Hacker News Reader

Yelp Prison Review Faxbot

lav.io

75 pointsdanso32 comments

But what of possible negative repercussions? I imagine that prison administrators that get poor reviews on Yelp are more likely than average to respond negatively to reviews received, and more likely than average to expend a lot of energy figuring out (even if they are wrong) who wrote the review, and exact revenge upon them.

It would be less snarky, but maybe it would be better to send these faxes to state/federal elected representatives that could act to change things for the better, and that would (generally) have less motivation to seek revenge?

Off the top of my head I imagine that most prison administrators are political appointees and probably know far less about the actual conditions of the prison and are less removed from the day-to-day running than one might expect. They have the ability to enact top-down changes in operations, but generally have no motivation to do so. I would think feedback like this would be quite valuable to them, so they could gain a perspective on what's going on that isn't coming from their direct reports.

that's quite an imagination you have.

Thanks. I don't particularly care about the topic, otherwise I'd go about fleshing out my musings with actual information. In this case I might use Quora to validate the basics and then spend some time on Google to answer particulars as I think about them.

But I'd say a good imagination is a necessary tool if one wants to understand the world. Without it, I wouldn't know where to start a search. Here I made my work available for others who might want to build on it, since I'm not all that interested in it.

Hey, don't let your absence of caring about the topic, or lack of "actual information" stop you from sharing on HN the things you imagine based on no actual information or experience! You might not care to spend the time to learn anything about what you're talking about, but you can still spend time sharing your uninformed 'musings' on things you "aren't all that interested in" with HN! Keep on rocking!

Read the thread again, I think you'd find that my contribution to this topic has been more constructive than yours.

I can't say I know what happens at a prison, but I'd assume there's some person(s) working as office admin at these places who sort out the incoming faxes. I'd be surprised if these don't just get trashed when received as they have no real bearing on the prison operations. I doubt Yelp reviews would sway elected reps either, unless there was proof a person they represent who can vote was upset. In other words, I imagine these faxes just waste some prison admin time in filtering them into the trash/recycle heap.

Reading the reviews it's about 95% joke reviews with an occasional honest one about visitation or conditions. I doubt anybody takes them seriously.

I imagine anyone writing these reviews from within the prison might anticipate them being read by prison staff, regardless of whether they were faxed to the prison.

Pretty sure this violates the Yelp TOS. Certain it violates good taste.

Friend works as a psychiatric counselor in a max security facility for 20 years. Commutes 2 hours to and from work for safety reasons. Amazingly decent fellow. Really cares. Really tries to do the right thing.

I showed him this and his reply? "Fuck those guys."

From a job description: "Specific safety and security duties for wardens include approving security policies, assessing safety and security systems, managing internal investigations, managing prison intelligence operations, ensuring facility compliance with applicable standards and overseeing inmate classification systems. Human resource and budget duties include interviewing applicants, conducting staff development, promoting career advancement, compile budget requests, maintain staffing within financial constraints and set budget priorities, according to ACA. Correctional employees, including administrators, operate in a dangerous environment where inmate assaults and more dangerous incidents, such as riots, are a threat. Managing critical incidents is a significant part of a warden's job. Duties include drafting and reviewing emergency plans, ensuring the readiness of response teams and implementing emergency plans when an incident arises."

The last thing these people need is automated FAXes scraping one of the least reliable services on the web. It's shameful.

Your comment is spot-on imho.

I have done time in 6 state prisons, 2 federal prisons, two federal detention centers, and several county jails. As long as the inmates aren't killing each other, the warden/superintendent/sheriff doesn't care overmuch what goes on inside regarding the inmate experience.

That is, unless it makes him look good.

I'm assuming this is a half-facetious joke from the creators, but its core intent is sound: valid feedback doesn't always get to the desk on which the buck stops. Not necessarily out of a pursuit of "see no evil, hear no evil..." but just because there's too much noise in the overall dataset of complaints/opinions, and not enough tools or efforts to filter and sift for possible leads. The recent GM recall debacle comes to mind, in which 260 complaints purportedly related to ignition problems were submitted to the NHTSA yet apparently not acted on [1]. The NHTSA's defense is that 260 complaint records is not statistically significant...but...by their criteria, it seems that a lot of complaint trends would fall in that category. The bigger issue is that not enough information is gathered about the complaints to make an informed decision about recalls. Sure, but can the regulators (or carmakers) honestly say that the people who would prioritize such fact-finding are fully aware of what the complaints data (all which can be downloaded by anyone from the NHTSA website [2]) contains at any given point? It's not about taking action when the truth is encapsulated perfectly in a database, but making the effort to sift that database efficiently for leads.

tldr: there's a lot of room for improvement and innovation in filtering feedback for further investigation and action, not just in prisons but much of the public sector.

(for simplicity's sake, I'm ignoring the obvious factor of companies/regulators deliberately and maliciously not giving a shit/covering-things up...which is of course, always something to be aware of)

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/business/auto-regulators-d...

[2] http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/downloads/

I thought there were some rules passed years ago regarding unsolicited faxes, due to the costs in paper and ink they incurred. I remember the topic coming up in the late 80's or early 90's I think.

I wonder if this use falls under those rules?

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/junk-faxes

Of course not. It's not in any way an advertisement.

It's an advertisement for Yelp, would it matter that Yelp's not sending it?

Cute, but I'd be concerned that automated unsolicited faxes are not necessarily something that people want to receive.

I'm pretty sure that every company with a fax machine whose number isn't private is accustomed to receiving "automated unsolicited faxes". At $work, we receive just as many (if not more) spam faxes as we do legitimate ones. People just toss 'em in the trash and don't think twice about it.

I worked for a few months in a research facility in the UK, and had a fax machine on a desk next to me. Once a day, it would turn itself on and print out an ad for a car, or insurance, or something. I was shocked to discover that spam is a thing on fax machines.

Spam has been a thing on fax machines since long before Canter and Siegel's infamous green card spam on Usenet (1994; it wasn't the first, but it was the first truly major spam)..

Sure, but that doesn't make it ok to spam people. By the same logic, you could say it's perfectly fine to receive lots of unsolicited email spam. Just because we already receive a lot doesn't mean we want any more.

Sometimes political campaign teams will fax each other pictures of black construction paper, just to be ugly.

Right, but you have to remember that the people running these institutions are routine subjecting their inhabitants (a fair portion of whom are innocent and/or unfairly convicted) to all kinds of unpleasant things they'd prefer not to "receive", to wit: rape (via silent acquiescence), beatings, gratuitous solitary confinement, intentionally inadequate food provisions, routine humiliation, etc.

So in cases like these, a bit if turnabout is more than fair play.

I think this is really great. How often do we as a society take the voices of prisoners seriously? It's kind of interesting to see a "view from below." Very cool work.

Do you expect people should like prison? Prison would not be much of a deterrent if it didn't get 1 star from just about everyone in terms of the experience. In terms of dealing with actual abuse of prisoners, the courts are a far more robust system for dealing with complaints.

The US has a brutal prison system where prison rape and sexual assault is routine.

The US also has a huge prison population and recidivism is high, so the brutality of the system doesn't seem to work much as a deterrent.

How do yelp reviews address this problem?

I teach computer science at a prison on a volunteer basis, and occasionally I've had to use Google Maps to get directions. Always amusing to see some one-star reviews of it as I find the address.

"Would not recommend to a friend..."

This is so cool. Wish we saw more stuff like this on HN. Also liked the other projects you have listed on your site.

Authors here - if anyone has any questions or critiques please let us know.

i think this is rad.

this is good art.

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