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Comment by kspacewalk2 | Hacker News Reader

The author lost me when he ranted about Google and Yelp reviews. Like, completely. There's nothing wrong with reviews saying servers are "sweet". This has nothing to do with candy and is a synonym for kind and/or attentive. Also, when customers 'use words like “clueless and absent” when talking about a twenty-year-old African-American women', it is the author of the article, not the author of the review, who needlessly and bizarrely brought race into the conversation. Is this guy kidding on both counts or what's his deal there, I genuinely don't know.

Perhaps the author's businesses aren't rated as highly as competitors in the neighbourhood, which must be because of sociopath reviewers, platform-related Reasons, and not (for example) a difference in customer service and/or quality.

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I regularly frequent fantastic small businesses there there are a handful of 1 star reviews from angry internet people. Pre-Covid, my favorite local banh mi place had a 1 star review that described the woman who ran the place as angry and hard to understand (because, I can only assume, her english was heavily accented). But in reality she was the nicest old lady and was so happy when I came back after a few months because our office moved. And I've been to 4.9 star places that could only generously be described as mid. Obviously this is all anecdotal, but it also seems to be a nearly universal experience among my peers. Rage baiting, Yelp's blatant extortion of establishments to get rid of bad reviews, and all the other little tricks described in the article are purely due to these awful companies optimizing their perverse KPIs, like a leech whose only KPI is quantity of blood sucked.

I was a true believer in a lot of this stuff 15 years ago, but from where I sit now I really agree with OP.

> a handful of 1 star reviews from angry internet people

My favourite category of 1-star reviews are those left at obviously fine dining establishments praising the food and service but one starring due to price. (Same category: excellent food truck food, unbelievable value, one star because there wasn’t enough seating or the water came in a plastic cup.)

This is a particular banh mi place in South Bay isn't it? I've been there dozens of times and seen the reviews you're referring to. For similar reasons I completely ignore all review scores because gamification ruins all signal. Same with the chaff driven by SEO. Synthetic information is way easier to produce than organic information, which means it's always going to be a losing battle over the long term.

No this was a place in the international district of downtown Seattle. It's not there anymore unfortunately.

But yea I'm right there with you. I ignore reviews now.

>Yelp's blatant extortion of establishments to get rid of bad reviews

Yelp has never done this. I have no idea how this myth has persisted this long.

What’s important though is that we can discuss the appropriateness, but it doesn’t matter at all. We can’t bend the rules either way, they’ve been arbitrarily set by someone else.

The recent resurgence of Bluesky would suggest that, on one of the article's main points about civility/toxicity/moderation, arbitrarily set rules can lead to an exodus and migration to greener pastures. Same is true of the author's own actions, e.g. with the payments provider. So while you cannot change a company, you can often just change companies.

If there's a better system for reviewing businesses than Google Maps, by all means, I'll try it out, but the information it gives me as a customer (often, even if not always, and with all other possible caveats) is too valuable for me to simply stop using. Otherwise, the information asymmetry is a nearly complete one, unless I rely on personal recommendations, which is very often not feasible. It has served me very well for what, 12-15 years now? I'll take the occasional sociopath review, those are more rare than insinuated in the article anyway.

Google reviews have been absolute miss for me.

A lot of car dealerships have high reviews in my area and were absolute garbage. There is no way they are not gaming it.

I've had similar experience with doctors. So much that I started using word of mouth again and asking physicians I trust for referrals.

The person you're responding to is talking about restaurants. You're talking about doctors and car dealerships.

The original article was focused on restaurants, this sub thread focuses on Google reviews in general, and the person you are talking about never mentioned restaurants at all

The Bluesky migration shows that people will keep trying anything but a decentralized platform as long as there are centralized ones that claim to be different. https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get...

Without knowing the location, we don't know the regional context behind this. Just because in some places people freely use this superlative with total strangers in person doesn't mean it's appropriate to use online anywhere english is spoken.

Yes it is. There is nothing wrong complimenting people by calling them sweet. Neither is criticizing the workers. That's exactly what reviews are for.

So everyone should be made to like these reviews and to view them as a positive, just because supposed customers are speaking their minds? It's well known that there are a lot of fake customer reviews on these sites. These sites shouldn't be allowed to behind a toxic "The customer is always right" mentality.

What you just wrote has absolutely nothing to do with the:

1. original article

2. critique of Yelp

3. your incredible "doesn't mean it's appropriate to use online anywhere english is spoken" take

4. my rebuttal

Why are you writing incoherently like a low-quality bot?

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