
SF Bar Owner to Yelp: ‘Fuck All of These People Entirely’ - zoolander2
https://sf.eater.com/2020/3/27/21197236/yelp-dna-gofundme-wrecking-ball-coronavirus
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merricksb
Related discussion 2 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706307)

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kryogen1c
>a Yelp spokesperson says “we have paused the automatic rollout of this
feature,” as “it has come to our attention that some businesses did not
receive a notification with opt-out instructions.”

if you've ever needed proof that this is a mirror dimension and not the prime
reality, this is it.

one could imagine such a well intentioned conversation at yelp HQ, trying to
connect damaged businesses (yelp clients) and their customers (also yelp
clients) to gain easy PR during a disaster. the execution took a wrong turn
and ended light years from reasonable. opt-out automatic enrollment of
business funding? are you insane? there must be some dimension of go fund mes
i do not understand because this seems likely to end in the atomization of one
or both of yelp and GFM via lawsuit, not counting summary execution in the
court of public opinion.

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eternalny1
Is this what it looks like to me?

Businesses don't sign up, GoFundMe gets slapped on their Yelp pages, and they
have to "claim" the money (without possibly even knowing it is there?).

Meaning all the "unclaimed" money sits in a nice pool for Yelp to happily earn
interest on, invest with, or do other things? Or does this money stay with
GoFundMe?

If it goes to Yelp and waits to be "claimed", this is indeed outrageous and is
not intended to "help" anyone but themselves.

That can't be how it works, or legal, so I must have missed something.
Hopefully.

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miguelmota
What yelp is doing is kind of analogous to what brave browser is doing where
people can give donations to any publisher website even if the publisher is
not signed up with brave, and then brave will reach out to them to claim their
donations.

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droithomme
Have you heard about the small child with cancer? He is dying and wants to see
his favorite baseball team before he dies.

We are (I am) collecting funds to help him achieve his dream before his tiny
life is extinguished. Won't you give what you can today?* Blessings, dear
fellow kind human.

* Please note I have no connection to him or authorization to hold this fundraiser and if he doesn't contact me to claim the money I guess I'll have to keep it for myself but I'm not going to mention that in my appeal.

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kqr2
Jamie Zawinski aka JWZ is a well known for his contributions to Mozilla and
XEmacs.[1]

He is also known for Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment :

 _Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs
which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can._

1\.
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski)

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ggm
I see echoes of the RIAA here. Artists told they are entitled to income, but
have to sign up, spend money, register, and then get told "oh, the algorithm
said you get cents"

I suspect Yelp is going to struggle to show financial transparency on this,
and has a future-audit headache if they don't handle this well. The funds are
very probably a _liability_ on yelp's books, because the intent is clear: its
not for them. If they don't disburse, they have a problem.

~~~
droithomme
Yelp has consistently behaved in an exceptionally sociopathic manner for many
many years. I don't see any reason why that should have changed. Does a
leopard change its spots?

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noptd
Yelp's eligibility criteria [1]:

>To be eligible, businesses must: (a) be in the United States, (b) have
claimed their business on Yelp by March 22, 2020, and (c) have five or fewer
locations. Additionally, businesses must (d) be listed in at least one of the
following categories: Restaurants, Food, Nightlife, Beauty/Spas/Salons, or
Active, though some exceptions apply; (d) have been negatively impacted by a
government mandate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, (e) be independently owned
and operated and not nationally dominant in their field, and (f) intend to use
funds to either to help care for their employees / workers or pay ongoing
business expenses.

The rest of the post sounds as though the process would be on an opt-in basis.
I wonder when/why that changed.

[1] [https://blog.yelp.com/2020/03/helping-local-businesses-
raise...](https://blog.yelp.com/2020/03/helping-local-businesses-raise-money-
matching-donations)

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arkitaip
When people don't trust you even when you try to do something good for them -
literally giving them money - that's a clear indicator that your reputation is
terrible. And this reasoning assumes an incredibly generous interpretation of
Yelp's actions here, a company known for countless predatory business
practices over many years.

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z9e
I don’t understand the level of outrage here, it doesn’t seem to match the
reality of what happened which was Yelp trying to help small businesses in a
way they can. The opt-out and heads up for sure could’ve been done better
though. But I don’t think it deserves this much aggression.

~~~
kadoban
Business owners right now have a bunch of crap they're dealing with. They
really don't need extra nonsense to opt-out of, and from the sounds of it the
opt-out is more than just a button click.

~~~
_bxg1
What I don't understand is why seemingly the majority _want_ to opt-out. Sure,
it's a bit weird and presumptuous and they botched the communication, but
these businesses really are struggling and they're potentially being handed
free money?

Edit: I know Yelp has a track record of being scummy, it's just that in this
case the catch isn't clear from my perspective

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eesmith
DNA Lounge already has a Patreon page at
[https://www.patreon.com/dnalounge](https://www.patreon.com/dnalounge) and a
one-time donation page at
[https://www.dnalounge.com/donate/](https://www.dnalounge.com/donate/) .

What happens if an alternative GoFundMe site, auto-generated by Yelp, results
in a reduction of the overall donation stream? Then it wouldn't be "free
money", would it?

So, who decides if this plan is appropriate for the business?

Hint: not Yelp. Which is why it shouldn't be opt-out.

Plus, Yelp was defaulting to a 15% cut for Yelp. So if people were going to
send $1,000 to a restaurant, but did it through Yelp instead of directly, then
that would be an overall net loss.

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Alex63
I'm slightly surprised (this being HN) that no one has noted that the Jamie
Zawinski quoted in the article is _the_ Jamie Zawinski (jwz, known for Xemacs
and Xscreensaver) . Or is it just too obvious to mention?

Regardless, his comments seem very much in character.

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SAI_Peregrinus
IMO 99% of the time, anything you need to "opt-out" of is bad for you.

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unwoundmouse
Yelp is definitely in the fault here for starting gofundmes for restaurants
without consent, but it’s not as if they murdered anyone. I tend to think that
yelp genuinely had good intentions, as evidenced by the fact that they don’t
profit off this and they would match donations to the gofundmes

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droithomme
> "Fuck All of These People Entirely"

I agree with this guy without even knowing what he's talking about. It's just
a general finding.

