A 1-star, unfiltered user review of Yelp - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/07/EDKN1NGO74.DTL <comment><USER4> Yelp has really let me down. I'm new to San Francisco, and initially used Yelp to help me figure out where to eat and hang out. Over time I learned that some of its 4.5 star places are dirty Taquerias that really suck, and some of my favorite places to be are poorly rated. (Note: I've got nothing against dirty taquerias, but the food better be good if it's a dirty run down taqueria with 5 stars.) I'm not sure what services are better than Yelp.

I've heard people say in casual conversation that Yelp is "over" and all the people in the know have gone elsewhere. What services should I be using to know where the best places to eat are in San Francisco and Marin?

Sol Food in Marin county, for example, is just worshiped on Yelp with 5 star reviews. But I go there, I wait in line for 30 minutes, get crammed in on a bench with 5 strangers, and get served a steak sandwich that's too tough to chew. What's up with that? I feel like I'm better off using Google Maps and just guessing than looking to Yelp for advice. Anyway, are there better services than Yelp to help me figure out what's actually worth going to?

<comment><USER5> My advice is to stop trying to optimize every event in life, and live more serendipitously. Pick places at random, have low expectations, and spend your life constantly being pleasantly surprised.

<comment><USER4> Would it be considered bad, then, to ask my friends where they like to eat, and discuss it? All my friends live in North Carolina.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with talking over ideas of where to eat with friends. It doesn't mean that I'm living my life wrong.

But let's just say for sake of argument that it's best to always be random and spontaneous. Tonight, you should randomly pick a channel on TV, and watch it. Or randomly select a movie. Maybe you don't watch TV or movies. Then a random book off the library shelf?

I do in general terms like your suggestion about being spontaneous, and living in the moment, and embracing chaos and randomness. And here's a suggestion for you: don't tell other people how to live; it's unseemly.

It's a nice suggestion, to live in the moment and be spontaneous, but it's highly impractical. Sometimes it makes sense to work with more information when it's available. Would you randomly select and just sit through a movie? A TV show? How about buying a random car? Selecting a spouse? Sometimes it makes sense to be discerning with limited resources. I'm as zen as the next guy, and live in the moment. I just got to this town, and I'd like to start my search with what people think are the most awesome places to eat. Is that so wrong?

It's surely not as wrong as you guys thinking I'm conducting my life improperly for wanting information about where cool places to eat are.

<comment><USER6> Yelp is not a substitute for your friends. It's not even nearly as good as asking a random person on the street. If you're really stuck, go to a hotel and ask the concierge, they generally don't even care that you're not a guest if you're asking for something as simple as a restaurant recommendation.

<comment><USER7> On NPR recently, there was a guy talking about a startup that works like Tripadvisor, but only shows you reviews within your social circle. This eliminates shills and only shows you opinions that have a known value to you.

Maybe someone can steal that idea and apply it to restaurants.

<comment><USER8> I think there's a golden opportunity that's less about "social circles" and more about "revealed common preferences".

If there's somebody on your review site, who ranks highly several of my highly ranked coffee shops, and ranks low a subset of my lowly ranked coffee shops, I'd be much more prepared to consider their other coffee shop reviews as relevant to me. Even better, location based services like 4Square of Facebook checkins could expose their "revealed preferences" to the algorithm as well, someone who rates Fourbarrel and Ritual highly, but checks in to Starbucks four times a day is less likely to be someone who's reviews I'd want to read than someone who perhaps rates Fourbarrel and Ritual lower on an absolute scale, but checks into both regularly as well as, say Sightglass and BlueBottle.

I'd really like a time and event aware as well as just venue aware review function. Zeitgeist on a Thursday night, or after a critical mass ride - is a _vastly_ different experience than Zeitgeist on a sunny Saturday afternoon when it's full of slumming sunset and marina crowds. DNA Lounge really needs separate review categories for Death Guild nights, Bootie nights, and out-of- town dubstep artist nights - people who love (and hence rate highly) one of those events are significantly less likely to enjoy the other two as much - which makes a Yelp-style single rating for DNA Lounge not particularly useful.

<comment><USER9> There is a Swedish movie review site (<http://filmtipset.se>) which gives you a predicted rating determined from your previous reviews. They are venturing into books and wine, using the same algorithm. Unfortunately they seem to be better mathematicians than web developers, so all of their sites are pretty crappy and they seem to have problems with monetization.

Another problem is that if your taste is not really mainstream, you have to rate quite a few movies to get accurate predictions. After I reached a couple of hundred movies, the predictions were nearly always completely accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A single helpful Yelp review lays out what happened with this establishment: _It ain't what is used to be. They've moved from North Beach to a new location closer to Fisherman Wharf. They probably get alot of tourists. The food is okay...but not as delicious as it was when the other "Italian" owners had it. Where are the Italian waiters who brought so much harm and courtesy to their customers._

Instead of acknowledging these changes as the source of discontent, he blames customers and the review site for pointing issues out. Instead of penning op- eds he should be training his staff, buying higher quality ingredients, and listening to customer complaints.

Owners who hate Yelp ignore the near real time feedback they would never get in person. Complaints posted Fri - Sun more often than Mon - Thur: maybe it you need to look at who works what shifts? Calamari rubbery: Did someone properly train the line cooks? Food called bland, mediocre, bad, or unremarkable: Maybe you should go back to the higher quality ingredients you decided to skimp on to "make more money"?

Yelp looks to be a great way to avoid the death spiral restaurants commonly find themselves in.

Not making enough money? Buy lower quality ingredients. Still not making enough money? Raise prices. Repeat until you lose all regular business and rely on unsuspecting first timers who begrudgingly pay and never return. Eventually close it down.

<comment><USER11> Really? Is it possible that an analogous review exists on a competitor who advertises with Yelp, but on that page the "review" is filtered?

It is entirely possible that the food is exactly the same, but this person's perception is entirely colored by the ethnicity of the staff.

<comment><USER12> That could be the case. Customers are unpredictable and you will have to work very hard to please them all.

But if all your reviews are negative, it's possible you are doing something wrong. Restaurants are one of those professions where you have to be good at more than one thing; you have to design great menus, you have to buy good food, and you have to hire and manage good staff. As a chef, you may consider your ability to make a great menu the only thing that matters. Unfortunately, your customers disagree, thus causing the restaurant to fail. Sorry, that's life. (Same goes for great doctors that hire incompetent staff. I've had to stop going to a doctor I liked for that reason.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Consumer Reports was way ahead of their time.

Any site that accepts advertising is automatically tainted. (CR never takes advertising.) Yelp wants its reviews to be believed and for establishments to pay for advertising.

Maybe they're good at balancing the two, but when it comes time to close the quarterly report, you know which one is going to win out.

<comment><USER11> This is very interesting. Perhaps this is Yelp's Achilles heal. A non- advertising based review site could be far more credible. Maybe some sort of freemium model could take them down by virtue of being more credible...

<comment><USER14> Isn't that what you'd call Zagat's? (Bought by Google a while back, somewhat surprisingly.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been a Yelp user for years, and I was even an "Elite User" for awhile...and I had never heard of "filtered reviews" until now. In fact, if you go to the page of the OP's business, once you actually find the "Filtered Reviews" link (which is in very light gray), clicking on it brings a CAPTCHA...

<http://www.yelp.com/biz/fior-d-italia-san-francisco>

What the hell??

Even as a user determined to see what the fuss is about, I don't even jump through this hoop. So I'm guessing __nobody __actually clicks through to the filtered reviews, whatever they actually are.

I love that Yelp helps me find interesting places in a dense area like NYC, but their business model is appalling.

<comment><USER16> > Even as a user determined to see what the fuss > is about, I don't even jump > through this hoop.

I just did and I'm astounded that this filter even exists. From what I saw I got the feeling that the filter mechanism is broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yelp is fundamentally flawed.

Firstly, they have a clear conflict of interest, which has been discussed many times, when it comes to selling advertising. Buying advertising (anecdotally) seems to make bad reviews magically disappear.

Secondly, and this has always been the problem with "local", is you need a certain critical mass for it to be usable. You can argue that Yelp has reached this point in many cases (although see the next two points) but there are many businesses with <5 reviews.

Third, there is too much friction in asking people to review (and even rate things). Most people simply don't and probably never will. This exacerbates the "critical mass" problem but also introduces a selection bias. The people who comment and rate aren't necessarily representative of general opinions or you (the personalization problem).

I've gone to eat at some places in NYC that are 3.5+ stars that have varied from average to terrible. In some cases I've gone with someone who shared this positive review but--and I realize the counterargument to this is that it's subjective--they're just _wrong_.

Fourth, there is a clear fraud problem with reviews and ratings. People are clearly paid to give positive reviews (eg you see someone rate a given car dealership in the Bay area on one day and then another in Maine the next day and so on). Of any of the companies in "local", IMHO Google is in the best position to deal with this particular problem (disclaimer: I work for Google).

Lastly, as such reviews become increasingly important, there is the issue of extortion. If this hasn't happened already it will. Criminals already target websites with DDoS attacks that go away if the site in question pays what amounts to "protection money". There's nothing really to stop such criminal enterprises shaking down businesses with the threat of a bad slew of reviews.

It's worth making extra mention of personalization. Many (Google included) seem to view "social search" and "social recommendations" as some kind of panacea to some or even all of these problems. I disagree. I know a couple of people who, say, like Adam Sandler movies. I do not. Not even remotely. Their movie recommendations are so diametrically opposed to mine that I can pretty much take the opposite of what they recommend.

The way forward with this will be something like the Netflix model (IMHO) where these great data mining systems will attempt to find people who are like me and have similar tastes whose recommendations will likely coincide with mine.

<comment><USER18> I believe there's room in the local space for a service that combines check- ins with reviews. In other words, only real people, who've physically been to a given restaurant, are able to review it. While you'd still suffer from selection-bias problems with this model, at least the self-selectors would be people with a propensity to try a lot of restaurants and review them -- not population-representative, perhaps, but at least dedicated to the task.

Of course, there are plenty of ways to game such a system. (You don't _actually_ have to be at a restaurant to check into it, but you do need to be within a certain geographic radius -- so this would cut down on bogus or fraudulent reviews from people nowhere near the location). But those methods are harder to pull off, and they necessarily apply to a much smaller subset of potential gamers -- thereby making gaming a smaller-scale proposition.

Collaborative filtering would lend itself well to this model, too. Toss in some sort of karma system, as well, and you've got a check against system gaming and low-quality reviews.

<comment><USER19> Believing the device's idea of where it is isn't going to help against any kind of serious criminal (get root, hook API, profit; and what about people without smartphones, anyway?). Triangulating a phone via cell phone towers might work, but that opens a whole new can of worms: you need the carriers to cooperate; it's a privacy nightmare; conclusively linking a Yelp username to a physical SIM card is not easy; and so forth.

<comment><USER18> True, but at the very least, we're reducing the set of all possible fraudsters and system-gamers.

How many of the fraudulent reviews on Yelp do we really believe are coming from fraudsters with this level of sophistication? My guess is that it's a pretty small percentage. Seems far more likely that most bogus reviews are coming from competitive small business owners, paid-off users, and other relatively average folk with a minimal level of technical understanding -- or even sufficient malice to drive them to become more sophisticated. (It doesn't help that Yelp may, or may not, be assigning greater weight to negative reviews unless/until a small business owner buys into their advertising).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This issue comes up quite a bit. Since OwnLocal works with a number of small businesses, we've heard many so-called "horror" stories.

What it boils down to is Yelp filters positive reviews for effusiveness (and ALL CAPS), personal connections with the business owner or employees, rapid review acceleration from first-time Yelp users, or users from the same IP address.

What this article doesn't mention is that many small business owners understand how important Yelp is and actively try to game the system in blatant and unsophisticated ways. Their friends write five star reviews about how wonderful the owner is and how they always have their anniversary dinner there. They create multiple fake accounts and complain loudly that their positive reviews have been filtered.

We've also noticed a certain tone businesses and their friends use. They don't typically describe a particular experience, they describe a business in generalities and will often refer back to what other reviewers are saying. They also appear to take what other people think very personally.

The very first four-star filtered review this business has mentions the waitress and host by first name (she goes on to sign it). Many of the other reviews for this business are similar and come across as fake or by people who mean well, but go overboard on behalf of their friends.

A common looking filtered review (notice effusiveness, caps wording, and referencing other reviews):

"This is a NICE restaurant - one that you go to when you want a quiet meal away from the kids - it's definitely not family-oriented, but then again, not every restaurant needs to be. If you're used to Olive Garden as your Italian "go-to place", then you will probably be disappointed in Fior d'Italia. If you want REAL Italian food, then ignore the naysayers and come here."

Yelp itself has rough stats for the breakdown of reviews:

5 stars: 38% 4 stars: 29% 3 stars: 14% 2 stars: 8% 1 star: 11%

Yelp's little secret is actually that the star ratings don't provide very much granularity for the casual review reader to make a decision and that most restaurants average out to ~3.75 or in Yelp parlance ~3.5 - 4 stars.

<comment><USER21> > The very first four-star filtered review this business has mentions the > waitress and host by first name (she goes on to sign it). Many of the other > reviews for this business are similar and come across as fake or by people > who mean well, but go overboard on behalf of their friends.

Or they actually really like the business? It's not staffed by 30 different no names, and you never get the same server? The owner will actually be present and greet customers?

That's not gaming the system, that's providing great service in a fast food lifestyle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the problems with Yelp in my city is the "Yelp elite". To bootstrap in my city, Yelp hired a community manager (part of their job is also writing reviews), and enlisted a bunch of people to become "Yelp Elite", earning access to parties in exchange for posting (it seems) daily reviews.

The result has been a high quantity of lengthy, some-times entertaining, low- information reviews posted by people whose advice I wouldn't likely take if I met them in person.

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43344769/ns/business- local_busin...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43344769/ns/business- local_business/t/yelps-elite-epicurean-force-totally-free-labor/#.T1fFD5H5wng)

<comment><USER23> funny thing is that complaining about it is doing nothing. People use it, and don't care for how schemy it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I disagree with all of his points. You shouldn't be able to opt out; if I want to post a review of your business on the Internet, that's my decision to make, not yours. (What's next, politicians opting out of news coverage? Yeah right.)

Review filtering is similar; Yelp is allowed to express editorial oversight over their website. Specifically, they try to reduce fraud. Your credit card company doesn't discuss their fraud detection algorithms, so why should Yelp?

All I see here is, "I like my own restaurant, but other people don't. Shut down the review site so nobody can tell anyone else!"

<comment><USER24> So you're cool with the "we're going to filter primarily good reviews" and "advertise with us at just about the worst rates in the free world and we'll clean up the bad reviews?" extortion angle?

<comment><USER12> Convince me it's extortion and I might agree with you, but I've read many filtered and unfiltered reviews and it seems that Yelp does a fine job filtering. The filtered reviews sound like morons or shills; the unfiltered reviews sound like customers sharing an experience. Paying Yelp to advertise doesn't seem to be a factor.

I'm just not feeling the hate. My main problem with Yelp is that the star ratings are useless because everyone else's standards are different from mine. I don't care if something is expensive; I'm happy to pay money for good food and good service. But for other people, that's an automatic negative eight billion star rating. So Yelp becomes essentially useless unless I read every review. (I understand Zagat has controls for this, but I've never actually used it.)

And now for the statement that's going to get me in trouble: whenever I see an ad like a Yelp ad or an Adsense ad, it implies a certain amount of shadiness to me. The businesses that are good don't need to buy ads, leaving most ads to be from businesses with some problem.

<comment><USER25> Same here. I've read filtered and unfiltered reviews and my conclusion is that Yelp does a good job with its filtering. It's not perfect but does a pretty decent job.

WRT your problem: Have you tried filtering by price ($, $$, $$$)? Perhaps if you did this, you would find good restaurants that aren't just rated highly because they are cheap.

On your last point, I disagree. I used to think that only bad restaurants would need to advertise. But then I ended up going to a restaurant that I saw had advertised heavily in the past on Yelp. I went there because they were in my neighborhood. The restaurant and food were absolutely fantastic (which matched their overall rating). So advertising is good for 1) new restaurants and 2) residents who don't know all the restaurants in their neighborhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lack of transparency isn't surprising to me, as that's basically industry practice when it comes to the "special sauce" algorithms that power these recommendation engines (google, tripadvisor, whoever).

But the extortion part does surprise (horrify?) me. I'd love to see some more concrete proof that advertising on yelp results in a friendlier filter function for that business. I assume that there is enough publicly available information (just by scraping their site) to establish some kind of correlation between advertising and filter-friendliness, if one exists. Any of you up for the challenge?

I'd settle for seeing those communications w/the sales team referenced in the article, though.

<comment><USER27> If that correlation existed, it wouldn't still indicate causation, i.e. that advertising causes the filter bias to change. Maybe the companies who eschew planting fake reviews are also the ones who are willing to pay for advertising.

Yelp has repeatedly, strenuously denied the extortion claims, yet the accusations continue to come. I think a phone recording by one of these accusers would be an excellent smoking gun. Or if someone here calls on behalf of a restaurant or other business (that they have a stake in and has filtered reviews), they could report back to us on what happened. In the meantime, I'm inclined to apply the "innocent until proven guilty" principle in favor of Yelp.

<comment><USER26> Very true! Thanks for gently pointing out that hole in my logic. The leap from correlation to causation is a very big one. Anyhow, like you, until I see something other than restaurateurs complaining, I'll give Yelp the benefit of the doubt here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think his worry for the investors is misplaced - the BBB has been running a similar racket for years and seems to be doing just fine.

<comment><USER29> Exactly what I was thinking. And the BBB has been doing this so well for so long that lots of (stupid) people think that it's an actual government agency with power to get businesses in trouble.

<comment><USER30> Back when I used to work retail, we constantly had customers who thought that the BBB was a government agency that would force us to do what they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting view from the restauranteur. I don't think Yelp would be wise to use his advice directly, though. Allowing businesses to opt out of Yelp would be a terrible idea, because Yelp is much more useful when it has everything. Also, there is doubtless a substantial amount of attempted gaming with the reviews, so attempting to catch this and filtering it out is very important if Yelp is to maintain a reputation of being a trustworthy source of reviews. They should try to reduce false positives, but saying they shouldn't filter anything is silly.

The implications of only being able to help the restauranteur with his bad reviews for money are really terrible, though. I wonder if they still do this after all the bad press surrounding that a while back.

<comment><USER32> I think he meant "opt out of having reviews filtered", not "opt out of being listed on Yelp".

I think that would be a more valuable thing.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps. But the filtering isn't just to protect the restaurants from fake bad reviews, but also to protect the viewers from fake good ones by the restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So... I _might_ be a bit biased (co-founder at Fondu <http://fondu.com>), but this really is a major problem.

Most restaurant owners we've talked to are afraid of Yelp and the power that it wields. From an investor standpoint it does a great job monetizing it's community. The problem is that Yelp essentially weights the scales, depending upon who is paying them ad money.

Whereas Google did a great job by separating church and state (search and ads), Yelp happily blends the two together. The end result is a little bit of fact and a little bit of fiction.

YMMV, but we think discovering through trusted friends rather than group averages is how the future looks.

</comment><comment><USER34> I cannot believe the coincidence! My father owns a small pizza business (small as in 1 store, 22 years) and yesterday a yelp power user got upset because I didn't give her free jalepenos. She knew we charge extra for things like ranch but still expected jalepenos for free. She got so mad she changed her review and said there was a "hair" in her pizza "months ago." She is obviously saying this to damage us because she was treated the same as all customers and expects special treatment. Extortion? That's how it felt but I don't care because our true customers know better and are great people. See the whole thing here: <http://www.yelp.com/biz/rays-pizza-irvine>. Sort by date, most recent review.

This was yelps response when I reported this user: Hi there,

Thank you for inquiring about the reviews of Ray's Pizza on Yelp.

We've looked at Jayne L's review, and since it appears to reflect the personal experience and opinions of the reviewer, we are leaving it intact. Unfortunately, we don't take sides on factual disputes, and suggest instead that you contact the reviewer again to clarify any misunderstandings.

We think it's important for businesses to be part of the conversation, and have created a suite of free tools to help business owners get the most out of Yelp. It looks like you've already unlocked your business page. As a reminder, you can: \- Communicate with your customers via private message or public comment \- Track how many people view your business page \- Add photos and a detailed description of your business \- Convert Yelp users into customers by posting a Yelp Deal to your listing You can login to your account here: <https://biz.yelp.com/>

Regards, Summer Yelp User Support San Francisco, California

I am a yelp user and it was great but for businesses its getting out of hand when there is no transparency. What if people are paid to yelp a lot and then use their influence to sell reviews? It could happen.

<comment><USER21> Good luck getting a power user (or god forbid, a community moderator) review removed.

A number of them feel they deserve preferential treatment because of their Yelp status, and will go out of their way to bash you when that doesn't happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm really looking forward to the day that this 'business practice' of Yelp's comes to a broader audience.

While I agree that you can say this is a business model, I can't agree that it is morally correct in anyway, even in a world of capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nobody gives a crap that the restaurant has been there 125 years, but that's what the owner leads with in defense of his enterprise. Looking at the reviews for Fior d' Italia, it looks like service leaves quite a bit to be desired and the food isn't that good.

Maybe Yelp is polluted and biased...or maybe Fior d' Italia just sucks. Occam's razor says it's the latter.

My wife and I travel all over the country on business, often finding ourselves in cities where we've never been. Yelp finds us a great place to eat _every single time_.

</comment><comment><USER37> I found this response elsewhere in the thread so interesting that I had to say something.

 _PS - The best taqueria IMO is in the outer mission, most the menu is in spanish, and I'm trying to keep it a secret, but yelpers seem to be catching on :(_

If you're trying to keep a taqueria to yourself, do you have incentive to leave a bad review? After all, your interests are not aligned with the rest of Yelp's customers. Or even, necessarily aligned with the taqueria's success. Maybe it's to your codependent advantage that they always stay small and delicious and hidden and yours...

preciouss.

This is the problem Yelp hasn't solved yet: how to align the interests of Yelp, Yelp reviewers, Yelp readers, and restaurants. Yelp succeeds if reviewers leave bad reviews because they are upselling bad review protection (they say they aren't several times in the FAQ, but they protesteth too much for me), or if restaurants buy ads. Yelp readers succeed if reviewers are honest and they can use reviews to optimize their personal quality/dollar equation. Restaurants succeed if Yelp drives Yelp readers to them, if reviewers leave good reviews.

Reviewers have many incentives to game reviews. One of the Yelp FAQs is about payola. If they review enough they gain community prominence through badges/titles. If they review too much, their reviews look suspicious (because they could be making them up instead of actually attending). If they become untrustworthy due to a secret Yelp algorithm, their reviews are obscured from prominent view. If they have a bad experience at a place everyone thinks is great, they run a risk writing a contrarian review and being labeled untrustworthy. And on and on.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've never used Yelp, beyond stumbling on the site when looking for restaurant reviews through Google. But as a follower of technology news, I _have_ read much about it and its controversies. Add this one to the pile. It definitely calls into question their slogan, "Real People. Real Reviews."

But even if the controversies are unfounded...$1.5BB blows my &!%#ing mind. My personal perception is that I'm not even sure I trust the reviews.

</comment><comment><USER39> I lived in roughly the same place for the last 20 years, so yelp is very interesting to me. I often notice poor ratings where I believe high ratings are deserved, but also low ratings where high ratings are deserved.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have a product in the local restaurant space. As a result I talk to lots of restaurant people - staff, primarily. It is overwhelming the vitriol I hear from them toward Yelp. Many people downright despise it.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a business owner, I have also seen the extortion for advertising model. Businesses that advertise with Yelp have low star reviews filtered, while businesses like mine that do not, have reviews from valid customers (often with friends and other reviews) filtered, to lower star ratings.

I have also seen reviews that are blatantly fake (e.g. reviews from Santa Claus, comical reviews, etc.) persist, until a significant amount of time passes. This indicates manual removal, and no actual Yelp filter.

</comment><comment><USER41> Filtering legitimate reviews is a big problem. Once I discovered that Yelp filtered most of my reviews, I stopped writing them. It's not even like I'm some anonymous coward (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course): I have had a photo of myself on Yelp for a long time, my account is linked to a few friends of mine on Yelp, and I even went to a Yelp event. I wonder how many other people like me stopped writing reviews for the same reason?

</comment><comment><USER42> Yelp really is the cool-startup version of the Better Business Bureau.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think this makes sense. Filtered reviews are reviews that yelp considers to be fraudulent. They may be reviews created by multiple accounts from the same computer to inflate a restaurant's rating. Or they may all be negative reviews created by one person with multiple accounts to try to hurt a business they weren't happy with. Either way, I think it's perfectly reasonable that such a system of filtering should and does exist.

Now maybe their filtering system is so horrendous that it makes a 4-star restaurant seem like a 2.5 star restaurant, but I find this hard to believe.

As for asking people to advertise with them to make "bad reviews disappear", that would be terrible, so I can't speak to that, since all we have to go on is this particular owner's word vs Yelp's. Is there any proof of this happening?

</comment><comment><USER44> When I want to find a good place to eat, first I 1. ask somebody where a good place is and what they liked that they ate 2. figure out what kind of food i want and look for the best rated places near me 3. compare the menu with what i know about the cuisine, pictures of the place and any details i can scrounge up 4. then I just go and try to pick something I think i'll like.

Food isn't rocket science. Good places are open for a while and have lots of people and you avoid chains and franchises. Don't complain about the service, nobody cares. Don't complain about the prices, nobody cares. Don't complain about the clientele or the ambiance, nobody cares. It's about the food, stupid.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is not the first time this has come up on HN:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=yel...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=yelp+extortion&sortby=create_ts+desc&start=0)

</comment><comment><USER46> Funny story. I recently was going to order out from a Chinese restaurant that I had recently ordered from before and recall enjoying. I had to google the number, and in so doing came up with a couple terrible Yelp reviews. For some reason I decided to listen to the toobz instead of relying on my own judgement. Ended up ordering horrible greasy food from a better-rated, well- known jaunt.

TL; DR: I let Yelp override my own experience, what's up with that?

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish the article headline had said that the piece was by a restauranteur. Most of what they have to say about Yelp falls under the heading of "more of the same."

I think that restaurant and venue owners are _wrong_ to hate Yelp - but it's understandable that they do. The reasons that they do are interesting. My take on it is that Yelp is disruptive to a lot of the traditional restaurant practices. Restaurant owners resent Yelp because it feels like they're adding more work to what is already a job that requires 80-hour weeks. Previously, restaurant owners had more message control about their venue's location, because social information like "is the Foo Pizzeria any good?" had more friction, it spread more slowly, and it degraded over time.

A Yelp review has low friction because it gets automatically ingested into Yelp's data set, it spreads quickly, and it doesn't degrade over time - <USER2> stays around on the site. If you're a business with a small number of reviews, it doesn't take many one-stars to make you look unappealing, and Yelp's attempts to be user-friendly mean that you're presented among a crowd of your competitors unless you earn a clickthrough. Like being on a crowded shelf at the supermarket, you're at the mercy of the visitor.

One interpretation of this would be to say that restauranteurs' reaction is "Hey! Shouldn't my success be tied to what _I do,_ not to what a stranger on the Internet _inflicts_ on me?" That's a reasonable objection - and that's why Yelp has invested a shit-ton of engineer-hours into filtering reviews. Filtering reviews is something that benefits both restauranteurs and users - it's just that the former tend to be ungrateful pricks about it because "filtering" includes "removing algorithmically detectable friends-and-family five-star reviews." Which leads to the other big interpretation - <USER3> restauranteurs are reacting badly to their customers' newfound ability to hold them accountable. We humans are dumb monkeys with a truckload of cognitive biases: we _hate_ being held accountable. I look at articles like this one and I see big parallels to other whiny people who suddenly are brought into accountability and are resisting it.

The thing is that the restauranteurs, like the MPAA or the newspaper industry, _cannot_ win this one in the long term (at least not on the terms that they now use to define "winning"). There's no way to keep people from talking about your business. There's no way to keep people from talking about the things they enjoy. There's no way to keep people from taking the easy way - "I feel like pizza, I'll look it up on Yelp" - instead of a harder way - "I feel like pizza, let's see which of my friends knows where the pizzerias are around here, which of them are available, what their phone numbers and/or locations are, or I know, I could go get the huge inconvenient yellow pages and make a choice based on how much they spent on advertising!" Computing devices will get more convenient to use, not less, knowledge will get easier to share, not less, and the cost of querying the Internet's collective opinion will be cheaper, not more expensive. The restaurant and venue owners are never, ever going to win this the way they want to - again like the MPAA and newspapers, the cat is entirely out of the bag.

Basically what I think they should do about it is

* Stop whining

* Read Seth Godin

* Compete instead of sue

As an aside, I've found Yelp very useful over time with the addition of a few mental filters.

* Judge places by the review histogram, not by individual reviews

* Trust the collective opinion far more than individual reviews, especially for places with 100+ reviews

* Assume that anything at 3.5 stars or above is Good Enough, and use other sources when you want to have rarefied tastes catered to (Yelp started out as being mostly for foodies - I think it's moved out of that, and that if you are or desire to become a serious foodie, you should release yourself from caring about Yelp)

<comment><USER48> So you try to think of all kinds of speculative reasons why restauranteurs hate yelp, but do not bother listening to what they say. Restauranteurs are very clear and vocal about why they hate yelp -- it is because Yelp uses reviews as a way to blackmail them into buying advertisements in Yelp. That is pretty fucked up behaviour and has been confirmed by many people many times.

By the way most restaurants have always relied on customer satisfaction to attract customers. This is true for most small businesses but it especially true for small restaurants. And this was true before yelp and even before the internet. A restaurant where each customer goes only once is usually doomed to failure (the exceptions are places in tourist traps and high traffic locations ... these restaurants are usually reliably awful, but they are the minority).

If you are the usual non-franchise non-tourist trap restaurant, you cannot afford much advertising or promotion. Your best hope for customers is someone wandering in, being happy and coming back again. Or maybe even telling their friends.

So the idea that restauranteurs now hate yelp because yelp somehow forces them to up their game is silly. Most of them have always relied on customer satisfaction as their main driver of business.

<comment><USER49> _"Restauranteurs are very clear and vocal about why they hate yelp -- it is because Yelp uses reviews as a way to blackmail them into buying advertisements in Yelp. That is pretty fucked up behaviour and has been confirmed by many people many times."_

No, it's been _alleged_ many times -- by unreliable sources. It's never been shown to be true, and in fact, the allegations that have made it to court have been dismissed for lack of evidence:

[http://www.suntimes.com/technology/4622094-478/extortion- law...](http://www.suntimes.com/technology/4622094-478/extortion-lawsuit- against-yelp-dismissed-by-judge.html)

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020450530457700...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577002170423750412.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I first read about Yelp's extortion practices in 2009 [1]. I thought that now they have grown so big, the extortion would have stopped. Apparently not :(

[1] [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business- of-e...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of- extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635)

</comment><comment><USER51> Mr. Larive is spot on in his opinion, and I think he offers good solutions to the dilemmas of business response and participation.

Yelp is representative of a fundamental problem with so many review sites, and our society at large -- namely that it attempts to coalesce many dimensions of data (a person) into a single score.

And, just like FICO, and the SAT/LSAT/etc, Yelp and its predecessors (BBB) attempt to do the same for businesses.

Worse still, they rely on the "Wisdom of Crowds" when it comes to qualitative measure and taste. An average 2.5 stars tells me nothing, especially because I'm an elitist prick and think the average Yelp commenter is an idiot.

I fear that people substitute a Yelp rating for their own critical-thinking, and that is wrong. It is just as wrong that schools judge students largely based on a single test score. It is wrong that lending happens based on a opaque algorithm.

I fear that Yelp is just another symptom that our society is sick. Our brains have atrophied to the point where we only look for one number that determines the succes or failure of our education, our lives and our livelihood.

Or is that a touch melodramatic?

</comment><comment><USER52> Shameless plug:

We just launched Chewsy (<http://chewsy.com>) last year after years of frustration with these aggregate business review sites. We're focused on rating what you ate and sharing recommendations with friends. It's similar to other food apps on the market but different in significant ways. For example, it's not like a vertical instagram like some of those other popular food apps.

We're very much in growth mode, but San Francisco is getting some good traction and our hometown of Seattle is thriving.

I encourage you to try it out and perhaps it can help you find your next best meal (and help you recommend something to your friends).

</comment><comment><USER53> Even though the article mentioned restaurants specifically, I believe the point about Yelp being fundamentally flawed extends much beyond food.

I have heard similar reports from doctors saying that Yelp is filtering out their 5 star reviews unless they advertise with them.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is my rule for Yelp:

1\. Listen to bad reviews. 2\. Ignore good reviews.

</comment><comment><USER55> I find that the star rating of places/reviews in Google maps in Android is more reliable. Presumably, it does not suffer from the extortion bias either.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yelp apparently does what the BBB does: Extort people by offering "brand cleanup" in exchange for advertising dollars. A disgusting business practice, and I'm sure to pass this along to my "social network".</comment>


Show HN: Ki – Expressive modal macOS automation, inspired by vi(m) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andweeb/ki <comment><AUTHOR> So I've seen other projects that use hjkl hotkeys or whatnot to mimic vim, but none that comes close to what vim offers in terms of productivity. My intent from the start has been to adapt what's so great about working in vim to the desktop environment, and attempt to replicate a similar modal language to increase productivity through reduced repetition.

I've been using this for about half a year now and use it as a daily driver in lieu of popular macOS app launchers or productivity apps like Spotlight/Quicksilver/Afred. Please give it a shot and lemme know what you think! :)</comment>


Three golden rules of success in today's brutal web 2.0 world. - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/02/three-golden-rules-of-success-for/ <comment><USER2> Must learn #3.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there real-world examples of moral failures of software engineers? - <AUTHOR> Consider the following projects:<p>* Facebook's Free Basics initiative in India: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35169226<p>* The Stingray phone surveillance device:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker<p>* North Korea's Red Star operating system:
https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-lifting_the_fog_on_red_star_os<p>* Hacking Team's surveillance software (sold to countries with a poor human rights track record):
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/07/leaked-documents-confirm-hacking-team-sells-spyware-repressive-countries/<p>Do you think that the software engineers who consented to work on the above projects acted ethically? <comment><USER2> Errr, define "ethically".

I'm not trying to trap you. I'm willing to work with whatever definition you specify, and I won't try to play semantic games with the definition if it's at least close enough to something specific to work with. I'm not asking for a universality claim. But without some specification of what you mean the question is vague to the point of unanswerability.

The North Korean programmers may well have truly believed in what they were doing. A utilitarian may well truly believe that even if Facebook Free Basics isn't a perfect program, it's a net good for the participants. The "surveillance software" can be seen as just a tool and whether the tool makers are responsible for its misuse is ethically debatable. (And let me be clear I mean that literally, not as an attempt to rhetorically state a position. I could write a coherent argument both ways.) After all, many people even in free countries end up calling for strict regulation of corporations and that same "surveillance software" is pretty much the way you instantiate such regulation, so, is it _really_ clear that it's intrinsically evil?

And again let me emphasize the point I'm making here is just the width of possible arguments about ethics that can be made. My previous paragraph is itself ethically incoherent, inasmuch I'm not even trying to take a consistent stand overall, but merely trying to highlight the most obvious problem per issue where ill-defined "ethics" makes it hard to even debate the matter.

<comment><USER3> Why? Defining ethics is extremely difficult, but volunteering our intuitions via examples helps us get closer and closer to narrowing what it is exactly that we're talking about.

It's mighty hard to pin down a universal definition for "art", "love", and even "game"\- and yet we use these words regularly and mostly very successfully to communicate.

Discussing "ethics" is difficult too, but I am unconvinced by arguments of the "it's obviously all subjective" variety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about the engineers who wrote this code? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal)

I can't put all the blame on the software engineers involved: the decision to do this surely lies higher up the chain. But did anyone of the coders object or blow the whistle beforehand? Or were they all fine with "just following orders"?

Now that more is known, have any come forward or even given an anonymous interview about it afterwards? AFAIK,no.

<comment><USER5> good point. although this actually crosses the line from "just unethical" to straight up "illegal", which makes the question perhaps less interesting. developers who wrote that code are accessories in crime. and the defense of "just following orders" might only be considered for soldiers, not for civilian workers.

<comment><USER6> It's typically not even considered and excuse for soldiers, is it? Just because someone may be immune from civil prosecution does not mean there are not equally (or more) severe consequences in the military justice system.

<comment> ni-hil I find it hard to believe you could be punished in the military system if you followed your superior orders.

Edit: my bad, in fact you can, if the order is illegal, and it has been unsuccessfully used as a legal defense in hundreds of cases. But, considering what you risk when you don't follow orders, it seems like a tought decision to take. If you don't follow orders, you are done and will probably be punished. And if you follow and you get caught it's on you and you will have to assume full responsability...

Here is more info on this subject: [http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/obeyingorders....](http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/obeyingorders.htm)

<comment><USER4> I used the phrase "just following orders" knowing that it referred to military history.

You don't have to work on the basis of _belief_ , there's a lot of history on this topic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought we could benefit from having a Hippocratic Oath for software developers and taking it seriously. The tough part would be agreeing what kinds of projects are and are not ethical to work on.

I personally have quit a job in the past because (among sever other important reasons) I felt the projects' primary application (surveillance) was not something I wanted to be associated with. I have also chosen not to voluntarily participate in the patent process for any software I've designed (foregoing those slimy patent "bonuses" other engineers seem to like to gobble up). But not every software developer shares my particular set of ethics. How would you come up with a definitive list of what does and does not violate the "Software Hippocratic Oath"?

<comment><USER8> My Comp.Sci. degree actually included one. All graduating students swore an oath to not use our skills for evil (paraphrased). It's been while since that happened, so I don't remember the specifics any more, but I do remember thinking what a great thing to pass onto new software engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its nearly impossible to answer your question, because the examples you give all have an element of "its bigger than one person".

In all of those cases, it it is conceivable that programmers could easily justify the "larger purpose" in their own moral/ethical framework. This a problem inherent in all collective efforts.

 _" There's always the same amount of good luck and bad luck in the world. If one person doesn't get the bad luck, somebody else will have to get it in their place. There's always the same amount of good and evil, too. We can't eradicate evil, we can only evict it, force it to move across town. And when evil moves, some good always goes with it. But we can never alter the ratio of good to evil. All we can do is keep things stirred up so neither good nor evil solidifies. That's when things get scary. Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top."_[1]

[1]: [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12020-there-s-always-the- sam...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12020-there-s-always-the-same-amount- of-good-luck-and-bad)

</comment><comment><USER10> How about the extensive surveillance software developed by the NSA (PRISM et. al.)? That's probably the biggest example of ethical and moral failure in modern history.

<comment><USER11> I think that most people disagree with you about that. So it's hard to call the people working on that immoral.

<comment><USER10> I call them immoral because I think the work they are doing simply is immoral. Nothing "hard" about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For an older example, see [0].

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of ethical failure in failed implementations.

I realize these kind of projects are big consulting firms' bread and butter, but if you as an engineer continue to work on a project that's being managed with an eye towards "Failure is okay, because our lawyers wrote the contract to cover that contingency" then that's pretty scummy from an ethical perspective.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Case_File](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Case_File)

 _Edit_ : On the flipside, I feel a lot more comfortable when employers I've worked for have sat down with customers and had the "Look, this just isn't working out. We recommend you cancel this project and we tie off our relationship, because it's not going to end well for either of us if we continue" talk.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd add:

\- Anyone who works for or supports militaries who wage aggressive wars or military actions. Arguably, depending on your stance on pacifism, anyone who works for or supports the military at all.

\- Anyone who supports torture or "intensive interrogation".

\- Anyone who helps to imprison people for victimless crimes, or otherwise supports the injustices of the legal system.

\- Anyone who works in or supports unsolicited advertising which tries to manipulate people in to buying junk they don't need, often lying in the process.

\- Anyone who works to support the security, surveillance, or police state aparatus.

Given certain viewpoints these are ethically indefensible. From other viewpoints these can be not only ethical, but righteous. A lot depends on where you're coming from and what your politics are.

Unfortunately, I don't think most people care or think much about the ethical implications of their work or what they do. And if they do think about it, they usually just throw up their hands and say there's nothing they can do about it, or everyone else is doing it and if they don't do it somebody else will, or that they got to make a living somehow, or that at least they're not doing something even worse, or that they were just following orders. The excuses, even in the rare cases when people recognize there might be an ethical problem with their actions, are legion.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is subjective, but you can argue that any device ever made with intention to kill or harm people had people involved who knew what they were doing and created it anyway. Everything from Gas chambers in concentration camps (made supposedly by Siemens or Bosch), bombs, guns, even swords.

And then there is Java EE...

</comment><comment><USER16> Why focus on these iffy things rather than say - ransomware, someone basically wrote a nw.js based ransomware as a service tool even. Are these people not professional enough or something?

</comment><comment><USER17> It's impossible to say without knowing more about the alternative courses of action available to the individuals involved.

You can't fault someone for making a morally wrong choice if they never had a morally right option to choose.

They might also genuinely believe--perhaps due to misinformation--that they are doing good rather than evil.

Besides that, I believe that it is acceptable to perform an action for the benefit of a mutually loyal relationship at the expense of anonymous strangers.

It may be that someone who has a moral objection to IMSI catchers would, instead of endangering himself for the sake of strangers, anonymously pass a tip to a defense attorney containing a suggestion for discovery. Would that person then be condemned as unethical for supporting the technology, or expiated by peeling away one of the veils of secrecy? There is never any shortage of skilled workers who can be psychologically manipulated into acting against their own interests, after all. If the morally conflicted person never worked there, the secrecy may have remained intact longer, creating a larger window for potential abuse.

It's very difficult to condemn someone for trying to collect a regular wage. "I was only following orders" is not exculpatory, but if the alternative to following the order is sufficiently dire, it is sufficient to discourage me from adding moral condemnation to any of the other consequences that may result.

</comment><comment><USER18> I know somebody who knows somebody :-) who did the following:

In a mad scramble to create some impromptu how-to instructions for a customer's users, the person made screenshots that revealed a bit of personal and confidential information.

The person doing that knew it was wrong at the time. This took place in a dodgy ethical milieu, where the customer's management refused to support the publication of high-quality how-to materials, and the customer's users were failing and flailing, and themselves emailing screenshots showing private data.

In my belief, this kind of breach of ethics is much more common than colossal systematic moral collapse. The trouble is this: It contributes to a morally slippery workplace.

</comment><comment><USER19> The engineers working on those projects may grasp that there are problematic sides to the wider-scope of what they do, but they are not the ones running the show and they are just trying to do their job. The ones running the show usually have very good compelling reasons to keep running it (national security, avoid company crisis and keep jobs for many families.. etc) even when things are illegal or borderline, and usually can diffuse responsibility in a larger board, subordinates etc...

In short, most people won't perceive their job as unethical at all. Those who see the problems, won't relate them to the tiny bit they work on but to the whole that doesn't depend on them (and are probably right).

And those who get enough remorse to stop doing their tiny bit, will be replaced by someone else who will happily continue it anyway.

So I don't blame the engineers working on those systems despite the results being so immoral.

Appeals to ethics are not very useful. Otherwise most of the Tech giants of this world, not only the NSA, would have an awful time finding someone to work for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are software engineers who follow some definition of ethics, and there are software engineers who ignore some definition of ethics - just like every other profession in the world.

What do you hope to achieve by finding real world examples? People do Bad Things for some definition of bad all the time, no matter their profession, but good luck trying to make any claim to absolute wrongdoing without the discussion devolving into semantics.

It will be very difficult for you to ascribe a moral position to any real world example because the real world isn't binary. To a first approximation, debates about ethics are usually won by vindicating the majority in-group's opinion about something they disagree with.

As you can tell, I'm basically saying this discussion isn't productive. You'll probably get some trendy answers like "NSA" or something to do with "surveillance" but I'll bite - how about the blackhat hackers who are employed by organized crime to de-anonymize "problem people" so those people can be found and "dealt with"? But that's just my opinion.

One of the biggest problems with this sort of thing is that no matter how powerfully you might believe someone working at e.g. the NSA is doing something evil, that individual likely feels just as powerfully that they are working to increase the net good in the world. In fact, they probably have an objectively coherent argument in favor of their position.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

Well, not really about SOFTWARE engineers, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER21> My question is slightly different. Is it the writing of the software that is ethically at issue, or is it how the software is utilized?

Are the scientists that develop new drugs which have potential side affects, even death, murders, are they ethically challenged, morally corrupt? Some people died using their invention, some could have even have been intentionally killed or accidentally killed. Rogue governments could use the drugs to hurt or abuse people. I'd say no, the scientists (like engineers) aren't the problem, they did something that served some valid purpose but their invention (creativity) can be abused or misused.

Stingray devices, while I totally disagree with how they are used, I can see that validity for their use for some specific law enforcement cases. The problem to me isn't the technology, but the lack of ethics and morales in the people using them. Lying to the judges about the usage, lying about it's capabilities etc.

Hacking Team's surveillance software, having read just a little about it in the past. It appeared again that the software was being used appropriately for a genuine and valid purpose, at least at first. However, then it was sold to people who planned to mis-use it and to people who have a track record of abusing human rights. So is it the software's creation that is the problem or the assholes that sold it to dictators and abusers?

A syringe isn't an evil device, it is necessary for the medical community to do its' job, but it is also a device that can be used to kill, commit suicide, overdose on drugs etc. Is the person/people who invented it morally corrupt/ethically challenged, or does their invention just have a potential to be abused?

<comment><USER22> Well if you are knowingly creating software that you can reasonably expect someone to use it unethically then you are responsible.

You might say that you are not directly responsible and that there are second or third order effects. Or you might even say every man has his own judgement, I cannot be made ethically responsible for his actions with the software I created.

Sure, no you are not responsible, but you were an enabler of his behaviour, you brought that man/company whatever one step closer.

To answer your question, I think you don't need to create separation between the two, they are intertwined. The software would be less likely to have been created if you didn't write it in the first place and you probably wouldn't have written it if someone wasn't going to use it.

So as a software engineer I think it's reasonable to expect to try to understand who is it that you are creating the software for, how are they planning to use it, who is selling it to whom, what kind of people they are etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> although i would personally consider all of the above unethical to some degree, i think i could understand someone thinking differently about Facebook Free Basics, Stingray, and Red Star. someone might put more weight to giving the poor any "internet", than giving them proper, neutral internet. Stingrays are used by legitimate law enforcement agencies, although i don't know much about how and under what conditions. and Red Star, well, all of that is legal there and not complying with the Kim can cost NK citizens their heads, so i'd cut a lot of slack there.

but investing your work in a company which sells surveillance equipment to dictators is downright disgusting. people are being tortured and killed because their governments managed to track them down thanks to that company. that seems like complete moral ambivalence at work. even if one could have somehow rationalized enabling their own government to spy, upon finding out who the company sells to, they must quit. and perhaps also leak everything.

</comment><comment><USER23> Potentially debatable, but:

Google outs transgender woman: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2321446/transgender...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2321446/transgender- woman-is-outed-by-google-hangouts)

<comment><USER6> Certainly debatable. Unintended consequences do not "moral failures" make.

<comment><USER23> One could argue that neglecting to take care when handling users identities is a moral failing.

<comment><USER6> Hence being debatable :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I heard a rumour (well people were talking in abstract terms about "the secret project" so I'd say 90%+ true) that a certain french owned software consultancy was building systems for the Saudi government to monitor homosexuals and journalists. Mass surveillance FTW!

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone who worked to keep Tor secure from the US government.

Anyone who worked to aid the US government to circumvent Tor.

The problem with ethical actions is that it depends upon one's framework. Now there are areas we can tend to all agree on. Taking money to sabotage software to kill someone we agree is innocent is probably a good example. But once you get past the clear cut examples, it begins to be clear that ethical behavior is subjective and our subjective views do not always agree. For example, I can find people who would agree strongly with one of the above two that I listed while disagreeing strongly with the other, and I can find people who would do the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER26> IBM & nazis: [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black- ibm.html](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> How about anybody and everybody working on surveillance software for the NSA?

</comment><comment><USER28> I would add Zynga, FanDuel, Draft Kings.

All three prey on people with addictive personality.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why would software engineers be any different than other people? As in any field you will find the whole spectrum of humans...

</comment><comment><USER30> There has been a conference by Bertrand Meyer on the topic but I don't know if there is a video of it : [https://bertrandmeyer.com/2015/10/12/danke- sehr/](https://bertrandmeyer.com/2015/10/12/danke-sehr/)

</comment><comment><USER31> don't you think that, especially in a large organization, the work can be partitioned in such a way that nobody knows they are working on something objectionable?

There are cases where it is obvious and people will quit over it, but if you are given the task, say, to change the firmware on this particular device to execute these external calls for conditions A, B, C, how do you know if this particular check is used for something you don't agree with?

What if somebody had you implement a bunch of logging and management interfaces telling you it's for QA when instead it is for mass surveillance? how are you going to know?

I think the ethics come more into play after the fact, if you find out that your company has done something you don't agree with (and you might have taken part in it without knowing), are you going to quit over it or not?

</comment><comment><USER32> Zynga

And I would personally argue for Microsoft's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish) program

</comment><comment><USER33> What about people that work at knife manufacturers? A portion of their product will be used to kill/hurt someone.

Most engineers build something for a paycheck and the company paying them ends up using it for something unethical or illegal.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've always felt a little strange about TEMPEST:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_\(codename\))

</comment><comment><USER35> Relevant Defcon talk - My life as a spyware developer

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2mdUcOXW6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2mdUcOXW6I)

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.wired.com/2010/09/google- spy/](http://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/) like him?

</comment><comment><USER37> slightly related, but check out consequences of an insightful algorithm - which speaks to the unintentional ethical failures we make as technology continues to progress and become more powerful.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NheE6udjfGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NheE6udjfGI)

</comment><comment><USER38> Nobody mentions software freedom? [0] Arguably any software that restricts user freedom is the result of a moral failure somewhere in the process.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)

</comment><comment><USER39> Various applications refusing to allow you to run them as root

</comment><comment><USER40> Let the one without sin cast the first stone.

<comment><USER41> That means don't condemn others. It does _not_ mean "don't bother cleaning up your own act". It doesn't even mean "don't make moral judgments about what other people do".

<comment><USER40> No, that means everybody is a "sinner". It can be argued that anyone who writes closed-source software is unethical (see Stallman et al). But open source programmers are themselves unethical, being privileged enough to give away their work for free which drives down salaries of less fortunate coders. There's simply no programmer who can be described as completely ethical, and your helloworld.c is the Original Sin.

<comment><USER42> Why is lowering the salaries of other coders unethical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> No, no, yes (I assume people from NK wrote it), no.

Add to that list everyone who works for a social network company or who works for an ad company.

<comment><USER44> What about social networks that aren't ad supported ? ( e.g. donation funded )

So, do you think providing a social networking site is inherently unethical, or just information selling advert stuff?

I ask because I've been kinda working on an alternative to a particular one, and if you think that is unethical, I'd like to know why, in case your reasons why are convincing.

(because I don't want to do something unethical, unless not doing it would be morally worse than doing it.)

<comment><USER43> These other social networks ("they really exist, trust me") probably don't try to actively spy on the entire world and follow every person across the entire internet. They probably don't try to hoard content into their silo and try to keep the users locked in. Clearly I am describing the big three here.

Now a not ad funded network may not do these things. That removes my largest complaints about them. It is these things which make them so grossly unethical.

As for your project I wish you luck. You will need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Like Patrick Naughton (Java creator) beeing a pedophile? But instead of 13-year-old girl it was an FBI agent.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Naughton#Sex_crime_arr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Naughton#Sex_crime_arrest_and_conviction)</comment>


Rubyonrails.org squatted? - <AUTHOR> http://rubyonrails.org/

<comment><USER2> The poster meant <http://www.rubyonrails.org> ?

Comes up as one of those annoying squat pages, yet <http://rubyonrails.org> gives me the regular RoR homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, maybe you've got it cached? For me both are pointing to the annoying squat page. I'll try refreshing my DNS.

<comment><USER2> They are now both back to normal for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Back for me as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> squatted by ruby on rails?

<comment><AUTHOR> That ain't a picture of DHH you're seeing there.

<comment><USER3> looks to be a dns issue. it works fine at home but not at work. fwiw, whois on the domain shows it expired yesterday and is now owned by a domain squatter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ouch.</comment>


Treasury Issues Proposed Regulations to Close Estate and Gift Tax Loophole - <AUTHOR> https://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/Treasury-Issues-Proposed-Regulations-to-Close-Estate-and-Gift-Tax-Loophole.aspx <comment><USER2> This is going to pass because tens of thousands of businesses are slated to change hands as a generation of owners pass on. Existing estate taxes and this proposed rule will create a tax windfall for USGOV that will make up for years of bad legislation and policy. The unintended consequence of this rule is that even more businesses will not be able to afford the tax liability and the will sell to businesses who can killing good paying jobs for tens of thousands of Americans. Its inevitable, this rule is coming.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Death Tax hike?</comment>


Terminal escape sequences – the new XSS for Linux sysadmins - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/terminal-escape-sequences-the-new-xss-for-linux-sysadmins/ <comment><USER2> I use a terminal emulator which does not support scrolling (as that feature is always buggy anyway), so I almost never use `cat`. `less` acts as my pager rather than my terminal, and I get printed escaped sequences for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can image you're the exception and not the rule. Everyone starting out with Unix/Linux will surely use cat/head/tail/more and should be aware of the possible consequences.

This is one of those things where "usability" (having colors etc. via escape sequences) and "security" (plain text should be plain text, without escape sequences) have opposing interests.</comment></comment>