{"id":145790,"date":"2023-02-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=913063"},"modified":"2023-02-01T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T00:00:00","slug":"anti-asian-hate-runs-the-gamut-racist-yelp-reviews-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/02\/01\/anti-asian-hate-runs-the-gamut-racist-yelp-reviews-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Asian hate \u2018runs the gamut,\u2019 racist Yelp reviews show"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

FILE- The Yelp app is seen on an iPad in Baltimore on March 19, 2018. There's been a sharp increase in the number of hate-filled business reviews spotted by Yelp's content moderators. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky, File)
\nFILE- The Yelp app is seen on an iPad in Baltimore on March 19, 2018. There's been a sharp increase in the number of hate-filled business reviews spotted by Yelp's content moderators. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky, File)
\nWASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 As if running a restaurant during a pandemic wasn\u2019t tough enough, Christopher Wong also had to contend with a racist troll.
\n\u201cI will not have my dog eat in this place because they might cook him,\u201d read the Yelp review of Wong\u2019s eatery, the Curry Up Cafe in suburban Los Angeles. \u201cThe owner works for the Chinese government.\u201d
\nYelp removed the review after Wong and several regular customers complained, but not before it had already been seen by an unknown number of potential customers.
\n\u201cIf one person read that and decided not to come in, that\u2019s someone who could have been a satisfied customer for years,\u201d Wong told The Associated Press.
\nLast year, Yelp, which is based in San Francisco, removed more than 2,000 racist business reviews before they went online \u2014 a nearly 10-fold jump over the year before.
\nIt\u2019s a sharp increase that reflects improved efforts by Yelp to combat racist content and shows how even a site known for reviews of restaurants and repair services can become ensnared in America\u2019s ongoing battle over online civility .
\nADVERTISEMENT
\nWhile the content included hate speech targeting Black, Latino and LGBTQ people, too, the largest increase was seen in reviews denigrating Asian Americans and Asian American-owned businesses, according to Yelp, which included the figures in its annual trust and safety report, released Wednesday.
\nIn 2021, Yelp proactively removed only nine posts that included anti-Asian hate. In 2022, it removed 475.
\nYelp first began tracking racial hate speech on its platform in 2020, just as Asian Americans experienced a rise in racially motivated hatred related to COVID-19, which was first identified in China. Then-President Donald Trump added to the controversy, referring to the coronavirus as \u201ckung flu\u201d and \u201c the Chinese virus .\u201d
\nIn that context, an increase in racist restaurant reviews isn\u2019t surprising, according to University of Michigan marketing professor Justin Huang, author of a recent study that found Asian restaurants saw an 18% drop in customers compared with non-Asian restaurants in the same communities in 2020, equating to more than $7 billion in lost revenue.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve seen an increase in violent incidents , in random attacks ,\u201d Huang said. \u201cAnti-Asian stigmatization during the pandemic really runs the gamut.\u201d
\nADVERTISEMENT
\nIn total, Yelp said, it removed 26,500 business reviews last year that violated its rules about hate speech, threats or lewdness, an overall increase of 1,300 over the year before.
\nSimilar to the increase in anti-Asian content, Yelp proactively removed hundreds of reviews containing anti-LGBTQ hate speech in last year. Similar content has thrived on social media , both on fringe sites popular with extremists as well as broad platforms like Twitter, which has experienced a rise in racist posts following its purchase by Elon Musk.
\nYelp has fine-tuned its efforts to identify and remove racist content since the pandemic began. In 2020, the platform started allowing businesses to identify that they had a Black, Latino, Asian or LGBTQ owner. As part of the designation, Yelp proactively assesses customer reviews for hate speech before they are posted online.
\nADVERTISEMENT
\nNoorie Malik, Yelp\u2019s vice president of user operations, said the company is \u201caggressive\u201d when it comes to taking down \u201cunreliable\u201d reviews, including those that contain hate speech.
\n\u201cThe trust and safety of the Yelp community is a top priority,\u201d Malik wrote in a statement emailed to the AP. \u201cWhich is why we continue to heavily invest in both technology and human moderation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FILE- The Yelp app is seen on an iPad in Baltimore on March 19, 2018. There's been a sharp increase in the number of hate-filled business reviews spotted by Yelp's content moderators. (AP Photo\/Patrick Semansky, File)
\nFILE- The Yelp app is seen on an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413,639,144,325,194,843,465,1542,1242,334],"tags":[3472,10323,10324,3544,8395,10389,10315,10328,6555,7327,10351,10336],"class_list":["post-145790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-california","category-china","category-education","category-news-chinese-law","category-racism","category-social-media","category-technology","category-twitter","category-university","tag-chinese","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-lgbtq","tag-media-intelligence","tag-pandemic","tag-restaurant","tag-revenue","tag-war","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145791,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145790\/revisions\/145791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}