The Yelp Effect

Culture, Media, General
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Yelp turns 20.

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For me, that link leads to a screen grab.

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scroll down

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Does not scroll. Is still image. Looks like this.

image
image2259×1272 396 KB

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If you scroll down you see this.

IMG_0429
IMG_04291170×1975 240 KB

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I am telling you I do not.

Oh, it won’t let me read without allowing ads, even though “continue to site is an option.” Well, now I’m not gonna read it, so there.

3 Likes
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Yelp is marginally useful as an overview, and almost worthless for specifics. It also has aggressively ‘dark patterned’ web design, constantly crippling its browser view and demanding you log in (so they can track you) and use the app, so you can’t help but see the adds.

And that’s without their well known bordering-on-extortion techniques of getting restaurants to sign up with them. “That’s a nice place you got there. Sure would be a shame if only the bad reviews showed up…”

In short: Yelp became one of the quickest websites to succumb to enshitification, more than a decade before the term existed.

I almost never use them. Google reviews gives me a decent enough general impression, and I’ll do my own deciding from there.

1 Like
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IIRC Yelp’s reviews have been sketchy since the beginning, but they’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of Section 23 protection. .