Yelp scrubs negative reviews for business threatening Andy Ngo
Andy Ngo Tweeted 3 days ago that Hanging Hills Brewery DM’d him with a threat that if he ever showed up to their brewery his “dumb face” would be met with an IPA. Is he an evil conservative bent on annihilation of POC? No, in fact, he is a gay and Asian liberal journalist who covers Antifa and other groups like them.
Twitter users stormed their Yelp page and left a barrage of negative reviews, all of which now seemed to have been removed. Within a day there were over 200 reviews, ranking the business a 2.2 on Yelp. Since the scrubbing, there are now only 46 reviews and the page rests at 4.6.
Before the scrubbing. 202 reviews, 2 stars.
After the scrubbing. 44 reviews 4 stars.
Why would Yelp remove these reviews? Yelp is currently monitoring the site, which claims “While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to this news event, we work to verify that the content you see here reflects personal consumer experiences with the business rather than the news itself. As a result, we’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page.”
Since those 156 reviews were not regarding genuine customer experience, Yelp decided to delete them.
Hanging Hillside Brewery has since issued a somewhat of an apology by claiming it was a joke that unfortunately didn’t land.
It’s clear that a joke of this matter is not appropriate for a business to make. Especially so when in context of Andy Ngo, who is a journalist recently assaulted to the point of brain damage at a Portland, Oregon rally. There are fliers in his hometown lambasting him as an evil conservative. They ignore the fact that he is Gay and Asian journalist.
90% of customers read reviews before making a purchase and a negative review can lead up to 91% of customers avoiding that company or product, according to Review Trackers.
I’ve reached out to Jessica, the tap room manager for more context of the joke. In order for this to be a joke I would imagine two possibilities:
A) They are making a jest to someone they appreciate
B) They find threats like these so ridiculous they decided to send a “parody” threat.
Either one does not seem to be a great candidate but I’ll hold out on full judgement to see if I get a response. In fact, a surprise third option has just occured:
C) Whoever has control of their social media was downing a few IPA’s and thought sending this message to Andy Ngo would be funny.
We’ve come to a place where hatred towards minority journalists is allowed. Hatred has become color blind in this sense. The thinking goes: I will fight for the rights of the disenfranchised- unless, of course, I don’t agree 100% of their politics.”