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Anti-Gay Restaurant Slammed On Yelp


Mark Slater

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Source: Grub Street New York

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The "best cruiser joint in Texas."

Yesterday, upon discovering Big Earl's, an East Texas diner where gay contact violates the cardinal rule that mandates "men act like men," the internet began its de rigueur decimation of the establishment's Yelp and Google+ ratings. Then somebody hatched the craftier idea of pranking the restaurant/bait house/country store by converting it into a very well-regarded gay bar.

Subsequently, Big Earl's now boasts five-star reviews as a place to "really just let your freak flag fly. No judgement [sic] what so ever," and "the best gay cruiser joint in Texas! "¦ I hear the ...

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Rednecks acting like rednecks. What a surprise.

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Rednecks acting like rednecks. What a surprise.

I saw this story yesterday, and was wondering if it would be discussed here.

As much as I applaud people for standing up to these rednecks, it is yet another example of Yelp using fraudulent reviews. I know that 99% of people who read this article cheered the Yelpers on, but the first word that popped into my mind was: fraud.

Yes, it's funny that Big Earl's worst nightmare is coming true, but assuming this happened in one of the cities we cover, I would never allow phony reviews to be posted on the restaurant's thread, not even in this circumstance. (In the News and Media forum? Absolutely, slam away.)

I hope people can see my point of view - I'm in a very unique position here.

(Why do I feel like the ACLU standing up for the KKK?)

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Don:

Its not Yelp.  Its the politics of the thing.  They are also adding these reviews to google +.

Here is an article from 2011 describing another situation where the politics of the issue created an overwhelming volume of reviews for a restaurant:  In that case they were on google plus...not yelp.

I think they are still up there for the Birmingham deli.  Search on that business in Birmingham Alabama and go to their google plus page.  Filter the reviews.  Filter them by lowest rated and then by highest rated.  I don't think they were taken down.   A lot of the reviews reveal the political leanings of the reviewers.

Off the top of my head, knowing the "policies" of the two review sites;  its more likely yelp will take down the overly political reviews on this Texas restaurant than google.

We'll see what occurs.

Your situation is unique and its different from yelp or google or any of those massive monetized sites.  You are going to do things differently.  Good for you.

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I went back and looked at the Google reviews for Max's deli in Birmingham, filtered by lowest score and found that these politically inspired reviews are still showing...and they have been showing since 2011.   Didn't look at all of them, but there are 285!!   that is a lot for any restaurant in that area, and the quantity of yelp reviews for that place is far fewer.

filter by "best" or "worse" and you will find a lot of politically inspired commentary.

Funny thing is that the guy who owned the place then and made the comments that spurred this "attack" and then "defense" has sold the place.  So the existence of those reviews are doubly stupid.   You can't trust the evaluations of that place on the google + page if it comes to food and service.

People will at times use review sites to blast political messages.  Google pretty much leaves content alone.  I think yelp will filter out inappropriate content.  You might have to point out the abuses to them.

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The Big Earl's controversy continues.  Coverage is spreading and it is being played out on a greater variety of Review Sites including Facebook.

Slate Magazine wrote a piece publicizing that Yelp decided to take down the political reviews.   Meanwhile this writer (on local search topics) actually counted the reviews on a variety of monetized giant/national sites.  Its more vast than just yelp.   He addressed a wide variety of topics.  (for transparencies sake--I wrote the 3rd comment in the comments section).

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12:53 PM  6/6/2014....And an update:  Google took down the political reviews.  So now both yelp and google are removing the political reviews.  This time.  Google still has a mass of obviously political reviews on Max's Deli in Birmingham, Alabama.   They were made from Autumn, 2011 to roughly the end of that year.

The status of the reviews appears to be a moving topic undergoing internal review and changing decisions.

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