Yelp To Stop Auto-Creating GoFundMe Fundraisers After Outrage From Business Owners (theverge.com) 53
Yelp has paused an effort in partnership with GoFundMe that automatically opted tens of thousands of small businesses into fundraisers after complaints from restaurant and bar owners, the company tells The Verge. From the report: Yelp launched the initiative earlier this week in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but it did so without informing any of participants. Some business owners said the process for opting out -- in the event they were hosting their own fundraisers or simply did not want one automatically set up by Yelp -- was unnecessarily cumbersome.
"On Tuesday, Yelp announced a partnership with GoFundMe to provide a fast and easy way for people to support their favorite local businesses by donating to a GoFundMe fundraiser directly on the Yelp pages of eligible businesses. In an effort to get businesses help quickly and easily, a GoFundMe fundraiser was automatically added to the Yelp pages of an initial group of eligible businesses, with information provided on how to claim it or opt out should a business choose to do so," a spokesperson said in a statement. "However, it has come to our attention that some businesses did not receive a notification with opt-out instructions, and some would have preferred to actively opt-in to the program," the statement goes on to say. "As such, we have paused the automatic rollout of this feature, and are working with GoFundMe to provide a seamless way for businesses to opt into the program moving forward, as we have received a great deal of interest and support for the program from both consumers and businesses alike."
Yelp said in its original announcement of the GoFundMe partnership that it would be waiving fees and that both companies would match the first $1 million donated. However, critics of the partnership fast discovered that GoFundMe was setting the recommended tip, which is how GoFundMe funds its own operations, at 15 percent. "Yelp does not get any portion of the donations. Donations through the GoFundMe platform may be subject to payment processing fees in some instances per the terms of the GoFundMe platform," reads an FAQ page for the program.
"On Tuesday, Yelp announced a partnership with GoFundMe to provide a fast and easy way for people to support their favorite local businesses by donating to a GoFundMe fundraiser directly on the Yelp pages of eligible businesses. In an effort to get businesses help quickly and easily, a GoFundMe fundraiser was automatically added to the Yelp pages of an initial group of eligible businesses, with information provided on how to claim it or opt out should a business choose to do so," a spokesperson said in a statement. "However, it has come to our attention that some businesses did not receive a notification with opt-out instructions, and some would have preferred to actively opt-in to the program," the statement goes on to say. "As such, we have paused the automatic rollout of this feature, and are working with GoFundMe to provide a seamless way for businesses to opt into the program moving forward, as we have received a great deal of interest and support for the program from both consumers and businesses alike."
Yelp said in its original announcement of the GoFundMe partnership that it would be waiving fees and that both companies would match the first $1 million donated. However, critics of the partnership fast discovered that GoFundMe was setting the recommended tip, which is how GoFundMe funds its own operations, at 15 percent. "Yelp does not get any portion of the donations. Donations through the GoFundMe platform may be subject to payment processing fees in some instances per the terms of the GoFundMe platform," reads an FAQ page for the program.
Freaking Yelp (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Freaking Yelp (Score:5, Informative)
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"Do you think it might be true?"
--Ayn Rand, regarding Christianity, as quoted by Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand
Whether John Galt was a lifelong "moocher" living off of others' work during his "strike", is entirely a matter of perspective.
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Ayn Rand was a moocher.
She applied for benefits and she received about $12k USD from 1976 until her death in 1982. That's roughly $2k per year, which is amount that she could have earned if she had been as industrious as the fictional characters she had written about in the past.
It's a virtual certainty that she turned down roles and business deals that could have earned her $2k in a week (every week), making her decision to apply for Social Security even more absurd.
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I'm pretty sure she didn't have the option to opt out of taxes used to pay for Social Security, so taking Social Security is only recovering part of what was forcibly taken from her. I don't think she could opt out of the distorting effect that taxes have on the economy which would make private insurance less viable either.
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Remember when the feds bailed out the large insurance companies with tax money?
Racket (Score:5, Informative)
Yelp is racket. Nothing new here.
JWZ had some "choice words" for yelp. (Score:3)
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/... [jwz.org]
"I don't really have a lot to say about this," Zawinski told Eater, except, "Fuck all of these people entirely... Really, get all the way right up in there and fuck them."
His club in San Francisco (DNA) is delivering drinks, beer, and hard liquor and his pizza joint (DNA Pizza) has food for delivery.
Surrounded by thousands and thousands of beggars (Score:3, Insightful)
This is how it feels nowadays, both online and IRL.
Re:Surrounded by thousands and thousands of beggar (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Surrounded by thousands and thousands of beggar (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Surrounded by thousands and thousands of begga (Score:2)
One of the principal duties of all states, from the beginning of history, is the management of the economy. Whether that management consists of creating the conditions and institutions where a free maker can thrive; or more direct forms of economic control.
A government that fails to ensure prosperity and opportunity for its population is on the way to being a failed state.
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This is how it feels nowadays, both online and IRL.
While I agree with you, I don't see them as beggars, but more like the mafia hitting you up for "protection" money.
Needs more lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
and for some reason it's possible that whatever money we collect might not ever actually get to them...
-but anyway click here to donate"
Re:Needs more lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this just straight to fraud? Creating a fundraiser without the recipients knowledge and taking a percentage sounds like fraud.
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Isn't this just straight to fraud? Creating a fundraiser without the recipients knowledge and taking a percentage sounds like fraud.
Well not in general. Imagine you started say a fund-raiser for refugees from Syria, would you want to go around a refugee camp collecting consent forms before you could raise any money, then make sure the proceeds only go to those you've collected forms from? That would be extremely impractical.
The problem here is business affiliation. There's a huge difference between holding some kind of bake sale for the Red Cross and a Red Cross cake lottery. If you get food poisoning by the former it's not something Re
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You would have to create an organization that is going to receive the money, and that is who you'd be raising the funds for.
No, you can't just do a fundraiser "for some children, I'll find them later" and start taking money.
It's called GoFundME, not GoFundThem, Yelp. (Score:2)
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That they're willing to create fundraisers for restaurants with zero approval or knowledge of the restaurant owner, suggest they do zero checking. Meaning for a
Just 15%? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re: Just 15%? (Score:2)
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“This planet has a problem, which is this: most of the people living on it are unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions have been suggested for this problem, but most of these are largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it isn't the small green pieces of paper that are unhappy.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tone deaf (Score:2)
Their tone deafness is... deafening.
Nobody... and I mean nobody... wants to be "opted in" (not a thing) into (anything) a funding campaign. MAKING THEM ("asking them") to opt out is insulting.
Imagine if your neighbors "OPTED YOU INTO" some weird cult that came and smoke weird stuff on your doorstep and you couldn't boot them out... but you could OPT OUT. (We'll leave within 7-10 business days).
This is beyond absurd.
The non lawyer in me speaks:
ABSENT A CONTRACT YOU DON'T GET TO DO ANYTHING WHICH REQUIRES
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Someone should opt-in Yelp into paying them 10 million dollars per day. Opting out requires a processing delay of 5 to 10 business days, in which time they are still required to pay 10 million dollars per day, as per their opt-in contract.
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I would be concerned about "opting out," where I'm taking some sort of affirmative action connected to your scheme. I think I would rather call the police and report fundraising fraud than to take any action associated with the thing.
This is how lying sons-a-bitches talk... (Score:3)
Opt Out must be made illegal (Score:3)
It should be possible for me to post a legal notice at the end of my drive way, "Any business or website or company that includes me under "opt out" clause will owe me one million dollars. They can opt out of this arrangement by opting out of this contract by certified mail to this address."
Remember certified mail is the only to prove adversarial communication has been delivered.
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The only what?
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All I know is that "yelp" sounds like someone stepped on a small dog's tail.
Yelp is improving no longer evil. (Score:2)
They did after all roll back a deeply unpopular borderline illegal and stupid policy without being dragged through the courts this time, so it's a step up from their usual bullshit.
Yelp. 2/5 stars, best smelling turd I stepped in this week.
Opt-out... (Score:2)
Can't we simply have some legislation that makes Opt-in the default for EVERYTHING? Oh wait, lobbyists...
What would that even mean? Status quo? (Score:2)
I think we already have "legislation making opt-in for everything" to the extent that it's logical concept in the first place. If you're thinking the law should be that opt-out isn't consent, that's law already - and obvious common sense.
For everything, eh? So I since haven't opted-in to somebody thinking about me, they aren't allowed to think about me? I suspect that if you work through the details of that all the way end up with this:
Without opt-in (what we call consent), you can't:
Hit people
Call people
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You didn't ask ScooterBill if you could reply to his post.
Oh wait, I didn't ask you if I could reply to your post! Can you give me a retroactive opt-in for this post?
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If I didn't opt in, we don't have a contract. That was always true, and it still is.
Rate Yelp on Yelp (Score:2)
WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Never, ever make decisions for your customers.
It applies here, it applies to Apple with that stupid U2 album and the iPhone battery shutdown fiasco, it applies to Microsoft for letting Windows 10 decide when to update and reboot without even asking the user.
This is also why targeted ads are so fucking annoying. Let me decide what my interests are, stop trying to add interests "based on my browsing". Another setting to let me decide what types of ads I want to see (ex: text-only and static images only) would go a long way toward making people respect (or at least hate a bit less) the ads industry.
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They don't want to show ads that you want to see, they want to show ads that make the most money when shown to your demographic.
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The goal of tracking users is not to target demographics, it's to target individual users. If I am in the age range for an ad, but don't have that particular topic selected, it means I'm not interested.
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At this point, Yelp should be shut down.
I would much rather see thousands (or millions) or small businesses get together with a legal firm, and create a class action suit.
Sue them for like, $50 billion or something.
Yeah.