Just What the U.S. Needs, NOT: Yelp Will Now Alert Users When They Have Decided a Business Has Been Accused of Racist Behavior...

Yelp plans to alert users when a business on its platform has been accused of racist conduct, the company announced in a blog post. When someone associated with a business is accused of or is the target of racist behavior, Yelp will apply its general public attention alert. But if there’s “resounding evidence of egregious, racist actions” by a business owner or employees, such as using racist symbols or slurs, Yelp will apply a “business accused of racist behavior alert” and link to a credible news source to provide users more information.

“As the nation reckons with issues of systemic racism, we’ve seen in the last few months that there is a clear need to warn consumers about businesses associated with egregious, racially charged actions to help people make more informed spending decisions,” Noorie Malik, Yelp vice president of user operations, wrote in the blog post.

It’s not totally clear what exactly will qualify as “racist behavior” under the updated alert system, but it continues Yelp’s alignment with the Black Lives Matter movement. The company put public attention alerts into place following what it said was a rise in social activism around the Black Lives Matter movement. The public attention alerts let customers know why a business might have more than the usual number of reviews due to increased attention in the media…