kefka (u/kefka) - Readit News

kefka commented on Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google nytimes.com/2017/07/01/te... · Posted by u/gaplus

saurik · 9 years ago

> However, that responsibility they fail to take in consideration except by lawsuit, does not counteract YELP's BaaS - Blackmail as a Service.

...and that you have reason to dislike Yelp or even think they are hypocritical does not counteract the problem with Google, which is the topic at hand, making your comment seem like nothing more than a defense of vigilanteism :/.

kefka · 9 years ago

I would accept the accusation of defense of vigilantism, but I only highlighted the issue. I see it as a "Pot calls Kettle Black", but I do not advocate a response, other than that the courts handled it incorrectly.

I can have fault with both Google/Alphabet and Yelp. They each can have their own form of hypocrisy and potentially illegal behaviors. Me calling one out doesn't lessen the other's actions.

kefka commented on Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google nytimes.com/2017/07/01/te... · Posted by u/gaplus

keymone · 9 years ago

> have been known to, time and again, to shake down companies

do you have any evidence of this?

kefka · 9 years ago

http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged...

Restaurant tells everyone to leave bad ratings, because good ratings are hidden since they didn't pay extortion.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/zdq0f/yelp_is_blackma...

Yelp "makes 4-5 star reviews go away" when restaurant refuses to pay extortion.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-yelps-blackmail-lawsuit-c...

Stoppelman says that businesses want to control their reputation, and Yelp's position is to charge for that. Question here is, if money means hiding bad reviews, is that extortion? Sure seems so.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2014/09/03/court-sa...

The courts said that "Pay to Play" isn't strictly extortion. And claims that Yelp themselves wrote bad reviews were unsubstantiated (no proof, server logs can be a 'tricksy' thing....).

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https://www.cnet.com/news/to-mock-yelp-restaurant-asks-custo...

This has gotten bad enough, that businesses are telling customers to seed YELP with good "Bad reviews".

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Seriously, when they call, and you fail to pay, your page on YELP goes to the toilet. How much "proof" do you need? There seems to be a misdirection by blaming 3rd party customers, but seriously. They're using blackmail as their market strategy.

kefka commented on Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google nytimes.com/2017/07/01/te... · Posted by u/gaplus

kefka · 9 years ago

Indeed, Google is too big and has a massive effect on the Internet across the whole world. A single capricious decision made by Google/Alphabet can cause dozens of businesses to shutter or fail. And that is a big problem, especially if we care about upstarts and new companies.

However, that responsibility they fail to take in consideration except by lawsuit, does not counteract YELP's BaaS - Blackmail as a Service. They have been known to, time and again, to shake down companies as local as mom-and-pop restaurants and other "juicy" targets. If YELP were to die today, we would be better off. They are the broken window in the Broken Window Theory of economics, and exact their damage by "Oh no, someone else wrote bad things about you - Pay us and they'll go away".

The courts ruled incorrectly about their doings. They should have been ordered to cease and desist. Or owners should be able to order them to bring down their respective reviews. Perhaps impartial review sites have a good reason to exist, but Yelp has shown that if you don't pay their protection money, you get all the bad ratings put forth and all the good ones 'disappear'.

Blackmail as a Service. As founded by the Better Business Bureau, and continued by Yelp.

(Edit: Evidently, I struck a chord that people don't like. I'd prefer that people rebut me instead of -1's that mean effectively nothing other than "shut up". )

kefka commented on Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google nytimes.com/2017/07/01/te... · Posted by u/gaplus

Fej · 9 years ago

Which is a shame. I doubt any real antitrust cases will be brought here in the US for the next 4 years.

kefka · 9 years ago

Honestly, I'd say longer than that. The Democrats have very little impetus to do them either, given their corporate funding record.

It's been about 30 years since the Democrats gave up on the working classes to cater to "Cause of the Week", "Big Media", and associated areas. Even Obama, with the ACA, set it up that we're required to pay for-profit companies for insurance. He even had a super-majority to enable Medicare for All... but didn't.

Republicans claim they're for the "Common Working Man", but time and again we see policies that ascribe to 'Socialism for the Rich, and Capitalism for the Poor'. And that's not discussing Trump, who has been criticized by both US parties for his actions. (I'm focusing on R-Congress and state governors.)

Something's got to give, and I don't see this going well at all. The fact that regulators and congress refuse to do anything is just a symptom.

kefka commented on What Is Space? nautil.us/issue/49/the-ab... · Posted by u/lxm

mathgenius · 9 years ago

If you are really serious about this question then you would also consider what mathematicians have to say about "space". Unfortunately, this is pretty much the whole of mathematics, but I think special attention should be given to the duality between geometry and algebra. This stuff goes back to Descarte. For example, you can consider the points equidistant from a specific point, which gives a circle. Or you can consider the algebraic expression X^2+Y^2=1. Both of these viewpoints are in a sense, two sides of the same coin. What is that coin? Deep answers can be found when you start doing funky things like change your definition of numbers, to say, a finite field. Even just having two numbers 0 and 1 is quite interesting to consider. What is the corresponding geometry? Or, more confusing still, let's drop the requirement that xy = yx (commutativity). Now what are the non-commutative geometries on the other side of the coin?

Considering the wide variety of these apparently fanciful ideas that have made their way into theoretical physics fills me with wonder. I wonder if the authors of the article mention any of this stuff in their book.

kefka · 9 years ago

I like the better question: "What is a measurement?"

What does the measurement actually entail? If a computer reads the contents, does that mean the computer is entwined with it? What does our consciousness do to the measurement?

What does the double-slit experiment show if only computers read its result? Does the result compare when we observe it?

Crazier yet, do different human observers see the same results? Has this even been tested?