Yelp Says It Will Mark Pages of Businesses Accused of Racist Conduct
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Throw in some other random dog-whistles while we're at it.
Socialism, meanwhile, is very much a dirty word in American politics. Biden and Warren, for instance, went to great lengths to distance themselves from 'Socialism'.
Yes, labeling a business as racist could be misused and is potentially very problematic, but it hardly rises to the level of McCarthyism.
We’ve already seen the damage that cancel culture can do, and so Yelp giving random people a way to damage an individual or business without a principled process (like that of the courts) seems like a really messy and bad idea that’ll make cancel culture worse.
As for your notes on Communism - to me banning visas of those associated with such policies/parties seems reasonable. Marxism/collectivism is responsible for tens of millions of deaths in the 20th century and we have numerous data points showing that these ideas not only don’t work, but that their implementation requires brutal governance that is in conflict with our most basic principles, like free speech. So yes I do not welcome anyone affiliated with such parties into my country just as I would not welcome terrorists.
Are folks like David Harvey, Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, etc., unwelcome in your hypothetical country?
Sounds like you are equally interested in "cancelling" ideologies, you just have a different set you'd disallow.
There is ample evidence for this comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
Numerous socialist and communist states require absolute adherence because they hold their ideology in absolute terms. A lot of them are one party states for that reason. I still don't mind people discussing these ideas or supporting them from a free speech perspective, as long as they're not calling for oppression of other views/people/groups, or inciting violence, or engaging in other criminal acts.
But do we need to give them paths to immigrate here? No - we provide those paths when there is benefit to our nation. Why would we provide such a path to those who support an ideology that so consistently results in bad outcomes (both economically and mortally)?
> Sounds like you are equally interested in "cancelling" ideologies, you just have a different set you'd disallow.
Not granting visas to members of communist parties is not the same as "cancelling" them, since they aren't being publicly shamed, or having their job taken away from them, or having their status quo disrupted in any way. But they're unlikely to add value to our society because their ideology fundamentally conflicts with our basic values. As the USCIS stated in their policy guidance:
> Membership in or affiliation with the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party is inconsistent and incompatible with the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America, which includes pledging to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
You've selected one carefully curated statistic and used it to justify a sweeping generalization you already held about "Marxists".
You also are "lying by omission". Yes, autocratic governments that call themselves communist have killed a great many people in famines and political killings.
But so have many democratic governments and non communist autocratic governments. (To say nothing of the hundreds of millions of deaths at the hands of Capitalism.)
Look, we can disagree politically. But please at least do so honestly and in good faith.
Among the problems with your evidence is that it all concerns Leninist and their ideological descendants. While capitalists tend to accept the Leninist propaganda that Leninism is Marxism, non-Leninist Marxists have, from very early in the existence of Leninism, viewed it as a departure, and even characterized it as “state capitalism”.
So, even to the extent that it represents a general problem with Leninism, and also generalizes to a broader category, whether the right broader category is “Marxist” or “capitalist” or something else is a matter itself of ideological dispute that would require additional evidence to answer in any objective fashion, if that is even possible.
OR stop using that blackmail company.
Yelp business model is basically taking the "influencers" game to scale mixed with the mafia "protection" service.
Remember when we were promised the "knowledge of the crowds"? Yelp, Putin and Facebook were smarter and gave us digitally manipulated lynch mobs instead. It seems far easier and more profitable to harness and manipulate ignorance than knowledge.
These would be linking to credible news outlets, so seems like the owner should take it up with them. My guess is it is hard to win a defamation suit against the lawyers for someone like the NYT.
"Don't blame us! A source with no proof and an axe to grind, told unverifiable gossip to an unaccountable journalist, who just happens to agree with us politically. But we're credible, so you're a racist now."
This is actually a good thing. Though the mainstream media has very little remaining credibility, Yelp will help eradicate the remaining shreds by further exposing the myth that media has built around itself; namely that they are unbiased, trustworthy purveyors of truth.
I don't get why other choices by consumers upsets you so much?
On the other hand, paying Yelp money to take down such notices from a business's page could be a robust revenue stream. Didn't something like this happen before?