SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Several prominent Biden campaign offices have been awarded the new “Racist” badge on the popular online review platform, Yelp.
Last summer, Biden publicly announced that African Americans who did not support him were not black, signaling the first time a white presidential candidate has publicly race-shamed voters into supporting him.
While many new outlets dismissed Biden’s racist comments as a public gaffe, many Americans forget that Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate on a platform of keeping black families out of wealthy Connecticut communities and schools. Also, that Biden was the chief architect of federal U.S. drug laws that helped his running mate, Kamala Harris, put many more African Americans in prison. Sometimes for life.
So, it was no surprise that Biden’s campaign quickly received the Yelp “Racist” badge after several thousand anonymous reports of racism.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign. “This is clearly a political ploy by Republicans to bring attention to Joe Biden’s long history. Republicans are the real racists here. Why haven’t they been reported on Yelp?”
When asked whether the Biden would reverse any of the racist policies he has supported over his multi-decade career, that Biden campaign responded that it “declined to make any specific commitments at this time.”
Facebook comments appeared a short while later commenting that Republican campaign offices were earning Racism badges too, with claims that Donald Trump is a white supremacist. When asked to respond to the new badges, the Trump campaign said that people on Facebook should, “stand back and stand by.”
Social media users also complained that the badge was intentionally divisive and would be easily abused. Many people deleted their original comments for fear being labeled racists.
Yelp recently rolled out the Racist badge this week a way for users to identify businesses which have been accused of racist behavior. A Yelp employee who spoke on condition of anonymity described the problem:
“We’re not trying to downplay actual racism, but we’ve noticed a steady uptick in racial complaints against businesses on Yelp. Someone forgets to put ketchup packets in a take-out order and someone complains on Twitter or Facebook that it must have been because of racism. When dozens of other Internet crusaders see it, they trash that business’s review pages all over the Internet. Unfortunately, Yelp is one of those platforms. Yelp is supposed to be based on personal reviews, and so this kind of mob mentality defeats the purpose of Yelp. It really undercuts the valuable information that Yelp provides.”
“So obviously, Yelp management though the very best way to combat online mobs would be to publicly accuse a business or unsubstantiated racism and shut down all comments on their Yelp page,” he said with a chuckle. “Go figure.”
Yelp has not yet said whether a business can appeal the badge or how it can be removed.
A few hours later, Daily Omelet discovered that Yelp’s page had itself received a racist badge. Yelp quietly removed it. A spokesman for Yelp explained, “Well, of course Yelp isn’t racist.”