Racist Yelp reviewers hurl hate at Asians in surge blamed on COVID

Racist Yelp reviews targeting Asians have seen a massive increase in just a year, The Columbian reports.

In 2021, nine post spouting anti-Asian hate had to be removed from the app. In 2022, the number was 475.

Figures in the company's annual trust and safety report issued Wednesday show racist reviews increased across the board, though those targeting Asian Americans far outnumbered others.

Yelp started tracking racism on its platform in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic surged and Asians increasingly became the target of racist attacks. University of Michigan marketing professor Justin Huang says the rise of COVID-19 coupled with racists targeting Asians as scapegoats makes the rise in anti-Asian hate in the app unsurprising.

“We’ve seen an increase in violent incidents, in random attacks,” Huang said. “Anti-Asian stigmatization during the pandemic really runs the gamut.”

Speaking to the Associated Press, Noorie Malik, Yelp’s vice president of user operations, said that the company is “aggressive” when it comes to taking down reviews that are racist, or at the very least, "unreliable."

“The trust and safety of the Yelp community is a top priority,” Malik said. “Which is why we continue to heavily invest in both technology and human moderation.”

"Yelp has fine-tuned its efforts to identify and remove racist content since the pandemic began. In 2020, the platform started allowing businesses to identify that they had a Black, Latino, Asian or LGBTQ owner," The Columbian's report states. "As part of the designation, Yelp proactively assesses customer reviews for hate speech before they are posted online."

Read the full report over at The Columbian.