'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
As if running a restaurant during a pandemic wasn't tough enough, Christopher Wong also had to contend with a racist troll.
"I will not have my dog eat in this place because they might cook him," read the Yelp review of Wong's eatery, the Curry Up Cafe in suburban Los Angeles. "The owner works for the Chinese government."
Yelp removed the review after Wong and several regular customers complained, but not before it had already been seen by an unknown number of potential customers.
"If one person read that and decided not to come in, that's someone who could have been a satisfied customer for years," Wong told The Associated Press.
Last year, Yelp, which is based in San Francisco, removed more than 2,000 racist business reviews before they went online -- a nearly 10-fold jump over the year before.
It's a sharp increase that reflects improved efforts by Yelp to combat racist content and shows how even a site known for reviews of restaurants and repair services can become ensnared in America's ongoing battle over online civility.
While the content included hate speech targeting Black, Latino and LGBTQ people, too, the largest increase was seen in reviews denigrating Asian Americans and Asian American-owned businesses, according to Yelp, which included the figures in its annual trust and safety report, released Wednesday.
In 2021, Yelp proactively removed only nine posts that included anti-Asian hate. In 2022, it removed 475.
Yelp first began tracking racial hate speech on its platform in 2020, just as Asian Americans experienced a rise in racially motivated hatred related to COVID-19, which was first identified in China. Then-President Donald Trump added to the controversy, referring to the coronavirus as "kung flu" and " the Chinese virus."
In that context, an increase in racist restaurant reviews isn't surprising, according to University of Michigan marketing professor Justin Huang, author of a recent study that found Asian restaurants saw an 18% drop in customers compared with non-Asian restaurants in the same communities in 2020, equating to more than $7 billion in lost revenue.
"We've seen an increase in violent incidents, in random attacks," Huang said. "Anti-Asian stigmatization during the pandemic really runs the gamut."
In total, Yelp said, it removed 26,500 business reviews last year that violated its rules about hate speech, threats or lewdness, an overall increase of 1,300 over the year before.
Similar to the increase in anti-Asian content, Yelp proactively removed hundreds of reviews containing anti-LGBTQ hate speech in last year. Similar content has thrived on social media, both on fringe sites popular with extremists as well as broad platforms like Twitter, which has experienced a rise in racist posts following its purchase by Elon Musk.
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. As part of the designation, Yelp proactively assesses customer reviews for hate speech before they are posted online.
Noorie Malik, Yelp's vice president of user operations, said the company is "aggressive" when it comes to taking down "unreliable" reviews, including those that contain hate speech.
"The trust and safety of the Yelp community is a top priority," Malik wrote in a statement emailed to the AP. "Which is why we continue to heavily invest in both technology and human moderation."
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.