Free Republic

San Francisco’s gourmet doughnut cafe George’s Donuts & Merriment is receiving online backlash just weeks after opening due to a sizable donation its co-owner’s startup made to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee. Hims & Hers, a San Francisco-headquartered telehealth company co-founded by George’s Donuts co-owner Andrew Dudum, recently made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle (Dudum is also the CEO of Hims). But despite the donation coming directly from Dudum’s health startup, the fallout over the large contribution is now extending to the cafe, with a barrage of negative...

A new bar in Jersey City, N.J., is already racking up a bad reputation — for displaying a dress code that was interpreted as “racist.” The Ashford is a highly anticipated addition to the up-and-coming area, but its debut seems to have fallen flat during the first week, based on some reviews. And although a number of people have posted some semi-flattering comments about the food and interior of the speakeasy-style eatery, others couldn’t get past a sign that was posted outside its front door. “Confused with the dress code,” a Yelp reviewer named Sam K. wrote. “My blonde female...

Customer reviews were supposed to be one of the internet’s greatest breakthroughs. They let you know if a product was any good before you spent money on it. Sites like Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb built their successes on the trust created by those review systems. But these days, that trust is getting shaky. *snip* “I would estimate right now, across all categories, around 30% are fake reviews,” Khalifah says. “Of the Chinese no-name companies, I’d say 95% of them are fake reviews.”

Amazon frightened many conservative authors this week in a mass deletion of reviews. Some authors lost almost 100 reviews on their published works. Others lost all the reviews they had ever written on Amazon. Some lost both. Information about the purge began to trickle out in the closed Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance (CLFA) Facebook group. Member after member began reporting the losses at the same time. Marina Fontaine, whose credits include the dystopian Chasing Freedom, the pro-Trump fiction anthology MAGA 2020, and moderating the CLFA page, reported many members experiencing losses. A coordinated effort was launched to contact Amazon for...

In April of this year, Amazon filed suit against the operators of websites that offered Amazon sellers the ability to purchase fake, four and five-star reviews of their products. Most of those websites have now been closed, and Amazon took action against the sellers involved. Now Amazon is continuing its crackdown on fake reviews by going after individuals who provide these sort of fake reviews – this time, those who used the online freelancing marketplace fiverr.com.