Is it supposed to be obvious why these bar owners and restauranteurs are so upset? The article doesn't really make it clear, and it seems like nothing more than an opportunity for them to get free money? I genuinely don't follow.
If you spend your life creating a business to build a reputation why would you be mad that a company as shady and dishonest as Yelp to put up an ad begging for charity when you may or may not need it, or want it? Yelp is a horribly unethical business, for them to step in and potentially ruin my business without my consent to do so is huge.
Gofundme sets the default “tip” (kept by Gofundme) to 15% of the donation.
> However, critics of the partnership fast discovered that GoFundMe was setting the recommended tip, which is how GoFundMe funds its own operations, at 15 percent.
Yeah, that's pretty slimy. That wasn't in the original article that was posted, which was in Eater and very short on details [1], consisting mostly of jwz's expletives. At some point the mods changed it to point to the better Verge article.
(It's a little frustrating that me and several other early commenters are getting hammered with downvotes because we pointed out how lousy that original article was, context that's now been lost. And unlike the mods, I can't go back and change my post retroactively.)
The only obvious explanation I can see is that they don't like the way it reflects on their image within their customer community.
I imagine it would be similar to unwittingly having someone set up a GoFundMe page for me as an individual. "Hey let's all help this guy out!" Sure, it's free money, but at some cost to my reputation with some people who would consider it a sign of weakness.
Yelp is implying a supportive relationship that does not exist.
Quite the contrary - jwz does not want his business listed on Yelp. He does not like Yelp, and his blog describes some of the issues.
(Eg, Yelp requires/d "a photo in which your whole face can be seen" while DNA Lounge wanted to use "our logo as the image" - quotes from jwz's blog.)
How would you like me telling everyone that "I'm frank_nitti's best friend", and (honestly) raising money for you, when you don't want me in your life?
What happens if an alternative GoFundMe site, auto-generated by Yelp, results in a reduction of the overall donation stream? Then it wouldn't be "free money", would it?
So, who decides if this plan is appropriate for the business?
I think the opinion restaurant owners have of yelp ranges from dislike to outright loathing. Yelp has the reputation of being a bully and essentially extorting restaurants for money. Most of the negativity is probably because of that. If it were someone like Google doing it then there'd probably be a lot less outrage.
Yelp has a very poor reputation with small businesses. They endlessly harass you with sales calls and if you decline their services people have reported their reviews being negatively affected.
Most of all, don't claim to represent a business unless you actually represent them.
