“Ive been pretty active for most of my life. Years of basketball, football, boxing, you name it,” a Yelp review of Regenics, an IV hydration, cryotherapy, and weight loss center in Tarzana, California said. P G, the writer, gave Regenics a great 5 star rating and even checked-in to the business to show they had actually been there. P G’s review was more important than most because they were a member of Yelp’s so-called Yelp Elite Squad (YES). Elite members receive a special badge on their Yelp profile to signify to visitors that they are more trustworthy. To become an Elite member, people have ..read more

A pioneering anti-trust bill that's moving through the New York State legislature could give the government and private parties unprecedented power to sue large corporations, specifically Big Tech, as a means of reining in abusive, monopolistic practices—even when those companies don't qualify as monopolies.  Known as the 21st Century Antitrust Act, the bill passed the New York State Senate on Monday and could be voted on in the New York State Assembly as soon as this week. The first-of-its-kind in the country, the legislation would pave the way for similar updates to antitrust laws at th ..read more

Restaurants across the country have been facing a peculiar problem: Delivery drivers show up to pick up orders the restaurant never knew about, and customers call to check in on orders the restaurant never received. These restaurants don't actually do delivery, but they ended up on apps and delivery websites, anyway. The result is a mess of a situation for restaurant owners, diners, and delivery drivers alike. A similar situation happened this weekend at the San Francisco restaurant Kin Khao, as chef-owner Pim Techamuanvivit wrote on Twitter. While managing the floor, Techamuanvivit answere ..read more

Update: On Thursday and after this investigation, Avast announced it will stop the Jumpshot data collection and wind down Jumpshot’s operations with immediate effect. You can find the original story below. An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has found. Our report relies on leaked user data, contracts, and other company documents that show the sale of this data is both highly sensitive and is in many cases supposed to r ..read more

Yelp sucks. As much as it wants to be a platform for bright-eyed foodies in search of new local flavors, the review site is mostly just an outlet for dedicated whiners. It offers a very particular kind of lonely person the golden opportunity to turn a necessary, everyday experience into an event that demands exhaustive critical reflection. Every meal is a writing prompt if you're bored enough. There is, however, a light in the darkness. Meet Fox E: a singularly good Yelp reviewer, who has risen above the managerial-class banality of your average foodie to become a true legend. Fox E reviews ..read more

This article is part of an investigation with Underunderstood, a podcast that explores stories the internet missed. You can subscribe to Underunderstood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A few months ago, I opened the Yelp app, typed in the name of my favorite sushi restaurant, and clicked on the phone number. Two options popped up: “Delivery or Takeout” and “General Questions." That’s new, I thought. I dialed the number for “Delivery or Takeout,” which played a perky greeting—“This call may be recorded to ensure awesomeness”—before a woman at the restaurant pick ..read more

Ofer Tchernichovski is a Zoologist at Hunter College, The City University of New York Dalton Conley is a sociologist who teaches at Princeton University. Humans can learn how to solve big problems from tiny creatures. An individual ant has limited cognitive abilities, but collectively, ants can solve extremely complex tasks. They can sustain colony harmony and productivity across millions of individuals with little or no coercion and without leadership. Ants also have a highly distributed, non-hierarchical communication network, which is partly chemical and partly tactile. They can collectiv ..read more

There are any number of reasons why someone may want to post a bad review of a restaurant. Maybe it’s because a customer saw the staff sneak a box of Popeye’s chicken into the kitchen, then busted them trying to serve it as their own spicy tenders. Maybe it’s because they banned pugs from their weekly pet photo competition. Or maybe it’s because the manager showed up at your house at 10 PM, several hours after you posted some gentle criticism of his steak fries. But according to new research from Ohio State University, some of those not-quite-five star reviews could have less to do with wha ..read more

Last month, chef and James Beard award-winning cookbook author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt announced that his San Mateo, Calif. restaurant, the Wursthall Restaurant and Bierhaus, wouldn’t welcome any patron who walked in wearing one of Donald Trump’s signature red “Make America Great Again” hats. A day later, he apologized, and said that Wursthall would “serve all customers [...] so long as they leave hate, anger, and violence outside of the doors of our restaurant.” Although Lopez-Alt admitted that he’d never had a single customer in a MAGA hat—much less told one to go get their Bratkartoffeln el ..read more

Until yesterday, Chicago-area restaurant Love on the Blu was known for its flavored French toasts, which you could order in flights. Though diners dinged points for service, they seemed to like Love on the Blu’s pancakes, turkey sausage, and its music, which might have include a tune or two by the notorious local figure R. Kelly. Since yesterday, however, Love on the Blu’s reviews have been nothing but negative after it came to light that its owner is the reason why R. Kelly was able to leave jail and go straight to the McDonald’s where he allegedly used to pick up girls. This past Friday, Ke ..read more