[farazzz]

On the flip side, as an avid Google Maps reviewer they also removed my negative review from a restaurant without any good reason (supposedly the business reported it as being “fake” or something)

It really pissed me off because I wrote a long thoughtful review and mentioned the good aspects of the restaurant too as well as some recommendations, and it’s just completely gone

The worst part is the restaurant is sitting at 4.5 stars despite being quite bad, and the recent low star reviews are all questioning the rating, which is obviously artificial

[caskstrength]

I've been reading a lot of reports recently about how businesses abuse AirBnb and Google Maps reviews by forcing the companies to remove them on technicalities or by outright lies. I wonder if I should just post any less-than-stellar reviews without any text but with rating only in order to make it harder for them to remove. Thoughts?

[flybrand]

I’m at Level 8, how far along are you?

[foo-bar-bat]

Just curious why you guys do this and for free?

[zeekaran]

It actually helps people. The only negative thing here is that Google makes money from it.

[tivert]

> It actually helps people. The only negative thing here is that Google makes money from it.

I used to be that naive, then I tried to correct a Places issue on Facebook. I stumbled into this netherworld of similar people being abused with horrible tools continually banging their heads against a wall "to help people," with little or no support from Facebook.

After months of trying, I totally failed at my task, and I vowed never again. These company just abusively exploit people's need to help others for their own profit. If Google/Facebook/etc. wants me to work for them, they can pay me and give me reasonable tools.

[executesorder66]

Add the info to OpenStreetMaps instead.

[tivert]

> Add the info to OpenStreetMaps instead.

OpenStreetMap didn't have the same error (which was still on Facebook, last I checked). Facebook Places has a buggy duplicate detection system that would frequently merge different places together, including one I specifically cared about. It would suck in any new instances into its merged blackhole. IIRC, a huge portion of the activity in that "netherworld" Facebook group I found was trying to mass-report merge errors to the automated system, which frequently didn't work.

However, OpenStreetMap would have been a very good suggestion for some of the other "netherworld" Facebook group members. Many of them seemed care about making Facebook Places accurate in general, so they'd look for and fix errors far afield from the stuff they actually interacted with.

[farazzz]

I enjoy taking photos and reviewing food. I used to do it on Zomato, and made some friends through that, but Zomato pulled out of my country and Google Maps is pretty much the only good existing choice

[differentView]

I like to see my numbers get bigger and collect badges.

[Rygian]

If that happened recently enough, I would guess that your "long thoughtful review" was confused for a ChatGPT fake.