I have started a new petition against Tripadvisor to demand that they stop supporting restauarnts that serve whale meat.
As some of you know, I recently started a petition to put some pressure on 3 Frakkar restaurant in Iceland. To cut a long story short, 25,000 people signed the petition ask 3 Frakkar restaurant to stop serving whale meat. What happened next? Over twenty people left reviews on their tripadvisor page. ALL of those reviews were promptly deleted by Tripadvisor staff members. When questioned about that move, here is Tripadvisor’s response:
Dear Dr Brown,
We understand you reached out to a colleague of ours requesting information about why a number of reviews for a restaurant in Reykjavik were rejected.
We wanted to provide an explanation as to why our team made this decision.
Firstly, it is important to note that the fact that a property is listed on TripAdvisor does not represent our endorsement of that establishment or of its practices. We list businesses on TripAdvisor purely as a platform for travellers to share their first hand customer experiences – good or bad. If a hotel, restaurant or attraction is active and open for business, we want it to be listed on TripAdvisor so that customers can share their experiences of that business with the rest of the travel community.
Travellers visit TripAdvisor for a specific purpose, which is to see what previous visitors had thought of a place. As such, we have strict guidelines in place to ensure reviews do reflect genuine customer experiences. One of those guidelines stipulates that reviews must relate to a first-hand experience.
In this case, we became aware of a number of reviews that, however well-intentioned, did not meet our guidelines relating to first hand experiences. As such, we had to reject those reviews.
This decision was made independently by specialists within our Content team, whose job it is to investigate and take action against any activity that breaches our site guidelines.
While we appreciate you may disagree with the outcome, we hope this at least provides some context to explain our decision in this matter.
Kind regards,
UK Press Office
My reply:
Hello,
In a word: bullshit. It’s a typical bullshit reply. That’s what first occurs to me.
So you need to review your community guidelines then. Because at the moment, you are not helping the whales’ cause. Not at all. That is just not good enough.
I think the trouble with big companies today is that they get past about 150 employees and they lose all sense of direction. They lose all sense of accountability. The same thing has happened to Amazon. They continue to sell the really cruel things like animal traps and whatnot. A smaller company would not allow that in their inventory…
You have become so big, you don’t even know what you are supporting anymore!
Here’s the problem I have with Tripadvisor right now. Let’s say I open up a restaurant that serves deep-fried human babies on toast. I serve all kinds of tasty human snacks. What would you do about it, if I tried to list my business on Tripadvisor? You would ban me because I am encouraging cannibalism. Right?
So if you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me to close my theoretical and yet at the same time very controversial restaurant listing,
why don’t you just have the balls to tell these pro-whaling restaurants that they are not welcome on Tripadvisor anymore?
DO YOU SUPPORT WHALING OR DON’T YOU?
TIME TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND PEOPLE!
Right now you just care about users and money, not whales.
Sincerely fed up with ‘diplomacy’,
Dr. Leslie Dean Brown
Whales are so beautiful but man as always will make them extinct like everything beautiful will go!!
Just a load of crap !
TripAdvisor YOUR COMPANY IS A DISGRACE!! SAVE THE WHALES!!!!
TRIP ADVISOR ENOUGH WITH THE GREAT WADES OF MONEY, THINK ABOUT OUR WORLD FIRST…….save the whales!!!!!!!
TripAdvisor should know better. More and more travelers learn of this in no time.
Stop supporting restaurants that sell whale meat
I am not going to visit any place that sells whale meat as I am 84 years of age; if I were to travel to a place where whale meat was served, I still would not eat it. I think it is wrong to kill whales for human consumption except in places where it is the only source of protein and fat. I believe this is not the case in the example shown.
I think Trip Advisor is out- of- order in deleting comments by visitors to their site because they have a different opinion from the site visitor.
Stop this, whales are an endangered intelligent species that care for its young, just like humans do for a very long time. They have been on this planet for many more millions of years before humans evolved, so think before you act, or are you just a puppet for big corporations that are not going to act in the best interests of our planet’s survival? That conscience will be on you forever and you will be remembered being on the wrong side of history in many years to follow – do you want that on your conscience – if you have one at all?
I firmly agree that whaling is barbaric and must be stopped and therefore not killed for food or any other reason.
Your monstrous practices are contributing to the overall suckage of the planet!
When the cash register rings out, and money goes in,–then conscience goes out in many businesses, – it is a hard fact, and it becomes more apparent when we think of animals. As long as these people who are responsible for these terrible acts can go home to a lovely meal, a warm bed, and a fat bank account, then it does not matter that these whales suffer a horrible death. People like as in this instance , are a disgrace to humanity, and one can only hope that one day they will receive their punishment.
As they explained above, Tripadvisor cannot accept reviews from people who have not experienced the restaurant where whale meat is served because it is against their rules. In my opinion their rules should bar restaurants serving whale meat from their site altogether.
The main fault is down to the users of Tripadvisor who post reviews, having eaten whale meat at the restaurants concerned. These reviewers are, in my opinion, akin to big game hunters but without experiencing the blood and gore involved. They either have no social conscience at all or are boasting how “special” they are (in more ways than one) for being at the “cutting edge ” of culinary taste.
Unfortunately it would be a hard task to bar reviews on the 3 Frakkar restaurants unless the company stated categorically that they will not accept reviews from whale meat eating reviewers and would that not be against the reviewers freedom of choice; albeit a horrible choice? I am trying to see both sides of the argument but I stress I am strongly against the killing of these glorious creatures. I’m sure Tripadvisor could find a way to stop the reviews if they wanted to.
So you at Tripadvisor think it´s okay to recommend a restaurant that have whales on there menu?
It must feel pretty great to be part of the extincion of those amazing creatures? Because that is what you at Tripadvisor are doing, as you allow this restaurant to be recommended on your site. You have the power to do good. And you chooses to do not. Is that the legacy you wan´t to leave for your children? Shame on you.
like Tripadvisor, but I like even more of whales, we should stop eating them
Whales have every right to inhabit this earth along with us.