Ask HN: Has this been done yet?
A site where people can report a restaurant where they suspect they got food poisoning ... and if enough people report the same place in a given time frame, they all get notified, so they can pursue a claim against the place as a group. (Site could make money by, say, offering lawyer referrals.)
6 comments
It might work. However, you will have to worry about false alarms/people not telling the truth. In addition to this, we always don't know where we got food poisoning.
This could lead to a situation where you, the site owner, are sued. This is probably why most people don't start a site like this.
This could lead to a situation where you, the site owner, are sued. This is probably why most people don't start a site like this.
Perhaps this is something that may be mined from the Twitter firehose (which may be easier than marketing a new site).
Let's be generous and say:
Those are pretty generous numbers though, with the figure jumping quite significantly as they're tweaked. A 25% poisoning rate for a reasonably-sized restaurant would probably hit the news beyond Twitter anyway.
Let's be generous and say:
Two mentions in the firehose would be sufficient for a correlation
8% of people twitter
25% of twitterers would tweet that they were food poisoned AND name the restaurant
25% of the patrons got food poisioning
Those are pretty generous numbers though, with the figure jumping quite significantly as they're tweaked. A 25% poisoning rate for a reasonably-sized restaurant would probably hit the news beyond Twitter anyway.
How would you prevent a restaurant from reporting all of their competitors?
What happens when a restaurant subpoenas you for the personal details of someone who posted a derogatory report?
I find kmort's suggestion interesting - using Twitter (i.e., data that is already public) could be a smart move, as you would then be simply displaying the data rather than compiling/publishing it yourself - this could reduce your legal liability when (not if!) a restaurant wishes to defend themselves against a report.
What happens when a restaurant subpoenas you for the personal details of someone who posted a derogatory report?
I find kmort's suggestion interesting - using Twitter (i.e., data that is already public) could be a smart move, as you would then be simply displaying the data rather than compiling/publishing it yourself - this could reduce your legal liability when (not if!) a restaurant wishes to defend themselves against a report.
In my experience, restaurants do not have a sense of humour about this kind of thing. One site I ran had several legal threats over user reviews even vaguely implying they fell ill. Other threats came over reviews they felt inaccurate.
A health scare can easily destroy a business like this so I'd be very very wary!
A health scare can easily destroy a business like this so I'd be very very wary!
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has links to each state's Department of Health [1]. They will follow up on reports of food poisoning and take necessary action.
[1] http://www.foodsafety.gov/about/state/index.html
[1] http://www.foodsafety.gov/about/state/index.html
You could extend that concept to patents http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792087 and a lot of other areas. I'm not sure how common is restaurant poisoning (never experienced it), you may want try to fit this idea in other industries.