[tor-talk] Yelp blocking Tor users from viewing entire site

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 03:16:43PM -0500, Greg Norcie wrote:
> So today I noticed Yelp appears to be blocking Tor.
> 
> I tried using multiple identities, but get a 503 error every time.
> 
> Anyone else have this issue?
> 
> This seems really overbroad... I could understand the argument
> against letting a Tor user post reviews, but to disallow simple
> browsing seems like overkill.

See their two mentions in
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/call-arms-helping-internet-services-accept-anonymous-users

I think Yelp blocks Tor for a similar reason to why Craigslist blocks
Tor -- their value-add is their web pages, and if their competitors
"steal" their web pages, they've got nothing else.

That kind of business model leads to jealously guarding all of their
pages from being crawled or otherwise viewed en masse -- which in turn
leads to being angry and bitter at every new Internet technology.

Unfortunately, since this business model is so fragile, I don't have
good ideas on how to make it compatible with Tor (or heck, with most
of the rest of the Internet).

--Roger