In earlier days of the internet, review sites like Yelp fought against businesses buying positive reviews to bolster their online reputation. One tool they used was badging businesses with a “consumer altert” when they found a business engaging in fraudulent reviews.

“The bigger Yelp gets, the more incentive there is to game the system,” said Eric Singley, its vice president for consumer products and mobile. “These notices are the next step in protecting consumers.”

It wasn’t all that hard to distinguish the fake reviews for the most part. They would be gushing and generic, come in flurries from “people” with no online existence. But like most things internet, when people began to recognize the potential of online reviews, they were seized by the perpetually outraged as their own weapon.

More recently, author Cecilia Rabess was the target of “review bombing,” after a summary of her as yet unpublished book went public.

In January, after a Goodreads user who had received an advanced copy posted a plot summary that went viral on Twitter, the review site was flooded with negative comments and one-star reviews, with many calling the book anti-Black and racist. Some of the comments were left by users who said they had never read the book, but objected to its premise.

Like Rotten Tomatoes for movies, Goodreads has become an essential conduit for authors to get their books on the public radar. It’s one thing to be bombed for a bad book, but another entirely to be bombed because the story raises woke ire with people who haven’t, and couldn’t, yet read it.

You would think this wouldn’t take much effort to vet if Goodreads wanted to keep its reviews legit, particularly when people say in the review that they hadn’t read the book, but then Goodreads has its own institutional concern. If it trashes the woke review bombing, will the woke then trash Goodreads? Almost every published novel these days is some flavor of woke, and it isn’t good business for Goodreads to alienate its target audience.

The other day, I was informed of someone leaving me a review on google as a horrible lawyer. Whoever it was, it wasn’t a client or anyone I recognized, but that wasn’t the point. I write things that people disagree with, and this was an easy way to try to punish me by some outraged rando lying about my work. The review, incidentally, was removed, although an earlier one is still there, not that it matters.

But what if this weapon was used against elected officials to control their vote in Congress? Remember, some representatives have businesses from before they were elected, or businesses that feed their families, that leave them vulnerable to attack. Would anyone be so low, such a scoundrel, as to intentionally try to damage a business because a rep voted the “wrong” way?

Dean’s Car Care, an auto repair shop in Portland, Ore., used to regularly rack up five stars and gushing accolades on Yelp and Google Reviews for its reliable and friendly service.

That was then, before the owner, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, was elected to Congress last year as a Democrat, and became one of only a small number of lawmakers in her party who periodically crosses over to vote with Republicans.

Remember, no one is more despised than a “traitor” to the cause, in this case a Democrat who doesn’t toe the party line.

These days, Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in Congress, and Dean’s — the family business named for her husband — has become the target of vicious online trolling from the left. Progressives from around the country are review-bombing the establishment with posts expressing their ire at the first-term congresswoman for siding with Republicans on a bill to repeal President Biden’s student loan relief initiative.

“Worst car care Ive been to,” one Yelp reviewer wrote in a now-typical post in May, shortly after Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez cast that vote. “My car was dirtier than when I dropped it off.” He added: “It also didnt help that Marie was bragging about her PPP loan and in the same sentence said f students. Shes very hypocritical.”

The comparison between PPP loans, which were intended from the outset to be forgiven in order to assure they would be put to the use of paying employees, with student loan forgiveness is the sort of argument that appeals only to the terminally insipid. This tells us where the group attacking Pérez comes from.

The online abuse may be an occupational hazard of serving in Congress at a tribal moment in politics, when there is little room for lawmakers to break with their own party, no matter the circumstances or the issue.

Attacking elected officials for their acts or omissions is one thing, and that it’s now online is merely use of the dominant means available. Whether it’s Cocaine Mitch, Little Marco or Crooked Hillary, that’s the nature of the job, to be judged and taken to task, even if the gnats that have swarmed to do their damage have no argument except their passionate self-interest.

But these bombers aren’t beating up on the congresswoman, but her family business. And it’s not only a punishment for Pérez’s “wrong” vote, but to any other Democrat or representative who might consider voting with the dark side.

None of her explanations have quelled the trolling, which is part of a new online frontier in political discourse, in which voters from across the country can express their anger at elected officials who may not even represent them by anonymously dragging down small businesses associated with one of them. Some members of Congress who own small businesses said they have tried hard not to have their names associated with their businesses at all for fear of this type of retribution.

“Awful company with terrible owners,” a reviewer said in a May post about Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez’s shop. “Pay back your PPP loan you frauds.”

Debating the merits of policy is one thing. This is what people get elected to do, and it comes as no surprise to any modestly thoughtful elected official that there will always be people who disagree with your decisions and call you mean names for not capitulating to their demands. But harming an unrelated business wasn’t part of the gig. Not only are economic threats the wrong way to influence political decisionmaking, but what sort of decent and sane person would want to run for office knowing a family business could be harmed if they don’t do as the mob demands?

And what is Yelp doing to prevent this brand of fake reviews, which are no less easily identified than the fake positives from the early days?