Yelp can hide your review if a restaurant pays them for that feature. Google fully controls what surfaces in search results — and changes it whenever they want. A restaurant can flag your review and have it removed without explanation.
Every major review platform runs on commercial incentives, not editorial ones. The algorithm serves advertisers. You are the product.
The Cheeseburger Database works differently. Reviews are posted to Bluesky — a decentralized network where your posts belong to you, not the platform. Your review lives on your profile. Permanently. No one can bury it, sell against it, or make it disappear. We index it. We don't own it. Nobody does.
It started in Portland, OR in 2026. One person, one city, one strong opinion about cheeseburgers.
Approved contributors post structured reviews to their own Bluesky profiles, tag them #CBDB, and attach a photo of the actual burger. The database indexes the post automatically.
The rating scale has four levels and every one of them matters. ⭐⭐⭐ Legendary is rare by design — overuse destroys it. ㄨ Skip It is published without hesitation. A list of reviews that only surface praise isn't helpful. It's a marketing channel.
Michelin's guide has been authoritative for over a century because the standards never bend to commercial pressure. This works the same way — except the contributors are real people, posting under their own names on Bluesky, with no intermediary between them and the record.