General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Angie's List = Scam [View all]daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Several articles have been written about Yelp shaking down local businesses to convince them to buy advertising in exchange for prominently featuring good reviews and lowering/hiding bad ones.
I thought this problem had been exposed and somehow addressed a few years ago, but it may still be going on. I was just talking to a neighbor who owns a local cafe. Someone wrote a 5 star review on Yelp and it disappeared the next day. He had recently refused to pay for ads on Yelp after high-pressure sales tactics. I pointed out the complicated "sort" functions on the reviews, but he insisted the review had been improperly demoted/hidden.
That's anecdotal, though. I'm curious if anyone else knows what Yelp's current reputation is in this regard. Of course online businesses need to make money somehow. It does bother me that "crowd-sourced" business models make a lot of money for a few people who essentially run a platform. The advertisers and investors are coming because of the crowd: shouldn't the crowd make the money and the platform get some small administrative fee? Just a philosophical thought there.
UPDATE:
Hmm, I see this was ultimately resolved when a Court ruled Yelp can manipulate reviews for profit. Woo hoo! The consumer deceived again! http://sfist.com/2014/09/04/yelp_is_allowed_to_manipulate_ratin.php