Yelp Gets Sued
New news on the yelp front. As background: A while back, yelp originally got in the news due to an east bay express article regarding extortion practices that their sales department would engage in. Essentially east bay express claimed that yelp would call up a businesses and say “hey that’s a nice rating you’ve got on yelp. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it. Those reviews can remain untouched. On a unrelated note, we have an advertising program that you can become a member of on yelp. Just remember that your enrollment in this advertising program will be you giving money to the people in control of your stores rating on the internet. I hope you make the right decision.”
I had emailed the CEO of the company regarding the east bay express claim and got responses from him denying the claim but using quite possibly the worst logic imaginable and making me more suspicious of yelp after talking to him. It turns out that yelp is getting sued over their extortion racket. They deny the charge and say that they will fight it in court. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
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This will be interesting. I can see their defense amounting to, “If you believe what you read on the internet, you’re an idiot”. Of course, their whole business model depends on us trusting what we read on their little corner of the internet. It would also be interesting if they just admitted to doing what they’re accused of doing. Yeah, we offer to improve ratings for money. We don’t like to tell people that’s what we do, though.
Now, the article is throwing around the word extortion, which I believe is a criminal offense. This is actually a civil lawsuit, although the motion filed appears to be requesting that Yelp give up all the money it’s ever earned, ever, on the grounds that it violates unfair business practice law.
It should be pretty easy to prove Yelp is doing what is claimed with some access to logs of review manipulation. I don’t know what has to happen in order for anyone to get an independent look at those.