Yelp is a popular website founded in 2004. Yelp allows ordinary people to write reviews of local businesses which are then visible to other users. Yelp is particularly popular among tourists, and is fairly trusted for accurate reviews. But could aspects of Yelp's business plan share similarity's with that of organized crime?
Throughout its life time, there have been countless law suits filed against Yelp. Most of these lawsuits have come from small businesses and claim that Yelp has been withholding or removing positive reviews, while at the same time pestering the business with offers to post ads on their site. In the case of the business buying ads, Yelp would then increase the number of positive reviews that appear on the company's Yelp page. Now, since many people rely on Yelp, a lack of positive reviews for a business can be very detrimental to their profits.
Back in 2014 one of these lawsuits gained traction when several small business owners banned together to sue Yelp, and the outcome of this lawsuit was very interesting. Basically, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Yelp has the right to arrange their reviews in anyway they see fit, based off of any reasoning they like. Meaning that as long as they don't openly relate business' buying ads to the order of their reviews, they can get away with it, no matter how shady it is.
So is Yelp operating in a sketchy manner? Yeah, I would say so. The similarity's between their "buy ads, get good reviews," methodology and blackmail are a little to apparent for my taste. But hey, none of it's illegal!
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