151–160 of 331 posts
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It's possible the sketchiness is caused by a restaurant's competitors (writing negative reviews, falsely flagging positive reviews, spamming) rather than Yelp proper.
That adds a bit more complexity to the problem, but it still remains that Yelp is running a platform that to some extent relies on the ability to abuse it.
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so you're claiming that since there was a win, that it was that egregious?
Not egregious, certainly for the couple hundred dollars recovered. I was mostly pointing it out (1) because any lawyers here would find it interesting that someone, somewhere, once won on an NIED claim, and (2) so that non-lawyers wouldn't get the sense that NIED claims are winnable, in general. They are often tacked on to other, more legit claims, but they are very rarely won.
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Apparently Yelp will remove positive reviews that have been posted before, and save up negative reviews for publication after the advertising pitch; to be unpublished if advertising is paid for. They may not actually be writing the reviews, simply choosing when to publish or unpublish them, and in what quantities, and which to count for the overall rating. It doesn't matter who's casting the reviews, but who's counti…
If that’s the case shouldn’t there be at least one screenshot of this behavior happening? I’ve heard dozens of anecdotes over the years. You think that at least one restaurant owner would screenshot their rating and the number of reviews as soon as Yelp reaches out to ‘suggest’ advertising. The fact that this seems to be commonly-accepted knowledge without a single piece of evidence is strange to me.
I agree that its hard to believe one restaurant hasn't tracked it yet but I think its more a confluence
- are you good enough/ no dip in performance that you can claim this correlation or are you confident enough to go out saying that knowing you have to defend against ppl saying "well maybe you just suck now!"
- did you have time to screenshot it when it was happening aka the day Yelp called and your dishwasher was out sick and your supplier of eggs upped their price
- how long does the business even run. lots of restaurants close down and Yelp is not on a top ten list of concerns
- if you're established then your focus is growing business not dealing with the mafia. maybe you pay them, maybe you double down on other channels like uber eats or a new location or whatever.
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Apparently Yelp will remove positive reviews that have been posted before, and save up negative reviews for publication after the advertising pitch; to be unpublished if advertising is paid for. They may not actually be writing the reviews, simply choosing when to publish or unpublish them, and in what quantities, and which to count for the overall rating. It doesn't matter who's casting the reviews, but who's counti…
If that’s the case shouldn’t there be at least one screenshot of this behavior happening? I’ve heard dozens of anecdotes over the years. You think that at least one restaurant owner would screenshot their rating and the number of reviews as soon as Yelp reaches out to ‘suggest’ advertising. The fact that this seems to be commonly-accepted knowledge without a single piece of evidence is strange to me.
A bit of a side note, but this is super rare: > Meanwhile, Dean took SavantCare to small claims court over the letter and calls she later received, and won a $275 judgment in March 2018 for “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” NIED claims are nearly impossible to win. In law school we were taught to point them out on issue-spotting questions, but that they were basically unwinnable.
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I am friends with 3 different businesses in my town. A baker, a cafe, and a small restaurant. All three of them have experienced the exact same thing. I've seen it happen first-hand on their accounts.
If this is sufficiently widespread, seems like there's an opportunity for a honeypot operation. I.e.: (1) Guess at what information triggers this kind of shakedown by Yelp for a new business. E.g., credit-card sales data for new restaurants. (2) Set up a fake business that pushes all of those buttons. E.g., register a new restaurant business in the state; temporarily rent a space and maybe put up signage; generate re…
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secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.
I worked at Yelp in 2018, and the allegations were there, I would be extremely surprised that a secret like this could be kept if it were true. It was generally a pretty open culture which lots internal open cynicism. There was just 0 evidence or even rumors internally this is true. I believe it's way more likely that the system is large enough to generate outliers that believe they're being targeted. However, hyper…
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You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?
Yeah I find it a bit hard to believe. If you really think reviews are inauthentic it’s not hard to click on their profiles and see. I find it hard to see much evidence for astroturfing. If anything I think it’s fairly generous about not putting negative feedback front-and-center. That, and, as the article details, and I’ve seen in my own personal experience, business owners are extremely aggressive about trying to ge…
I leave negative reviews for places that deserve them, and there's nothing they could ever do to get me to take it down, or discourage me from doing it. I doubt they could ever do anything that would make most people feel differently from me about that. In fact, I'd be pissed and just start leaving more negative reviews if they even thought of getting aggressive.
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I can see some ways that might go awry (what if I like reviewing every new restaurant that opens?). But more importantly, bad actors will figure out and work around each heuristic like this you make.
Of course they will, but that shouldn't negate the need to identify and shut down interactions which are quite definitively problematic.
Good for her. Yelp's business model seems to work best if they can pick winners, which is unfortunate. If I search for "dinner" on Yelp for "current location" and look at the map, it leaves out an astonishing number of places that I can see within a mile if I drive down the street. And if your business model is centered around hiding all but the winners - who might pay for placement + reviews both - then you have to…
A good restaurant directory - some exist for restaurant niches, but none in general - could clean up with non-obtrusive ads if the focused on completeness and accuracy with a fairly minor feature set. It would just require having enough capital and time to establish social trust.
Curating reviews is just broken, just like SEO has turned out to be. It is unavoidably gameable. Yelp seems like a zombie site. They are free-riding on their prior reputation and gradually spending it away to acquire revenue. When the reputation is gone, the revenue will be, also.