Yelp Prevails In Lawsuit Over Authenticity Of Its Reviews

Megalith

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Plaintiffs had accused Yelp of manipulating reviews in an attempt to coerce businesses to buy advertisements, but the federal judge handling the case wasn’t convinced.

A Yelp spokeswoman said the company "has repeatedly stated that it does not manipulate reviews in favor of advertisers or against non-advertisers, and the court saw through plaintiffs' attempts to cast these statements as false."
 
People actually use Yelp? I thought it was just a place whiners went to complain their latte was 2 degrees too hot, or losers went to just make up shit about their competitors.
 
this is why we need judges to specialize in specific areas of law. who ever presided over this case has either never even looked at a yelp page or is a techno illiterate. I stopped using yelp years ago due to the amount of reviews that get dismissed due to businesses paying to have them removed. It's a common practice and most people in the tech industry know it. the only real way to impact their shystie business practices would be to convince apple to stop using them as their top search results when searching for businesses, but from one shady company to another we know that's never going to happen. :/
 
Ever since Yelp removed some of my non-positive reviews I stopped trusting the site.
 
People actually use Yelp? I thought it was just a place whiners went to complain their latte was 2 degrees too hot, or losers went to just make up shit about their competitors.

The other night, the wife and I were looking for a new Asian place. We were reading reviews for a place we were going to go, when we read one where a patron found a cockroach in their food. The picture of the food covered cockroach was helpful. Needless to say, we ended up discovering a new (and great) Mexican place instead.

I take their reviews with a grain of salt (as I do for reviews on any website). I do find them helpful though.
 
The other night, the wife and I were looking for a new Asian place. We were reading reviews for a place we were going to go, when we read one where a patron found a cockroach in their food. The picture of the food covered cockroach was helpful. Needless to say, we ended up discovering a new (and great) Mexican place instead.

I take their reviews with a grain of salt (as I do for reviews on any website). I do find them helpful though.

Not saying no Yelp reviews are accurate, just that enough are not that none of them can really be believed. Taking them into account at all, salt grains or no, is prolly giving them way more voice than they deserve. Yelp may as well not exist as far as I am concerned as a result.
IE, there is so much bullshit, that wading through it is more or less impossible. Was your cockroach review legit? Did it really happen? I can't say one way or the other, but I would be inclined to not actually believe that. Even so inclined, I would likely now think twice about eating there. Regardless of veracity, claims of the bad are almost always more believable to us that the good, so your choice to eat elsewhere was an obvious one.

Financial harm was done, and no proof, other than a picture that could have easily been staged or fake altogether. They have a case for financial harm imho.
 
The other night, the wife and I were looking for a new Asian place. We were reading reviews for a place we were going to go, when we read one where a patron found a cockroach in their food. The picture of the food covered cockroach was helpful. Needless to say, we ended up discovering a new (and great) Mexican place instead.

I take their reviews with a grain of salt (as I do for reviews on any website). I do find them helpful though.

A restaurant without cockroaches is a restaurant that has no food. Just like amazon reviews you have no proof if they are legit.
 
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