
The extortionists at Yelp - soundsop
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/03/15/the-extortionists-at-yelp/
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browser411
The title of this blog post is sensationalistic. As described by the author
himself, Yelp's actions seem completely justified. A burst of 15 positive
reviews from new users in a short period would make a user like me suspicious.

And assuming that the 15 reviews garnered an average score of 4.5 stars, it
would have placed the business in the top 3-5 ranked business in all of
Bedford, MA (its hometown). If Yelp allowed such rankings, it'd be a slippery
slope into spamville.

~~~
JoelPM
I agree that the title is sensationalistic. That being said, I think it's a
poor product decision on the part of Yelp. Showing and then removing reviews
is a lot more suspicious than not showing them at all for a period of time
(until a user has made a second review, or some other criterion), or showing
them but not counting their rating toward the overall business rating (until
the criterion are met).

~~~
rdtsc
Not showing the review would put users off. Users need instant feedback. "I
wrote something -- it got posted in a second" If they had to wait a day or
two, they would not use the site. The second idea of showing reviews but not
counting the rating is better, but then after a while it seem these reviews
should be garbage collected, which is apparently what happened.

On the vendor's side, telling your users to post good reviews for discounts or
for promotions is a bit like spamming I think. There is no good way to 100%
detect spam like this, so there is always going to be controversy.

Also, hopefully Yelp has enough lawyers if it operates in a country with loose
libel/slander laws.

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rksprst
I've personally spoken to a restaurant owner that told me that a Yelp
salesperson told him that negative reviews would be removed if he signed up.

Nothing they do will really surprise me anymore.

~~~
rwhitman
I once did some market research for a project in which I tried to get in
contact with a Yelp sales rep for a real business. After waiting a full month,
they finally called me. It was the most unprofessional sales call I've ever
encountered. Girl was making jokes with her friends in the background,
couldn't explain to me what they give you for $400/mo, kept trying to get off
the call. Sounded like a bored intern, told me to 'uh call back or something'
when I wanted to buy the plan. I could tell she sure as hell wasn't a trained
salesperson.

I also talked to Citysearch. Called me back within 24hrs, had a ton of talking
points, offered to come to my office the next day with a presentation, gave me
her personal cell number. World of difference and professionalism.

I almost got the sense that the Yelp girl didn't know how to sell Yelp's plan
without offering to cure bad reviews. Since there weren't any there, she
didn't know how to sell it...

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makmanalp
Relevant link: [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/yelp-sued-for-
alleg...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/yelp-sued-for-alleged-
extortion/) Comments claim that first positive comments were removed, then
promotional calls were made for a subscription. No hard proof, but same
pattern repeated by several people.

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alttab
If its an algorithm that makes the choices - why would businesses get phone
calls asking for money to put them back up?

They've only really addressed half the story.

Kind of upsets me too, I have friends that work at Yelp.

~~~
paulgb
He's merely speculating based on the WIRED article, he hasn't actually gotten
the call. I see nothing wrong with removing some reviews that appeared
algorithmically fraudulent, so Greenspun isn't really adding any evidence
against Yelp.

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jasonlbaptiste
If this is a widely practiced tactic and not just a few renegade sales reps,
then it's going to get ugly. Someone is going to record these phone calls and
release them. Whether it's legal to do that or not, it won't matter. Once
they're on the net everyone will hear them and they will be permanent.

~~~
prawn
And Yelp will just claim they were by interns or renegade sales people and
carry on.

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adi92
Should Yelp just tell people how it decides what is spam?

This would alleviate some of its reputation problems but, then adversaries
would know exactly how to game the system.

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lsb
As described, there's no actual extortion going on, just a bunch of positive
reviews disappearing off of a page, and a bunch of hearsay. Is this sarcasm?
Trolling?

~~~
Zak
I think Phillip Greenspun has probably earned enough reputation in the hacker
community that we can assume he isn't trolling, especially considering the
update he posted. The fact that a bunch of legitimate positive reviews
vanished shortly after they were posted certainly looks suspicious from the
point of view of a business.

Yelp's sales calls are known to include offers to restore hidden positive
reviews and hide negative ones in exchange for a fee. That sounds an awful lot
like extortion to me. Furthermore, as a user, I know I can't trust the
information that appears on Yelp.

