
Court to Yelp: Reveal names of negative reviewers - passepartout
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57616978-71/court-to-yelp-reveal-names-of-negative-reviewers/
======
mik3y
The Courthouse News Service article [1] is a little more detailed. What stood
out to me was the following bit:

> The business sued [..] and subpoenaed Yelp to learn the identities of the
> anonymous reviewers. Yelp repeatedly refused to respond to it, however,
> leading the trial court to hold Yelp in contempt.

My first thought was, "Gee, that's either lazy or clueless of Yelp!" IANAL;
was there a better strategy for Yelp, presuming they wanted to fight user info
disclosure at all costs?

[1]
[http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/01/09/64385.htm](http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/01/09/64385.htm)

~~~
NoPiece
Could the exposed users sue Yelp? It doesn't seem like Yelp fulfilled their
duty to protect them if they failed to respond to the subpoena.

~~~
stonemetal
>We may investigate and disclose information from or about you if we have a
good faith belief that such investigation or disclosure is (a) reasonably
necessary to comply with legal process and law enforcement instructions and
orders, such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, judicial proceeding, or
other legal process served on us

Their privacy policy is very easy on the courts.

~~~
objclxt
> _Their privacy policy is very easy on the courts_

In fairness to Yelp, their privacy policy can hardly say "we won't give your
data up in response to a subpoena", because if the subpoena was legitimate
they'd be in contempt. Yelp can certainly challenge the validity of a
subpoena, but that's not something they would be putting in a privacy policy.

~~~
stonemetal
I would be on their side if it said "good faith belief that such investigation
or disclosure is reasonably necessary". That is to say they would defend
against frivolous nonsense (and perhaps lose making it necessary). It would be
nice to know they had something akin to a spine.

------
j_baker
Some people take their Yelp reviews too seriously. I've been to several places
that I went to because of their positive score on Yelp only to hear them upset
because of the one negative Yelp review they got. I have to say: getting upset
because of one or even a handful of negative reviewers is petty. Just about
_every_ business that has a significant amount of reviews is going to have one
or two. On the other hand, if a business has a ton of negative reviews, that's
something to be concerned about.

I seriously doubt the solution in either case is to sue the people leaving the
negative reviews.

~~~
billnguyen
Your theory really only works for places with a large amount of reviews
(positive or negative). When you have only a handful of reviews, the need for
authenticity grows because they carry much more weight.

You would need much more data points to avoid the noise of fake reviews.

~~~
j_baker
That's not much different from any other form of word-of- mouth advertising.
If anything, it's worse.

"Did you hear about restaurant _x_?"

"They suck. Don't go there."

If you've only got one friend who's been there, that's all the data you have.
At least with Yelp, you can see reviews from people you've never met. The big
difference between Yelp and any other form of word-of-mouth advertising is
that the business owner can actually see the reviews people are giving to
others.

~~~
fleitz
I find the Yelp reviews pretty hilarious, especially dives, I go to this one
place all the time that does $2.95 cent breakfast (full plate, coffee, etc)
and many reviews talk about how the breakfast was greasy, etc. I'm wondering
what kind of culinary miracle they expected to happen for $2.95 cents.

[http://www.yelp.ca/biz/bons-off-broadway-
vancouver](http://www.yelp.ca/biz/bons-off-broadway-vancouver)

I wonder if the people on yelp ever go to metal shows and wonder why it's so
loud.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Yelp is where people go to get recommendations and people with unrealistic
expectations are given a soap box to pontificate.

I'm not saying every negative review is uncalled for, but I can't count the
number of times I've heard someone say, "Fine, I'll write about this on Yelp."
It's supposed to be a recommendation tool, not a weapon for revenge.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yelp might be the most special-snowflake place on the internet.

I tend to ignore the negative reviews since 9 times out of 10 the people
leaving them have a ridiculous sense of their self-importance.

It's more useful to focus on the positive reviews and if they're telling you
the place has what you're looking for.

------
ivanca
Is a common believe by some people that the business model of Yelp for big
restaurants is plain old extortion: "Please Pay us a fee to have premium
priority! Otherwise some strange negative reviews may appear that you cannot
refute nor delete."

~~~
stevejohnson
It is also a common belief by some people that homeopathy is effective.

~~~
edgarallenbro
It is also a common belief by some people that breathing air is necessary to
stay alive

~~~
ivanca
There is just too many beliefs, we need an app to destroy them all. /cj /s

------
pessimizer
How else would you defend against competitors, extortionists, or ex-husbands
destroying your business through straw Yelp reviews? Serious question.

~~~
patrickmay
Allowing names to be exposed by court order doesn't solve this problem --
people will just sign up with throwaway email addresses and, possibly, use
Tor.

The best solution is a combination of reviewer reputation and compatibility
matching. First, very few people are going to go to the trouble of creating a
bunch of valuable reviews just to build up enough karma to be able to smear a
particular business.

Then, even if someone were that motivated, if Yelp weighted the reviews I see
based on how closely my reviews matched the reviewer's past reviews[ _],
standalone smears would have very little impact.

[_] Yes, I know that sentence should be taken out and shot.

~~~
pessimizer
>people will just sign up with throwaway email addresses and, possibly, use
Tor.

But what if real name was forced, like on facebook or google? There's plenty
of precedent now if a judge wanted to declare that as a minimum amount of due
diligence.

I can't comment at the Chicago Tribune without telling them who I went to high
school with (through facebook comments.)

~~~
aestra
>But what if real name was forced, like on facebook

Facebook doesn't force real names in practice, I know a bunch of people who
have Facebook pages under non-real names and a bunch of joke ones, ones for
dogs, one for a trash can. Really, Facebook doesn't seem to care to enforce
these.

~~~
jrs99
Facebook doesn't force real names. But they do sometimes force you to use a
fake name.

If your real name is Ben Dover or Mike Hunt, or Mike Michaels-Michaelson, then
you might have to use a fake name.

------
wehadfun
Yelp only hurts (or helps) small new businesses. (McDonald's doesn't need,
care, or probably know Yelp).

Small business owners invest lots of there personal money, time, sweat, and
tears and don't need some stupid brat posting some garbage on Yelp because
they were not happy with the $25 they spent.

------
muyuu
I guess Yelp is more popular in America. Here in London I don't know anyone
who uses it and I never heard anyone mention it.

~~~
TillE
That's because Yelp made the strange decision to spend years as a US-only
service. I'll never understand why internet companies do that unless there are
compelling legal or logistical reasons. In Yelp's case I believe they were
using Google Maps from the very beginning, so expansion would have been
trivial.

Recently they bought and absorbed Qype, which in the absence of Yelp has been
the dominant service in Germany at least. That should give them more of a
foothold in Europe.

~~~
splonk
There are, in fact, compelling legal reasons to not launch products involving
user generated content for local businesses in other countries. At a bare
minimum, your liability for libelous reviews is different in each country and
dealing with that alone is a logistical nightmare. Quite a few other reasons
as well, but that's a start.

------
politician
> Currently, Yelp reviews of the business are less stellar than, for example,
> reviews on Hadeed Carpet Cleaning's own site.

I'm shocked that a company's website has better reviews than an independent
third-party review site. Someone call the lawyers.

------
genwin
Reports of bed bugs is the giveaway to a competitor's fake review for me.
Almost always such reviewer has made only 1 review.

~~~
elpool2
Really? I don't review anything on Yelp, but getting bed bugs from a hotel
seems like the sort of thing that would make me sign up just to write one bad
review.

~~~
genwin
I'm willing to throw those babies out with the bath water. I've been to too
many hotels that were fine, where every reviewer with only one review had
nothing but awful things to say. I find that to be too much of a coincidence.

------
kaoD
"CNet is now available in spanish!! Close [x]"

Click close.

Click close again.

Clickity, clickity, click. No dice.

Open JavaScript console. "ReferenceError: om is not defined"

Thank you CNet!

------
darklrd
You may not be able to make everyone happy always. Instead of suing your
customers for negative comments, it may be better to try and improve your
product/service.

------
brownbat
Surprised these businesses aren't flooded with one star reviews that simply
state that the businesses have sued someone over a negative review.

~~~
Sniffnoy
The article mentions that one such review is now the second-from-top on Yelp
for this business.

------
pstack
And, once they have the identity of the yelp reviewers, they can go over to
the rip off report website and post, anonymously, the most hideous and vile
things about the reviewer and expose their private and personal information
without any recourse whatsoever.

Smart tactic. Get their identity and then go harass them. That'll teach them
to leave reviews about services and products they have paid for!

~~~
nyar
The reviewer can do the same. Getting into a pissing match with an individual
as a business is a bad business move.

------
mrfusion
Wowsa. Has anyone considered using TOR to post reviews?

~~~
Torgo
Yelp blocks their entire site from Tor. If you try to visit, you will just get
a 403 forbidden.

citation: I run a tor exit node.

