The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has received 2,046 complaints about Yelp from 2008 to March 4, 2014, and most are from small businesses claiming to have received a rash of fraudulent reviews. Although some negative reviews may come from competitors, many are alleged to have begun when the business rejected an offer to advertise on Yelp. Yelp denies any connection between advertising and reviews. “Our recommendation software doesn’t punish people who don’t advertise,” Yelp spokeswoman Kristen Whisenand said, adding, “There has never been any amount of money you can pay Yelp to manipulate reviews.” Yelp acknowledges many requests for information come from private litigation brought by business owners.
Businesses have rarely been successful in going after consumers who criticize them online, says Professor Eric Goldman of the Santa Clara University School of Law. Many small businesses direct their anger at Yelp for allowing reviewers to use made-up names, although with 120 million visitors a month and over 50 million customer-generated reviews, the vast majority of reviewers use their real names. “There’s a huge paradigm shift in the way that businesses get discovered and how they’re marketed, and, as a business owner, you have to deal with that,” says Vince Sollitto, Yelp’s vice president of government relations. As MHProNews understands, it is a question of free speech versus fairness, similar in some ways to anonymous online bullying of teenagers. ##
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