Protecting Free Speech: Why Yelp Is Marking Businesses That Sue Their Customers

My only concern is around the lack of ability for businesses to respond or request any level of verification that a person actually did business with them. The BBB at least contacts the business and oversees a process for resolution (documenting the entire thing).<p>I personally know multiple business owners who&#x27;ve dealt with threats from customers who will go and write a bad review if they don&#x27;t simply bow to demands. Medical offices are another issue entirely because many medical professional don&#x27;t even know if they are allowed to respond to complaints due to HIPAA.<p>I know one who even had a bad review from a phone call from a woman that simply called and yelled at them for not getting free service. It was their first and only review in years. Never even set foot in the building.<p>People are basically given permission to hang a sign on your front door that you&#x27;re not allowed to take down.<p>I&#x27;m all for reviews and feedback but at least Amazon shows &quot;Amazon Verified Purchase&quot;. Balance it somehow with either cross reference to the BBB or document how many years the business has existed. There are far too many businesses who&#x27;ve been open 10+ years with thousands of customers that have never felt the necessity to leave a review.<p>Without verification that the person has actually a customer, it&#x27;s basically just libel.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Yelp is doing this? The same Yelp that was built on the back of some of the most aggressive, manipulative, downright shady marketing tactics out there?<p>I&#x27;ve heard multiple complaints from Mom &amp; Pop shops in my neighborhood which basically amount to Yelp calling and saying &quot;Sign up for our premium business package or the negative reviews stay at the top&quot;

As a SLAPP victim, Yelp&#x27;s decision to punch-down against a pet-sitting business is a slap in my face. A few years back I was sued by a chain of business for $2 Million. These were private-equity financed businesses which serially sue customers, as I later verified using public records search. I complained to Yelp, to no avail.<p>I went to a lawyer who told me that they have a lot of cash in the bank and that I don&#x27;t want to fight them, and encouraged me to sign a non-disparagement agreement and pay them some money and move on with my life. I took his advice.<p>I lost over $20K due to this, as well as months of frustration in which my career and family life took a hit.<p>Still quite angry, I watched, (using public records requests) as they continued to sue more customers, contractors, or anyone else. Eventually, I found a lawsuit in which they directly contradicted claims they had made in their complaint against me, and even provided 100s of pages of documents showing that my &quot;defamatory&quot; statements were correct! So I called a lawyer, who reviewed the documents and told me that I have a very strong case to have my settlement thrown out because it was fraudulent induced. However, he said that that due to their history of Trump-like earth-scorching, it would be a bad idea to pursue this without a big reserve of cash, patience, and nerves. (In fact, the lawyer, who practices in NJ, mentioned Trump by name as an analogy.)<p>When I was sued, my adversary was financed by private equity company funded by someone with over $10 billion net worth. (This was one of my assertions that I was sued for, which was later corroborated in court documents.) Yelp told me I was on my own. Now Yelp is taking on Prestigious Pets, in an effort to protect free speech.<p>So, Yelp, if you want to humiliate someone your own size, I&#x27;m happy to have a confidential discussion with your lawyers. Let me know how to get in touch with you.

How adorable. Yelp taking the moral high ground. Once I wrote a negative review for a business describing my personal experience with them. The company first wrote me an email and asked me to remove it, I obviously didn&#x27;t because everything I wrote was true. Then Yelp removed my review, because it was &quot;irrelevant&quot;! :-) Strangely enough, that business had all positive reviews on Yelp with near 5&#x2F;5 score, while on Google it had a score of around 2.5&#x2F;5. Does anyone even care about Yelp scores at this point?

I think one of the things Yelp has caused (or, perhaps, needs to cause) is a change in consumer behavior related to bad reviews. I&#x27;ve learned, over the years, to disregard certain kinds of bad reviews[0] or not choose to avoid a company because it has a small number of poor reviews.<p>The Internet reminds of me of driving. Most people will scream at another driver for cutting them off on a merge -- assuming the driver was being aggressive and entitled (he thinks is time is <i>so much more important</i> than mine!). That same driver will find himself on a road, not paying enough attention, only to discover his lane is ending at the last second and expects another driver to let them in and understand it was just a mistake.<p>We scream because we don&#x27;t see the other driver as a human being, just an angry caricature of a bad driver (and we&#x27;re not actually <i>confronting</i> that driver directly). On the Internet, we&#x27;ll rip a mom and pop or small restaurant business apart because of a server who had too many tables and one bad dining experience. That same person likely didn&#x27;t talk to the manager or give them an opportunity to make the situation better because it&#x27;s a lot less socially intimidating to hit Yelp and tear into them via a bad review.<p>[0] My favorite is &quot;bed bug&quot; reports at hotels. Practically every single hotel I&#x27;ve stayed at in the last few years has had at least one review claiming bed bugs (some with pictures for evidence). It&#x27;s a problem pretty much <i>everywhere</i> and in those reviews I look for a hint about how the hotel handled the situation. If it was taken care of in a reasonable manner (regardless of what the reviewer feels was reasonable), I won&#x27;t hold it against the hotel.

Businesses making profit off entities with positive reviews has been the norm: e-commerce etc.<p>Business making profit off entities with negative reviews (GlassDoor, Yelp &amp; friends) reek of protection-rackets. These services are best decentralized rather than be profit-seeking.

If Yelp put accuracy and completeness ahead of # of reviews, they&#x27;d have already made 2 changes:<p>1. Let anyone comment on other people&#x27;s comments - like HN or Reddit, with similar reputation (points) and up&#x2F;downvotes.<p>Right now, unless an owner monitors and responds to every negative comment, there&#x27;s no recourse for being unreasonable or flat-out inaccurate. Even when an owner does so, the recourse is minimal. Let any other Yelp user reply, turning each comment into a thread.<p>2. When someone posts a 1- or 2-star review, show a second, required comment field for &quot;What happened when you informed the retailer?&quot;<p>If someone is served a meal they don&#x27;t like and says nothing at the time, they skipped a - the - critical step. While there are cases where a low review could be justified without ever giving the retailer a chance to address the perceived problem (like if someone showed up twice during posted business hours and the retailer was closed), they cause fewer than 10% of 1- and 2-star ratings and they&#x27;re easy to explain. Otherwise, the minimum for a negative review to be constructive is having informed the retailer (and let them try to address it).

Doing the right thing in one instance of one aspect of &quot;free speech&quot; is not &quot;protecting free speech&quot;.<p>Protecting free speech is about a framework of process, transparency, inclusion, and democracy.<p>Yelp is not a transparent, inclusive democracy with processes in place to ensure we can each express ourselves freely. It is a business, driven by business decisions, run by business people, for its customer, in the interest of it owners.<p>Period.

I guess the problem for yelp and for businesses is that yelp wants to be the crowd sourced zaggat&#x27;s. Semi honest reviews of businesses.<p>For most people it&#x27;s a place to complain about businesses and most don&#x27;t make an effort of being a good reviewer, even when they want to just provide a public service review. They tend to be subjective personal opinions of businesses.

This blog post is missing some important details. Sometimes legal actions from businesses are empty or meritless. However, what if it&#x27;s legitimate libel? Labeling any legal action as &quot;questionable&quot; seems odd. How do they differentiate?

I think the biggest problem with Yelp is fake reviews intended to harm a business either from competition or disgruntled ex-employees. They allow 1-star reviews from throwaway accounts to stay on the front page and filter 5 star reviews from active users unless you pay for their service which includes &#x27;account management support&#x27; to dispute fake reviews.

I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if Yelp added a feature where businesses that sue their customers can pay a fee to remove the mark.

Businesses can perhaps incentivize their customers to write good reviews by offering a discount in exchange for a review on Yelp. When the customers are paying the bill, they can ask them for a 1-5 star rating posted alongside a photo of that customer to their Yelp page as some sort of a proof that the said business is not making up those star ratings.

Good to see businesses advertising this too.<p>It&#x27;s already against the law for a business to punish you for writing a negative review. Many people do not know they can sue when a business tries this. That&#x27;s what the Consumer Review Fairness Act is about - letting the public know their rights. It&#x27;s basically the government trying to teach people the law. And Yelp would be helping by promoting this.<p>Good job Yelp.

This first amendment says the government can&#x27;t abridge your speech. The government is not doing that here, so mentioning the first amendment adds more confusion to the concept of free speech than it adds clarity. It&#x27;s about as useful as mentioning any of the other amendments.

Nothing to do with the post, but I wonder why they&#x27;ve chosen to host the blog on a separate domain instead of a subdomain on the official site. I did confirm blog.yelp.com redirects to it, but still it&#x27;s easy to be suspicious of a separate domain not having the same owners.

Not that Yelp doing this isn&#x27;t a good thing, but an obvious side benefit for them is that they now have a database of super litigious folks who they know to steer their shady marketing practices well clear of because they don&#x27;t want that kind of headache.

This sounds a little odd to me:<p>&gt;the Consumer Review Fairness Act, prohibits inclusion of gag clauses in consumer form contracts<p>Won&#x27;t that just lead to some businesses asking you (in a sneaky way that you don&#x27;t realize unless you read several pages of legalese) to sign an NDA?

It would be really helpful to also see the reviewers summary. Then that way I could see if the reviewer is usually balanced or positive then a negative review has more weight whereas if you are a serial bad mouther I can more easily discount your opinion.

&gt; may be trying to abuse the legal system in an effort to stifle free speech<p>I&#x27;m not a lawyer... but doesn&#x27;t this open Yelp up to allegations of libel?<p>As a side note, I am really starting to be irritated by confirmation buttons that say things like &quot;Got it, thanks!&quot;. Stop putting words into my digital mouth!

&gt; but there will always be a small handful of businesses who mistakenly think it’s a good idea to threaten consumers who exercise their free speech right<p>Wh... what? the free speech right only covers repercussions initiated by the government. Businesses are not the government so consumers have no free speech right or expectation here.