I agree, the downfall of Yelp was its hard push for people to install the app, e.g. requiring an account to see all the reviews, requiring the app to see the photos. Why do that when I can get better results directly in my browser?
There are plenty of places I love which have 3 stars and plenty I hate which are 5. Granted, Google and other crowdsourced review platforms have the same issues.
Personally, I've fallen back to critics reviews of restaurants. At least they have a reputation to uphold if they give a good review to a bad restaurant.
Their app is also probably continuously tracking your location.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...