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Comment by dwater | Hacker News Reader

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post reviews that never appeared. Then negative reviews started appearing from people that he knew never came in because he was working the host station all day. All this activity was reversed once they started paying for Yelp services. It's the kind of behavior that's impossible to prove for anyone outside of Yelp, and they of course claim they don't do it.

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Same story from a restaurant owning friend except the sales rep called him a second time offering to remove negative reviews as a service. Simple extortion like the mafia.

I've heard the same stories from several local restaurants. With one added detail, which was consistent between the 3 restaurants: The sales pitch was always $300/mo. to ensure they have only high ratings. When they don't pay the fee, the negative reviews start showing up, and the positive reviews start disappearing.

It's such a consistent story it beggars belief that there's nothing there.

Interestingly, I never hear this about TripAdvisor or Google / Google Maps...

Same. I'm sure there's claims out there, but they've got to be few, and I wouldn't imagine that all of them have all the same details.

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory

of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.

I mean, this isn’t the CIA here. It’s a tech company people are probably filing in and out of in about two years. And the salesmen are all meant to be in on it?

Yeah, if pay incentives are there, and we're talking sales... They're not necessarily people of the highest esteem. And if the hiring party puts a little pressure on the candidate, I could definitely imagine a tight ship.

A scrupulous person wouldn't join the Gestapo, y'know?

Most tech companies leak like sieves and the incentive isn’t there after you’re no longer being paid. It seems hard to believe it could be that airtight to me.

I dunno, man. I've seen lots of FRA, OSHA, MSHA, corporate, and food safety violations over the years - but they benefit me and my peers because they're shortcuts to the metric target. It's a win-win and everybody keeps it quiet, and everyone is on to it. And these are businesses that aren't selecting for privity.

ITT: people who have never heard of NDAs

IANAL, but can an NDA legally bar someone from reporting a suspected crime to law-enforcement?

No, But do you want to fight that out in court?

I dunno. Guess it depends on how pissed off I was.

I don't think Yelp's practices constitute a crime in the USA. The crime of a hypothetical Mafia is when they threaten violence for not paying. Yelp just changes what their site says about your business, which isn't a crime unless you can prove slander (very difficult).

In print, it's "Libel", not slander.

Spreading falsehoods is libel. Pretending they can't know the truth doesn't shield them from culpability. Especially when their entire business depends on suppressing negative reviews.

Federal law protects whistleblowers who confidentially disclose trade secrets to law enforcement: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1833

NDAs have nothing to do with this. Employees leak all kinds of stuff from tech companies all the time despite NDAs.

I worked at Yelp in 2018, and the allegations were there, I would be extremely surprised that a secret like this could be kept if it were true. It was generally a pretty open culture which lots internal open cynicism. There was just 0 evidence or even rumors internally this is true. I believe it's way more likely that the system is large enough to generate outliers that believe they're being targeted.

However, hyper aggressive sales reps were there and while I don't have specific details, I know their methods were the cause of at least some people not comfortable staying there. They however would not have access to things like reviews.

Is it possible that sales reps were using the publication of negative reviews by others as a tip-off of which businesses would then be more likely to purchase the service by which negative reviews could be removed? If so, the timing of those sales pitches along with negative reviews could make it seem like this is what was happening.

I could only speculate about that.

Yeah I find it a bit hard to believe. If you really think reviews are inauthentic it’s not hard to click on their profiles and see. I find it hard to see much evidence for astroturfing. If anything I think it’s fairly generous about not putting negative feedback front-and-center.

That, and, as the article details, and I’ve seen in my own personal experience, business owners are extremely aggressive about trying to get you to take down negative reviews, which I’m sure not only gets people to take them down but also discourages people from writing them in the first place.

I am friends with 3 different businesses in my town. A baker, a cafe, and a small restaurant. All three of them have experienced the exact same thing. I've seen it happen first-hand on their accounts.

So just to be clear, you unselected the default “yelp sort” and sorted by either review date or best or worst and they don’t show up?

Sorry, not sure I understand the question. Part of what I’m saying is the default sort tends to be fairly generous to the business.

If this is sufficiently widespread, seems like there's an opportunity for a honeypot operation.

I.e.:

(1) Guess at what information triggers this kind of shakedown by Yelp for a new business. E.g., credit-card sales data for new restaurants.

(2) Set up a fake business that pushes all of those buttons. E.g., register a new restaurant business in the state; temporarily rent a space and maybe put up signage; generate realistic credit-card purchase data and/or cell-location data for fake customers.

(3) Wait for the Yelp reviews to come in. [Possibly legal offence #1]

(4) Wait for the Yelp sales call. [Possibly legal offence #2]

(5) Turn down the sales offer.

(6) Wait for the negative reviews. [Possibly legal offence #3]

(7) Ask prosecutors to pursue criminal charges, and/or file a civil suit. Either way, get to the point of legally compelled discovery.

I wonder if this would be a fun first project for a newly minted government prosecutor.

Back in the 70s, the Chicago Sun-Times did this with corrupt government agents by purchasing a bar.

https://interactive.wttw.com/timemachine/mirage-tavern

Seems like a lot of work for a speculative theory, given all the stuff government has to do.

It’s exactly the shenanigans investigative journalism used to do.

> which I’m sure not only gets people to take them down but also discourages people from writing them in the first place.

I leave negative reviews for places that deserve them, and there's nothing they could ever do to get me to take it down, or discourage me from doing it. I doubt they could ever do anything that would make most people feel differently from me about that. In fact, I'd be pissed and just start leaving more negative reviews if they even thought of getting aggressive.

Well, sure, some will react that way. But some guy kept calling my wife and trying to intimidate her over my review. That probably works at least some of the time. And how many people want to go to court to defend themselves over a review? Seems like it’s not worth the effort.

Oh, I thought you were talking about anonymous reviews, where the the businesses can respond but not contact me directly. I wouldn't leave a review where they would be able to contact me. And even if they did, I'd handle that scenario a bit differently. Sorry that happened to you.

Yelp has a big sideline in helping to find contractors. So obviously if you then review them after finding them through Yelp they know who you are.

> You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years...

I wouldn't think so. In a society so rife with obvious scams everywhere you look, at every level in public and private sector orgs, it would be patently idiotic to trash your own career on account of a dishonest restaurant review operation.

I wish we lived in a world where such bravery were meaningfully valued, but we don't. For any might-be whistleblowers, this reality has been made painfully clear in the time since the Snowden leaks nearly a decade ago, during which nothing has changed.

The thing about whistleblowers is that nobody actually likes them. "Whistleblower" is to white-collar crime as "snitching" is to anything street-level.

We "appreciate" them when they call foul on others, but you appreciate them a hell of a lot less when you have such moral crusaders in your own ranks. They aren't loyal to anybody but their own sense of self-righteousness and can't be trusted to keep their mouth shut if you piss them off after they discover dirt on you. They're only ever a liability.

On the flip side, barring being vindictive it's not worth it to blow the whistle on anything unless you can prove it beyond all doubt and intend to pivot to motivational speaking for the rest of your career. Outside of the defense industry (the DoD does pay generously to anyone tattling on Snowden/Teixera types), there is literally no incentive to speak out, and a lot of potential retribution you invite.

Very true. Whistleblowers' friends come and go, but their enemies accumulate.

(I repurposed that from an aphorism about being in politics.)

what? I like them.

I don't get this automatic assumption that everyone is a hypocrite and no one is willing to face accusations of doing things wrong in their own life. I mean, is that how you operate? That's not how I do things. If I'm doing something wrong I love finding out about it - otherwise, how will I eve do things right?

if your goal for relationships with other people is to prevent them from discovering dirt about you then... I dunno man, I'm not sure how it's possible to live happily around other human beings with that kind of attitude. what kind of person does that make you?

> If I'm doing something wrong I love finding out about it - otherwise, how will I eve do things right?

We're talking about a few different things-- most of what I said applies to employer/employee relationships. If you hire a known whistleblower, you better make sure there are no skeletons in your closet because they've already proven what they're willing to do with such information.

> if your goal for relationships with other people is to prevent them from discovering dirt about you then... I dunno man, I'm not sure how it's possible to live happily around other human beings with that kind of attitude. what kind of person does that make you?

In both cases, it's just a matter of discretion. There is no prevention; discovery is inevitable.

okay but whistleblowing is good - I still don't get why you keep harping on this idea that if they revealed something secret about someone else, they'll reveal something secret about you, like - what kind of threat is that supposed to be?

again, I feel like this is you projecting - what are you hiding, anyway?

Yeah that's the part I don't get too.

It's normal for a new local restaurant to get a bunch of good reviews because locals are trying it for the first time and want to help. Then it's normal for reviews to drop off because every local who would leave a review, has. Then it's normal to start attracting negative reviews from people who have never visited because local competing restaurants have realized where the downtick in their own business has come from, and so start trashing the competition. And then the negative reviews stop because the competing restaurants were satisfied they'd left enough negative reviews.

These stories have been going around about Yelp for over a decade at this point. And Yelp has churned through so many salespeople... you'd think there would have been tons of credible whistleblowers by now if this were really how Yelp operated.

Apparently Yelp will remove positive reviews that have been posted before, and save up negative reviews for publication after the advertising pitch; to be unpublished if advertising is paid for.

They may not actually be writing the reviews, simply choosing when to publish or unpublish them, and in what quantities, and which to count for the overall rating.

It doesn't matter who's casting the reviews, but who's counting them.

If that’s the case shouldn’t there be at least one screenshot of this behavior happening? I’ve heard dozens of anecdotes over the years. You think that at least one restaurant owner would screenshot their rating and the number of reviews as soon as Yelp reaches out to ‘suggest’ advertising.

The fact that this seems to be commonly-accepted knowledge without a single piece of evidence is strange to me.

In fairness running a restaurant is nearly a round the clock job. Running delivery and the online reservations is more. Managing reviews is even more.

I agree that its hard to believe one restaurant hasn't tracked it yet but I think its more a confluence

- are you good enough/ no dip in performance that you can claim this correlation or are you confident enough to go out saying that knowing you have to defend against ppl saying "well maybe you just suck now!"

- did you have time to screenshot it when it was happening aka the day Yelp called and your dishwasher was out sick and your supplier of eggs upped their price

- how long does the business even run. lots of restaurants close down and Yelp is not on a top ten list of concerns

- if you're established then your focus is growing business not dealing with the mafia. maybe you pay them, maybe you double down on other channels like uber eats or a new location or whatever.

Sure, that's all totally fair, but was there seriously not even one -- out of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of businesses -- business owner who managed to find the time to do this?

It's possible the sketchiness is caused by a restaurant's competitors (writing negative reviews, falsely flagging positive reviews, spamming) rather than Yelp proper.

That adds a bit more complexity to the problem, but it still remains that Yelp is running a platform that to some extent relies on the ability to abuse it.

There is an enormous gulf between a platform with abusive users and a platform where the operator uses it to engage in extortion.

NDAs and threats to sue? If this is how Yelp does business they'd be very aggressive about enforcing that.

The same place the tobacco companies kept their whistle-blowers for 30 years?

I’ve heard this story more than once from business owners.

Small biz across the world are subject to the reach of social media addicted primates with persecution complex. Few will take the risk of a review bomb or nobodies traveling to vandalize their business.

It’s not a new meme by any means: https://fortune.com/2015/04/07/yelp-reviews-controversy/

best guess: they have been NDA'd and the dirty work completed by temp workers or contractors.

Could be individual salespeople doing it, and probably without Yelp truly "knowing". I worked at a nationwide gym once upon a time, and it was common for salespeople to trick people into signing long term contracts.

This theory is better than most, considering that other organizations have used similar tactics to get the benefits of bad behavior while dodging responsibility, such as HomeVestors of America (aka "We Buy Ugly Houses"):

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-...

Amazon also somewhat infamously uses contracting organizations with scandalous labor practices.

But to the contrary, these allegations have been levied against Yelp for nearly a decade, and yet no real clear evidence of this happening deliberately at least once has appeared. Meanwhile, people have switched to Google Reviews, which also have a pay-to-play element (for visibility) and dubious corporate backing.

One rather mundane explanation might be that people who click on restaurants near the top of the search results are just friendlier reviewers overall, while people who search to the fifth page are more picky.

Who will they blow the whistle to?

If they go to the media, even if they are 100% on the whistleblower's side, it'll be a week (at most) of slightly negative PR. People will forget, if they noticed in the first place.

Is there a government body that will act on this? What will they do? A small fine? Would this actually go to court?

The point isn't that whistleblowing might put a sudden end to it; it's that nobody has ever blown a whistle, with evidence that isn't hearsay, ever.

I have seen this same claim so many times over the years and not once I have seen direct evidence of it, just hearsay. "My friend", "My wife's cousin", etc. How hard would it be to show before/after screenshots, timestamps of Yelp sales calls, etc.

It's also really hard to tell if Yelp is doing it. I would absolutely believe there are third party scammers posing as Yelp

I would totally believe this. Probably not THAT hard to pose as a yelp salesmen and try to trick restaraunt owners into paying you. And of course the scammers could be quite good at gaming the review system.

This has been known for like 10 years now. I can't believe anyone actually still uses or trusts Yelp reviews.

There were lawsuits in the early 2010s over trying to reveal the identity of negative reviewers because so many restaurants were claiming they were fake/extortion.

Known to whom? You might be a sophisticated consumer but go hang out at the DMV and ask yourself how many of your fellow countrymen would really question yelp reviews.

This. The only thing left to do is create your own scam.

Isn’t this cause for defamation? Or is it protected under article 230?

Even if it’s not yelp doing it the fact that they are publicly advertising the reviews should make them culpable.

It's section 230 not article 230 but yes it's somewhat protected. You could go after the end user for defamation and you could probably use the legal system to force yelp to turn over identifying information from their logs if a judge agreed a comment was defamatory. But you'd have to go after the poster not after Yelp.

There have been cases on exactly this, and the basic summary of the result is Yelp can do what it wants on it's own platform:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=336153126478324...

which ended with: The case was dismissed on appeal on the grounds that the complainants had not adequately proven (1) Yelp had wrongfully threatened economic loss by manipulating user reviews, (2) it was unlawful for Yelp to post and sequence both positive and negative reviews, (3) Yelp authored negative reviews, and (4) Yelp’s conduct amounted to a violation of antitrust laws by threatening or harming competition.

Yelp was also sued for false advertising (essentially saying they were a trusted, unbiased review source) which they somehow also won:

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/03/yelp-finally-d...

anyway, I actively avoid Yelp reviews because of this chicanery.

> It's the kind of behavior that's impossible to prove for anyone outside of Yelp, and they of course claim they don't do it.

This kind of conspiracy would be trivially uncoverable in the discovery phase of a lawsuit.

I mean, I'm not saying that Yelp isn't doing this, but if it is, it would bust right open the moment anyone sued them for anything related to this.

I'm curious what laws (if any) Yelp would have violated in that scenario.

My non-lawyer intuition is that this is something like fraud, extortion, or racketeering.

The parent comment doesn't mention the restaurant's location. Are the relevant jurisdictions are some combination of the following?

(a) the restaurant's location

(b) Yelp's HQ in the restaurant's country, and/or

Just to be clear did you change from the default “yelp sort” to one of the other options? I don’t know many small business owners but the one I did know that didn’t pay Yelp had their default “yelp sort” results filled with negative reviews. Sorting by most recent the reviews were all positive and the one I left finally showed up.

> It's the kind of behavior that's impossible to prove for anyone outside of Yelp, and they of course claim they don't do it.

Im surprised there hasnt been a class-action defamation suit. That would force discovery at least.

It is easy to imagine that (some) Yelp sales reps are following an unofficial playbook to manufacture negative reviews around the time they engage prospects.

If one sales rep is caught, easy for the company to label them a rogue, bad actor.

Wow, isn't this extortion. If this allegation were true, someone in Yelp should go to jail.

A relative of mine owns an Air company that is as transparent and honest as they come (they've sent technicians who have no idea I'm related to the owner) and he was telling me they were a scam, but I had no idea that is how they work. I wonder how long until someone sues them for extortion.

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