Agreed. Not to say there isn't a problem with Yelp's practices (as have been documented elsewhere), but this article does not make a good case against them.
From an algorithmic standpoint, filtering out reviews from new users makes sense. Otherwise you'll get the owner and friends stuffing in good reviews.
Just look at what the data might look like for the 17 people. -They all sign up in a period of a few weeks. -They all review this one place and nothing else. -16 of the 17 never sign back in again.
It's pretty clear that it's a blatant rating stuff, so filter it out. Again, I'm not saying that the algorithm is perfect, but it makes sense to at least filter out these reviews.