In a time
when much of our lives revolves around access to the Internet, our online
profiles are hugely important. This is especially true for many small
businesses who depend on positive user reviews and comments from their customers. There are plethora of services that have been
created to help businesses with good reviews be found by potential new
customers. One of these companies, Yelp,
has become a go-to website for thousands of people to find reviews and
recommendations for small businesses around the world. Over time, however, Yelp has become a morally
corrupt company that you, as a consumer, shouldn’t trust as an honest source of
reviews.
Founded
in 2004, Yelp has over 138 million unique users per month, 79,900 business
accounts, and over 61 million reviews[1]. Businesses take advantage of the wide user
base by publishing deals, release news, and interacting with their
customers. In addition, Yelp provides
them with a paid advertising platform to help get their name to new customers.
Under
normal circumstances, the website sounds like a fantastic tool to find new
stores and restaurant that you and your friends could visit. On the contrary, Yelp has become an extortion
agency, constantly looming over small businesses that are struggling to stay
afloat. Their process for earning new
advertising revenue is as follows: A representative initiates contact with some
business with a profile on Yelp. The
representative then offers the business owner a deal to publish ads. At this point, the owner will choose whether
or not to take the offer, and then go on with their day. Sounds ok, right? It was for a while, unless the owner chose
not to advertise through Yelp. Sometime
in the weeks after they deny the offer, Yelp begins altering what can be seen
on the businesses profile. They begin
hiding positive reviews and ratings in favor of displaying only negative,
seemingly in hopes of pressuring the owner into buying advertising space (It
should be noted that restaurant owners have no control of their profile –
anyone can create a page for a business).
One
would hope that these cases are isolated and simply the work of immoral Yelp
salesmen. However, a ruling last week[2]
stated that these actions were not legally “extortion” because Yelp did not
write the negative reviews and that there was not enough proof that the deliberate
hiding of positive reviews contributed to economic loss. The ruling means that Yelp can continue to
manipulate rating of businesses until they sign advertising deals.
This is
a very dangerous precedent in an age where our online profiles are almost more
important than our physical ones. Finding
new stores and restaurants to visit has become an online activity. You can see from Yelp’s user base that
millions of people log on to find the best rated spots in their area. Websites like Yelp contribute greatly to the
economic success or failure of small businesses. If users are fed misleading information about
the quality of a restaurant, that owner will lose those customers. The only thing they can do about it is pay
the advertising representatives and hope that their customers see the positive
reviews they deserve.
In this
age of information, we expect to find people in our communities who share
honest information about the places around us.
Companies like Yelp take advantage of that, betraying our trust and
threatening the livelihoods of small business owners so that they can sell
advertisements. The deception they cause
have dire consequences for the people that they affect. As users, we should avoid these platforms in
favor of neutral companies that support small business instead of blackmail
them.
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