Yelp Hit With Extortion Lawsuit For Allegedly Demanding Payments To Pull Negative Reviews
*Big Long Sigh*
I knew it would come to this eventually. As a former employee, I am pretty sure Yelp will beat this one, but even so, it gets to the core of one of the reasons why I left: by not focusing enough on public perception of issues like these, Yelp is doing irreparable harm to their own reputation, regardless of the truth. Eventually no one will trust the reviews on the site enough to actually use them to determine where to go, and other services are rising that have the potential to replace their stockpile of location-based data. Once a tipping point is reached, a lack to user interest will lead to a lack of ad sales, and then congratulations, you’ve killed your business model by not giving a shit.
Kind of too bad this isn’t Google’s class action lawsuit instead now, isn’t it?
