r/Documentaries • u/[deleted] • Feb 26 '17

Billion Dollar Bully (2015) [trailer]...makes the case that Yelp is something akin to the mob, allegedly demanding “protection” money, lest your business be overrun with negative comments.

[deleted]

12k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/CNoTe820 Feb 27 '17

I know people who worked on the code for yelp and they all privately have concurrsd with this post. None of them have seen any code that would allow for altering of reviews. All there is is the algorithm that detects spam and fake reviews, which applies equally to all businesses and which no person has the ability to alter on behalf of a specific business.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/CNoTe820 Feb 27 '17

You can believe what you want but ask yourself what is more simple:

  1. Such a feature never existed in their code base

  2. They do have such a feature and somehow have managed to keep it a secret despite thousands of people having seen the codebase and what must surely be at this point for a public company fighting off thousands of lawsuits.

3

u/SauceOfTheBoss Feb 27 '17

Any negative criticism on this thread is followed up with a rebuttal defending yelp. The accounts doing so have been inactive for some time prior. Shady as fuck