A federal court of appeals in San Francisco has ruled that Yelp can, if it so chooses, raise or lower the rating of a business on the site depending on whether or not that business advertises with them.
Such a move would not be classified as extortion, which is what the lawsuit at issue had claimed.
Yelp is happy with the results, but claims it doesn’t do such things, anyways. The company said in a blog post:
“We are obviously happy that the court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review.”
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