Yelp Extortion Story Grows

Kathleen Richards in the East Bay Express followed up her February story about the many-headed and allegedly democratic monster that is Yelp with a new story in which she responds to Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman's criticism that she only used anonymous sources in her original article--ironic, as she notes, because his entire site is anonymous. For this piece she got a number of business owners to go on the record to report that Yelp sales reps told them they could re-order or in some cases remove negative reviews if they paid to advertise. Business owners also reported on the disappearance of 5-star reviews when they refused to advertise, to which sales reps allegedly responded that those reviews would "come back" if they paid up.