Something more reliable than hearing "from a totally trusted individual, why would they lie?"
People repeat untrue things a million times a day for varied reasons. In this case, people who don't read up on Yelp's FAQs are frustrated by the yelp filter on both a consumer and business-level and want to subvert them, so they regurgitate a story they heard from someone else as fact.
An email or bill for review promotion/deletion services rendered would be perfectly acceptable, otherwise less credulous persons will file them away with the rest of the bitter cranks.
I'm on the other side of the fence. Walks like a duck and all that.
Without checks and balances and transparency, it's easier to assume the fix is in. The mere appearance of a conflict of interest is sufficient to signify a conflict of interest.
"The mere appearance of a conflict of interest is sufficient to signify a conflict of interest."
And what gives there a conflict of interest? The algorithm has absolutely nothing to do with what advertising businesses pay for or do not pay for. This much is known.
Yelp, Google, UrbanSpoon, YellowPages all charge for placement. And that's fine. But the veneer of collaborative filtering is a con. It's no different than the industry standard quid pro quo system of reviews for ads in tech / product magazines.
Yelp's claim to some form of algorithm objectivity doesn't change the power dynamic.
In other words, I don't credulously believe there to be a functioning Chinese firewall separating the business functions within Yelp. Because those firewalls rarely work, if ever.
