Yelp, Yelp, Inc.,  Evil Yelp Libels Businesses to Sell Advertising, is defrauding investors Internet

Yelp manipulate filter results to libel   profiled businesses.    Yelp hides behind the Filter results, using the “secretive” Yelp Filter to libel businesses.  Why does the Yelp Filter  selectively display  negative results? If you believe Yelp, it is to remove false reviews.  This is a lie.   In the guise of protecting the public from false reviews, Yelp thinks it  has legal immunity under the Community Decency Act  § 230(c)(1) to libel any profiled company. Yelp characterizes their filter as mere "Editorial discretion".

The reality is, that Yelp needs to ruin the reputation of profiled businesses to make money. When it  ruins the reputation of reviewed businesses Yelp   sells advertising to other businesses advertising in Yelp on the Profile page of the damaged business.  Yelp  sells advertising by libeling profiled businesses,  so readers click on  links   to  other profiled advertisers.  This is what makes  Yelp  profitable. That is what the "evil Yelp" is all about. 

Until now, the debate has been focused on whether Yelp is “extorting” businesses to advertise, by taking  good Yelp reviews using the “Filter” into off-page filtered results, leaving predominantly poor reviews.  But the real issue is whether Yelp uses the  Yelp filter to libel  businesses deliberately to sell advertising to other companies.  If a review is good and the Yelp visitor reading the review clicks through to the reviewed company, Yelp makes nothing.  Yelp is motivated financially to libel reviewed companies, to have readers select an advertiser on the profile page instead.   Motivation to libel  is the foundation of  the Yelp business profitability model.

There is another law that may find Yelp without immunity to ruin the reputations of profiled businesses.  The securities litigation industry is ordinarily  vigilant against Rule 10b-5 violations, or a “fraud upon the market”.  Inflating profits by libel may be found to fall under this cause of action.  The 10b-5 statute only requires proof by preponderance of the evidence.  This is a much easier standard for litigators to win than criminal statutes requirnig proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  That is why class action lawyers prosecute such claims widely.  How long will it take for a class action to be filed and  to determine the legality of the Yelp “filter”? Such litigation may determine the dread Yelp Filter  to be nothing more than a widespread fraud upon the public of businesses Yelp profiles, and the investors buying shares in Yelp.

MSNBC "Your Money" did a presentation on this problem Olek is having with Yelp, televised in the past few months.  They took hours of footage and interviews showing the extent of the libel Olek has been subjected to.  We have detailed proof that 9 of 10 suppressed reveiws, (8) ***** and (2) **** were from legitimate customers, showing before and after photos, Proposals and Invoices with names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, and evidence of payments.  One of ten we can't locate, as the reviewer Yelp name is not identifiable. 

Our company has suffered from the suppression of positive reviews by Yelp, which has seriously undermijned and libeled our good 63-year old reputation.  We are interested in being a lead plaintiff in a class action against Yelp, or a sole plaintiff in a NJ Federal Court against this San Francisco based company.  There are statutes protecting against consumer fraud in NJ that might be applied in Federal Court against  Yelp, We would participate as plaintiff in such an action against Yelp as well, and are seeking Counsel to represent us on a Contingent basis.  Yelp has provided weekly reports, based on a Boston Consulting Group report Yelp sponsored  showing the extent of diverted traffic on the Search term "Olek Lejbzon" that in Yelp's own calculation has cost Olek hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past two years.