Perhaps Yelp’s TOS could be relevant to the discussion, but what do I know?
https://terms.yelp.com/tos/en_us/20200101_en_us/
You also represent and warrant that you will not, and will not assist, encourage, or enable others to use the Service to:
Depends on interpretation on whether this constitutes as buying a positive review, and I’ll leave that to the actual lawyers (e.g. @hungryhungryhippos). And while businesses are encouraged to comply now, they won’t be rolled out or enforced for months if not years.
Regarding Yelp, this does not apply to third-party review platforms unless the platform knew or should have known that a review that was disseminated was false.
Here’s the updated guide (as of April 30): Federal Register :: Request Access
Again, that regulation applies only to advertising. You don’t have to be a lawyer to read and understand those regulations.
Yelp’s terms of service ban a lot of things that are not illegal. The relevant portion is
B. You represent and warrant that you will not, and will not authorize or induce any other party, to:
i. offer incentives of any kind, such as discounts, freebies, refunds, gift cards, contest entries, offers, or deals in exchange for the posting of reviews of your Business, or to prevent or remove reviews, and you understand and acknowledge that Yelp, through its Consumer Alerts, may publicly notify consumers about such incentives and other attempts to obtain, prevent, or remove reviews;
ii. solicit or ask for reviews from your customers; …
iv. pay or induce anyone to post, refrain from posting, or remove reviews, or otherwise attempt to circumvent Yelp’s Recommendation Software (defined below) or fraud detection systems;
Friend told me he’s headed here tomorrow. It’s now a high-end AYCE buffet?