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.
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;
At the end there is a high pressure spiel from the server to give a good review. They have QR codes direct to the Niku X yelp page that they ask you to scan with your phone. Then they will “help you out”, tap the 5* button, use the AI feature to auto-fill the rest of the review, and post. Entire 5* review process takes about 15-30 seconds at the end of the meal.
… one of the owners of Chubby Group, David Zhao, previously ran a business called MoreViews Inc., which specializes in selling online engagement, including fake followers, artificial traffic, and directory submissions. While the MoreViews website does not explicitly list Yelp review services, it offers digital strategies commonly associated with online reputation management through non-organic means.