Yelp Is Not Liable For Negative Rating 'Stars' On Website, Says Appeals Court (cbsnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Online review site Yelp's star rating system does not make it responsible for negative reviews of businesses because it is based on user input, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, dismissing a libel lawsuit filed against Yelp by a Washington state locksmith company owner. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the star rating system that Yelp features is not content created by the company that helps guide people to everything from restaurants to plumbers. Under federal law, the decision said, Yelp is not liable for content its users post. The ruling focused on the libel lawsuit filed by Douglas Kimzey, a locksmith business owner in Redmond, Washington. The court said Kimzey's business received a negative review on Yelp in 2011. The review by a person identified in court documents only as "Sarah K" gave Kimzey's company one star out of five, saying it was slow to respond to a car lockout and then overcharged. The appeals court has ruled previously that the 1996 Communications Decency Act lets websites provide "neutral tools" to post material online and that they cannot be held liable for libelous or potentially libelous material posted by third parties. Monday's ruling affirmed a lower federal court decision that also dismissed Kimzey's claim that Yelp should be held liable for distributing reviews to search engines. The appeals court said distributing the content does not make Yelp the creator or developer of the content.

Comments

Re:"Sarah K" could be also a competitor locksmith

[FrankHaynes]

Entirely possible.

But I have to wonder about reviews that I encounter about 10% of the time that are so outlandish that they can't possibly be true: "I ordered a mocha latte, but received a plain black coffee. And I waited 45 minutes for it!!11!!1" SRSLY?? You waited 45 minutes for a cup of coffee without saying anything or taking any action to speed things up?? Sure, that's entirely believable!

Or hotel reviews of the form: "The people at the check-in desk were very rude and ignored all of our requests. The bed was pilled to the ceiling with human feces and there were roaches completely filling up the coffee dispenser. We only stayed 5 days instead of our originally planned 6 days."

The problem with Yelp is that the buttons for rating reviews only allow for positive/upvotes. When there's obvious garbage there's no way to vote it down other than to report it, which I doubt does any good.

tl;dr Yelp is only moderately useful. Read reviews with a critical eye.