Except there's no way to review Yelp's process without intimate involvement of Yelp itself, which, if you assume for a moment that they do have levers and strin

Except there's no way to review Yelp's process without intimate involvement of Yelp itself, which, if you assume for a moment that they do have levers and strings into their algorithm, means they would be pre-prepared to change how data is presented to those conducting the study, with minimal impact to their ongoing business. Or, even if they don't manipulate them directly but simply have baked that behavior into the algorithm, it wouldn't even look that different. It's not as if Yelp wouldn't assume this behavior would attract complaints and regulatory attention, so they'd be motivated to make sure it's as subtle and undetectable as possible, which when you have total and complete control of a closed-source codebase, is easy. Do we have proof? No, and that's why Yelp won in court, they couldn't be implicated beyond a shadow of a doubt of manipulation. But considering how much of their system is nothing but shadows and doubts, I don't find that all that exonerating.