4 ms·

You're not alone. A friend rented out her place to a tenant who was a total nightmare and then he went and made a yelp page for her as a person, because she's

You're not alone. A friend rented out her place to a tenant who was a total nightmare and then he went and made a yelp page for her as a person, because she's a real estate agent, defaming her on yelp (not for real estate business, but for being his landlord). So there's now a yelp page with her face on it and angry "reviews" from this tenant and his partner, and she has no way to remove it. Yelp refuses to do anything. Amazon product search usually works for me but I often use google to make sure there isn't a better price somewhere else on the internet. So I end up repeating my search terms to Google anyway.

ertemplin 7y ago
Can't businesses opt-out of Yelp by sending a cease and desist letter or eventually suing Yelp? Restaurants can't opt-out because they would no longer be discoverable on the internet, but a real estate agent should be able to opt-out of Yelp and still be reasonably successful.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  What exactly would Yelp be ceasing and desisting here? Surely things like the name, location and contact info for a business are public information that can be freely reproduced. Everything else on Yelp (primarily user reviews/photos) aren't the property of the business in the first place. If anything I'd expect the example in GP's case to be a rare instance where even US defamation law might be helpful to the landlord. I don't see that extending to businesses in general though.
jefftk 7y ago
It doesn't sound to me like this is a problem? Someone had a poor experience with a landlord, and posted about it on Yelp. Perhaps this was all the tenant being unreasonable, but that's not the sort of thing Yelp is going to be able to judge. This is how reviews work: over time you build up a picture out of a lot of unreliable data points.

4 ms·

You're not alone. A friend rented out her place to a tenant who was a total nightmare and then he went and made a yelp page for her as a person, because she's

by kajecounterhack 7y ago

ertemplin 7y ago
Can't businesses opt-out of Yelp by sending a cease and desist letter or eventually suing Yelp? Restaurants can't opt-out because they would no longer be discoverable on the internet, but a real estate agent should be able to opt-out of Yelp and still be reasonably successful.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  What exactly would Yelp be ceasing and desisting here? Surely things like the name, location and contact info for a business are public information that can be freely reproduced. Everything else on Yelp (primarily user reviews/photos) aren't the property of the business in the first place. If anything I'd expect the example in GP's case to be a rare instance where even US defamation law might be helpful to the landlord. I don't see that extending to businesses in general though.
jefftk 7y ago
It doesn't sound to me like this is a problem? Someone had a poor experience with a landlord, and posted about it on Yelp. Perhaps this was all the tenant being unreasonable, but that's not the sort of thing Yelp is going to be able to judge. This is how reviews work: over time you build up a picture out of a lot of unreliable data points.