I worked on a start-up that was basically a Yelp competitor with a less-bad business model. Unfortunately, all the incentives in the business are about boostin

I worked on a start-up that was basically a Yelp competitor with a less-bad business model. Unfortunately, all the incentives in the business are about boosting the performance of your paying customers relative to free businesses on the platform. While we never went as far as faking reviews or helping businesses eliminate bad reviews and we at least were clear to customers about our search lists being curated rather than complete, there were clear pressures towards all the things that lead to Yelp being the shit-show that it is.