Thoughts & Ideas

January 9, 2014
|

Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers per court’s ruling

yelp-courtThe City Court of Alexandria, VA, ruled that online review site Yelp  must identify anonymous reviewers who posted negative reviews for a local carpet cleaning business. The owner couldn’t match the reviews with the company database, which was a sufficient reason to assume that the reviewers were not the real customers.    According to the court, the First Amendment rights do not cover purposely false statements. The ruling has a potential of changing the practice of online consumer reviews (source).