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Nasir and Matt discuss the recent ruling which allows Yelp to alter reviews based on whether a business purchases advertising. They also answer, "Hi, I am 16 and my partner is 15. We have started our own car brokerage business. When do you think we should actually establish and when we do, what should we establish as ensure we split control and ownership 50/50" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to this podcast. Oh, I screwed it up. We had it so good but then I messed up. MATT: Yeah, should have maybe played it out for more than fifteen seconds, but I like it. it’s change it up, middle of the week. You know, people need some sort of something new – something new to listen to. NASIR: It’s like the seventh inning stretch and change it up, right? Change up the pitcher. MATT: Unfortunately, this isn’t a new topic because we’ve talked about this before. I don’t like to repeat stories but, in some instances, we have to just because of what’s involved and this is going to affect businesses and there’s really no other way to put it. The Yelp case which I think we discussed after the result in the trial court level, didn’t we? I think we did, right? NASIR: Yeah, I think so. I know you and I talked about it. I can’t remember if we did it over the show or not. MATT: Okay. They just had their verdict from the federal appellate court and basically they said, I guess I’m paraphrasing what this says but this is a summary. A little background, obviously, people are upset because Yelp was being accused of paying clients favorable reviews and people that deny their advertising, they’re giving them fake bad ratings. That’s the accusation that’s out there. But the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said that Yelp is entitled to set a price for its ads and the businesses review to have no legal right to a high rating. As Yelp has the right to charge for legitimate advertising services, the alleged threat of economic harm is utmost hard-bargaining and not extortion or unfair business practices. Basically, what this is saying is Yelp can pretty much do whatever they want. That’s how I’m reading this. You know, if someone denies wanting to have the advertising, if the business denies the advertising then, you know, Yelp can dock them accordingly. I don’t know if they talked about the actual fake reviews but isn’t that more or less what this is saying here? NASIR: Yeah. I mean, I would definitely agree with that. Keep in mind that the court didn’t actually look at the facts as to whether or not Yelp was actually doing this or not because this was a review of law before it even got to that point because Yelp has vehemently denied despite many businesses’ accusations that basically their Yelp reviews are distorted depending upon whether they’re an advertiser or not and Yelp says: “Our algorithm does not take into consideration whether it’s a paid advertiser or not.” And so, that seems a little bit unbelievable to some businesses, but let’s just assume that’s true for a moment and that’s what they did. The court says that’s okay because this is a private business and it doesn’t fit the legal definition of extortion in both the criminal or civil capacity. And so, therefore, it’s perfectly fine. You’ll probably find this surprising, Matt, and I know we’ve attacked Yelp many times before but I almost hope that Yelp starts manipulating its reviews this way a little bit more openly because – think about it – from a user experience, if you know that Yelp basically just shows good reviews for those businesses that actually pay for advertising and bad reviews for businesses that don’t pay for advertising, then the value of those reviews are less than even more than they already are and I almost hope that Y...