Yelp's Review Filter

There was mention of Yelp's review filter on the news because some lady got sued for $750K.  I'd never heard of this filter in my time as a pretty regular yelper so I looked at my friends business page and saw that it was being rated on 3 reviews. Two of them were five star and one of them was a two star, bad review.  I could have sworn he had more reviews because he'd mentioned to me a while back that business was doing good and his yelp page was blowing up with good reviews from his customers. When I looked today it said rating based on 3 reviews.

At the very bottom is a link. It's light gray text that says (16 filtered). I clicked (because I knew what I was looking for, many wouldnt probably know what it was)  and it made me enter a captcha to prove I'm a real person. There I saw 16 more reviews all of which were 5 or 4 star. That one shitty review on the main page was the lowest star rating of all of them.  Now, how exactly does this "filter" work?  I don't trust it and don't see how any business can benefit from it.  It looks like it filters out reviews by users who have only 1 or 2 reviews. And apparently your worst review (which the user had only 2 reviews) gets automatically calculated on the main page. What the shit is that? Then apparently I've heard they call you to get you to sign up for their paid service which will let your profile show more good reviews. That, if true is straight up extortion.

Anyway, who are they to say that this bad review wasn't a fake? I mean she only had 2 reviews ever. Also who are they to say all those 1 review 5 star reviews aren't real? I know many businesses that support yelp by getting the window sticker and many people visit yelp maybe that one time to give a good review to that business. Just because they aren't yelp whores doesn't mean they are fakers or robots.

This yelp filter removes the aspect that people can see all of the reviews and make an intelligent choice. It was showing (and ranking on) 3 out of 18 reviews. That's not right, especially because people also look at how many ratings you've gotten. Only 3 people went here? jeez and 2 only of them like it? this place sucks. not TRUE! It falsely portrays businesses, and yea right, 16/18 are fake reviews? SURE!!!

I'm starting to hate yelp. Most of my reviews are negative btw.  Here's the best part, the stupid review filter sucks because my review of his business was totally fake. I did his website for him and set up his yelp page. But I have 70+ reviews, I guess that makes me trustworthy.