Yelp Not Liable For Rearranging Reviews
Yelp appears to be immune from liability even if it acts in bad faith and manipulates its reviews of businesses to force them to advertise with the online review site.
A federal district court judge threw out a class action case by several businesses against Yelp!, Inc., which alleged the site unlawfully manipulated the content of its business review pages in order to induce businesses to pay for advertising. The court found the reviews were “third-party” generated content and that under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) Yelp was immune from any civil liability as an “interactive computer service.”
The court wrote that “the CDA immunizes providers of an ‘interactive computer service’—such as Yelp—‘where liability hinges on content independently created or developed by third-party users,’ unless the service provider (such as Yelp) created or developed part of that content. . . . Plaintiffs’ allegations of extortion based on Yelp’s alleged manipulation of their review pages—by removing certain reviews and publishing others or changing their order of appearance—falls within the conduct immunized by § 230(c)(1).”
The court said that the plaintiffs’ removal of certain reviews, publishing of other reviews and changing their order fell under the traditional editorial function of a publisher. The plaintiffs argued that the actions manipulated the rating of businesses on the site and that Yelp sales representatives used the reviews to induce businesses to advertise. The court noted that the plaintiffs “seek to import an intent-based exception into Section 230, whereby the same conduct that would otherwise be immune under the statute (editorial decisions such as whether to publish or de-publish a particular review) would no longer be immune when motivated by an improper reason, such as to pressure businesses to advertise.”
The court wrote that it would be inappropriate to scrutinize the purpose behind Yelp’s decision to include or to determine the order of the reviews. “[F]inding a bad faith exception to immunity under § 230(c)(1)could force Yelp to defend its editorial decisions in the future on a case by case basis and reveal how it decides what to publish and what not to publish. Such exposure could lead Yelp to resist filtering out false/unreliable reviews (as someone could claim an improper motive for its decision), or to immediately remove all negative reviews about which businesses complained (as failure to do so could expose Yelp to a business’s claim that Yelp was strong-arming the business for advertising money.)”
Levitt v. Yelp!, Inc., N.D. Calif. No. C-10-1321, Consol. with C 10-2351, issued Oct. 26, 2011.