I’ve said all along that it was only a matter of time before
these unpaid content providers either stopped providing content or started
demanding payment for it. Not the commenters so much – leaving smart-ass
remarks or even outright trolling is still considered to be its own reward – and
not the people for whom posting their writing is the entire point of the
exercise, like the people writing fan fiction. But sooner or later the people
who go out of their way to review things, writing lengthy analyses or even
testing specific products or services for the express purpose of reviewing
them, are going to figure out that they are effectively providing the content
that would otherwise have to be done by employees for free. I learned this week
of a test case on this exact topic being brought against everyone’s favorite
review cite, Yelp...
This isn’t the first time that Yelp has come to the negative
attention of the reading public, of course; there have been repeated complaints
about the company extorting money from its customers in return for positive
reviews, and just recently three executives of the company have been accused of
$20 million in insider training by their own stockholders. As you can see in
the linked story from Courthouse News Service, however, Yelp is now being sued
by a group of former contributors who are claiming that since they do the exact
same work that Yelp’s paid personnel do, they should be entitled to the same
wages – retroactive to when they began posting reviews…
Now, I’m not going to pretend that I ever liked the Yelp
model, or the company itself; my opinion of them started to plummet when I
learned about the extortion cases and has been dropping every since. And I’m
not claiming to know anything about employment law (or any other kind, really),
so I can’t comment on whether the case has any merit or if the protesting
contributors are wasting their money and some attorney’s time. But one does
have to wonder if either the company or the reviewers who are suing them have
really considered all of the implications of this situation…
On the company side, it seems obvious that since they are
making all of their money by displaying content effectively given to them for
free, sooner or later someone was going to ask to be paid for doing all of the
work. It should also be obvious that Yelp can’t just ignore cases like this
one. Unlike a regular e-commerce site like Amazon, Yelp can’t support itself by
moving merchandise; their income is dependent on a steady supply of new reviews
to drive their products and services. Without that stream of information the
company has nothing to sell; thus, they can’t risk losing that entire
population of reviewers. But if they start paying the reviewers, then anyone
who goes onto their site and scribbles down a few notes can demand payment for
his or her work – and probably will – regardless of whether the company ever makes
a cent on those reviews.
As for the users, if they do start getting paid by Yelp,
they will completely lose their anonymity (the company has to have their
information in order to pay them – and that information can be subpoenaed), and
will thus be subject to legal action for any outright lies or even inaccuracies
in their reviews. There will probably be other complications involved, as well,
such as conflicts of interest, rules their primary employer might have about
working additional (paying) jobs, loss of disabled or protected status, or even
paying taxes on the income…
Personally, I think the lawsuit is a colossally bad idea for
all parties involved, and I don’t believe that Yelp is going to be able to get
this genie back in the bottle; even if this particular lawsuit is defeated I
think they can probably expect a number of others just like it. They’re going
to have to find some way to deal with the issue, before things get any further
out of hand…
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