Does Yelp lie?  Are the reviews you read on Yelp legit, or did some sleazy sales guy write a bunch of them to squeeze a dirty dollar out of some innocent business owner?

We don't know.

Does Yelp lie?  Are you about to send your expensive dress to a bad dry cleaner with good (but fake) reviews?

We don't know.

We do know that over and over again, advertisers tell us they are offered mafia-like 'help' with a bad review...for a price. Even if it's just implied, people are calling that extortion.

We also know that Yelp pays reviewers, but good luck finding out who's on the payroll...or who wrote that bad (or good) review. Who are the secret shills? And is Yelp deleting reviews without telling the reviewer? That'd be cowardly censorship.

Has Yelp twisted a community built on user contributed content into a sleazy tool to extort companies into ad contracts they 'can't refuse'? Read on...