This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a similar story from a small business owner and I stopped using Yelp for the most part. I overheard a conversation that Yelp was really pushing the owner to subscribe for the same reasons. They got pretty aggressive about it. The owner said no and Yelp started boosting negative reviews to coerce the owner into subscribing. I checked Yelp vs Google reviews and there was a stark difference. Yelp was primarily negative reviews and Google was primarily positive reviews.

If they can hide negative reviews, they can also hide positive reviews.