thunder I agree. I think that letting businesses pay to only display good reviews to users is highly unethical and I don't think it's good business practice.
Personally, I know dozens of dozens of people in my life (part of which are immediate family members) who are scammed from hundreds to even thousands of dollars because scammers (of all different techniques, by the way - robocalls, crypto, pyramid/MLM) have a professional looking website and a Trustpilot page.
I do digital marketing and familiar with very many black hat techniques to circumvent any sort of parameters that help to protect people, especially consumer reviews. They have a very large impact on a brand and often help seal the deal on customer intent. Popular reviews platforms can be very easily manipulated. It doesn't matter if it's Yelp, Google My Business or Trustpilot - they can be manipulated.
