Yelp shuts down teachers’ account sharing student reviews

BOSTON – Yelp is shutting down accounts used by a Boston teacher to post rave restaurant reviews written by her third-grade students.

The reviews were part of an assignment designed to teach students at the Boston Teachers Union School about opinion writing. They described some restaurants glowingly with praise such as, “Prepare for your taste buds to explode!”

Teacher Taryn Snyder tells the Boston Globe that the students loved publishing their work and have grown as writers from the experience.

But Yelp says the law does not allow it to publish reviews written by people under age 13 without parental consent. A spokesperson also says that the website requires reviews to be the “firsthand experience” of the account holder.

Snyder says she plans to move the reviews to a different website.

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Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com