I didn't say that Yelp didn't remove negative reviews; I said they don't do it in exchange for pay as implied, and comments from actual business owners on this thread, and my first-person experience interviewing almost a hundred businesses as part of an investigation for the local Chamber of Commerce confirm that.

I am a business owner and I’ve had reviews taken down solely because I was a paying Yelp customer. I’ve had other accounts that were non-paying that couldn’t get fraudulent reviews removed at all.

Yelp is a scam, but you pay the piper because their local SEO is too good.