I regularly frequent fantastic small businesses there there are a handful of 1 star reviews from angry internet people. Pre-Covid, my favorite local banh mi place had a 1 star review that described the woman who ran the place as angry and hard to understand (because, I can only assume, her english was heavily accented). But in reality she was the nicest old lady and was so happy when I came back after a few months because our office moved. And I've been to 4.9 star places that could only generously be described as mid. Obviously this is all anecdotal, but it also seems to be a nearly universal experience among my peers. Rage baiting, Yelp's blatant extortion of establishments to get rid of bad reviews, and all the other little tricks described in the article are purely due to these awful companies optimizing their perverse KPIs, like a leech whose only KPI is quantity of blood sucked.

I was a true believer in a lot of this stuff 15 years ago, but from where I sit now I really agree with OP.