
Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’ - OopsCriticality
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/30/everyone-you-know-will-be-able-to-rate-you-on-the-terrifying-yelp-for-people-whether-you-want-them-to-or-not/?tid=sm_fb
======
dragonwriter
> If you haven’t registered for the site, and thus can’t contest those
> negative ratings, your profile only shows positive reviews.

So, that's a pretty good incentive not to register.

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nchammas
For some reason this reminds me of the debacle [0][1] where some site was
accepting "tips" from users who wanted to support any GitHub project of their
choosing. They did it without explicit opt-in of the project owners (Armin
Ronacher in this case).

Quote [2]:

> But nevertheless i think tip4commit should be opt-in instead,

> because i consider the current tactic to be a very intrusive form of growth-
> hacking.

[0]
[https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969)

[2]
[https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127#issuecom...](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127#issuecomment-60149031)

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Zhenya
First post from me: rate Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray 1 star.

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hapless
So instead of signing up for every imaginable libel suit by posting
uncontested "negative" reviews, they're going to hold back a little, and just
monetize my name and likeness without my permission.

They clearly have a crack legal team.

~~~
amelius
If the company/server is located in a place outside your preferred
jurisdiction, then they can do anything they want, I guess :/

On the bright side: you can still post reviews about yourself. Or create
hundreds of identities for yourself, and rate them so differently that nobody
could ever tell which one is the real you.

------
paulpauper
this is fine if you have f-u money, but for everyone else it sucks

Your online presence is becoming your new, indelible permanent record.
Anything incriminating, so long as it’s archived on a major search engine or
social network, can and will come back to hurt you. The rich, such as Rap
Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam who was fired from the annotation service
after posting comments about Elliot Rogers, don’t have to worry so much about
the consequences of reckless online behavior because they at least retain
their equity in the said company, so being fired is just like a permanent
vacation. Now the 9-5er who gets fired only has unemployment to fall back on.
Much worse. But those online comments will also hurt your future job
prospects, leaving you with no recourse but to request they be removed (fat
chance) or pay inordinate amounts of money to a reputation firm to bury the
results. If you’re really smart and talented your skills may be so valuable
and rare that employers may overlook your past transgressions. So we see with
the abnegation of privacy and anonymity, like most changes of the post-2008
economy, primarily impact those who are the most vulnerable, and there’s
nothing anyone can or will do about it. The only solution is be careful what
you post on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere, and if someone slanders you, there
isn’t much you can do that won’t cost a lot of money and time.

------
MichaelAza
This is a horrible, horrible idea. I mean, people are already using platforms
like Facebook to bully people, not caring it's done in public and under their
real name. Now there's a platform optimised ror that mode of interaction. I
hope the founders are simply cynically using the shock value to make a quick
buck and don't actually think it's a good idea.

------
jeffmould
Apparently Peeple founders are not fond of being reviewed themselves:

[https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/649575258123579392](https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/649575258123579392)

Edited to fix typo

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AnimalMuppet
From the article:

"To add someone to the database who has not been reviewed before, you must
have that person’s cell phone number."

I don't actually own a cell phone, for personal reasons. But that's looking
like an even better choice...

~~~
Falcon9
"Positive ratings post immediately; negative ratings are queued in a private
inbox for 48 hours in case of disputes. If you haven’t registered for the
site, and thus can’t contest those negative ratings, your profile only shows
positive reviews."

So you can opt out by not having a cell phone number, the rest of us can opt
out only of having "negative ratings" posted. For better or worse, aren't they
disincentivizing their potential users from registering accounts with this
policy? (I suppose they know their potential users better than I would.)

------
ddw
I remember in elementary school the popular kids passed around a survey in
which they ranked every student in our grade based on some nebulous
combination of attractiveness, coolness, etc.

This will probably not be that much different.

------
I-M-S
this kind of apps resurfaces every few years... first one that springs to mind
is Honestly (formerly known as Unvarnished). it also sparked a huge public
backlash when it appeared in 2010, but went nowhere. where these kind of
services fall apart is basically numbers: how many people do you know well
enough (and care for/hate enough) to write a review for? 5? 6? And how many
people would care in what you wrote? 10? 15? Unlike a restaurant, which is
frequented by thousands of customers each of which is a possible reviewer,
people don't generate enough "traffic" for the system to work (not to mention
the overall negative social sentiment, as evident from the backlash - the
public reacted just the same 5 years ago).

pity really, as I think some kind of a "reputation" system would really
benefit people in general, both for professional and personal reasons. If
quantified it might even replace money in the future
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie)).
I am certain that one day the whole concept of a "stranger" will be obsolete -
we shall know everything we need to know about somebody upon meeting them
(which is probably going to be the reason we are meeting them in the first
place). Of course there will still be jerks but they'll just no longer be able
to hide it from unsuspecting others.

------
neumino
For the same reason as why you shouldn't have a service that locates where sex
offenders/ex inmates, this service shouldn't exist. So many things can go
wrong with something like this...

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I was raising four daughters in a nice suburban neighborhood. They were
starting to ride bicycles up and down the street. Knowing which house the sex
offender lived in (only 3 houses away) let us steer which areas they could
ride in (didn't tell them why), and led us to say that they couldn't go out
riding alone. I thought that was definitely important information.

Yeah, you can be worried about the consequences to the sex offender. There's a
valid argument there. But I'm worried about the potential consequences to my
daughters.

And the situations aren't comparable at all. I get to be a sex offender by
_doing_ something. I get on the wrong side of this new site by annoying just
one person.

~~~
dTal
You can get to be a "sex offender" by annoying just one person, too.

------
kazinator
This is one of the gags in the movie _Amazon Women on the Moon_. [1987!]

Guy (played by Steve Guttenberg) goes on a blind date, and the woman (played
by Rosanna Arquette) asks him for ID and then performs some sort of database
search which reveals his dating history in detail (such as that he had sex
with some woman and never called her after that). She refuses to continue with
the date, and the skit finishes with him calling some woman that he had dated
before. First thing _that_ woman does now is ask him for ID ...

Not so funny any more, I suppose!

------
imgabe
> “People do so much research when they buy a car or make those kinds of
> decisions,” said Julia Cordray, one of the app’s founders. “Why not do the
> same kind of research on other aspects of your life?”

So, what kind of decisions is this supposed to help me make? Whether to be
friends with someone? Isn't getting to know them "doing the research" for
that?

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gaspar
Apparently the tech bubble is going to burst very soon. What a ridiculous and
horrible idea.

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new_hackers
It's interesting this was built by women, since they will obviously be the
biggest victims here. I wonder how many reviews will be "nice tits", "great
ass", "gives good head", etc

~~~
new_hackers
They should of just called it Yelp for hot chicks

------
WalterSear
"Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...

The dead rising from the grave!

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

------
politician
So they can detect sarcastic positive reviews?

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Havoc
>[your name] it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service.

Well thats a new take on T&C.

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Animats
What, no face recognition? Well, they have to launch with a MVP.

------
VLM
This will be handy for raids

