I admit it. I was under a rock. I hadn’t heard about Peeple until I watched John Oliver’s hysterical send up of it on Last Week Tonight. Touted as Yelp for people, the application would have allowed you to create a profile for someone you wanted to rate (without their consent) and then rate them using 1 to 5 stars along with comments. If you posted something negative, the subject had 48 hours to talk you out of posting it. If negotiations didn’t work, the posting went up and you could engage in rebuttal on the site. And all of those comments would stay up forever because you couldn’t delete your account.
What could possibly go wrong in this scenario?
The Washington Post saw the possibilities for abuse and slammed the site as it was coming out in its beta launch to a limited number of opted-in users. Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough pitched Peeple as a ‘positivity app’ designed to ‘lift up people’. To be fair, they also limited profanity, sexism and discussion of private health conditions. But the fundamental premise, that others have the right to rate you on a public platform without your permission and that you are reduced to a star rating was what the Post found most disturbing.
Dispatches From The Front 