“Imagine you’re about to go on a first date. You Yelp the restaurant, naturally, to make sure that it has something edible on the menu; then you Google the person, naturally, to make sure that they’re not obnoxious on social media,” Mary Sollosi reports for EW. “Simple enough!”
“In a (perhaps inevitable) new development, these two perfectly innocuous Internet searches are coming together in Peeple, an app that will allow users to rate and search other human beings,” Sollosi reports. “It’s Yelp for people, and it’s coming in November.”
“Users will be able to review their friends, coworkers, and romantic partners — who may or may not have ever signed on to the app themselves — using a one- to five-star rating scale,” Sollosi reports. “In order to rate somebody, you need to join the app through Facebook using your real name, and you must be at least 21 years old. To review somebody else who is not on the app, you can create a profile for them with their cell phone number; they will be notified via text that they have been added to Peeple, but they won’t have an option to remove their profile from the app.”
“If you are not on Peeple yourself but others are rating you, then only positive reviews will be posted,” Sollosi reports. “If you have, in fact, registered, then negative reviews will be published, but only after 48 hours of being written so that you will have a chance to dispute them.”
Read more in the full article here.
“The most surprising thing about Peeple — basically Yelp, but for humans — may be the fact that no one has yet had the gall to launch something like it,” Caitlin Dewey reports for The Washington Post. “You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose. ‘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?'”
“A bubbly, no-holds-barred ‘trendy lady’ with a marketing degree and two recruiting companies, Cordray sees no reason you wouldn’t want to ‘showcase your character’ online,” Dewey reports. “Co-founder Nicole McCullough comes at the app from a different angle: As a mother of two in an era when people don’t always know their neighbors, she wanted something to help her decide whom to trust with her kids. ‘As two empathetic, female entrepreneurs in the tech space, we want to spread love and positivity,’ Cordray stressed. ‘We want to operate with thoughtfulness.’ Unfortunately for the millions of people who could soon find themselves the unwilling subjects — make that objects — of Cordray’s app, her thoughts do not appear to have shed light on certain very critical issues, such as consent and bias and accuracy and the fundamental wrongness of assigning a number value to a person.”
“It’s inherently invasive, even when complimentary. And it’s objectifying and reductive in the manner of all online reviews. One does not have to stretch far to imagine the distress and anxiety that such a system would cause even a slightly self-conscious person; it’s not merely the anxiety of being harassed or maligned on the platform — but of being watched and judged, at all times, by an objectifying gaze to which you did not consent,” Dewey reports. “Where once you may have viewed a date or a teacher conference as a private encounter, Peeple transforms it into a radically public performance: Everything you do can be judged, publicized, recorded. ‘That’s feedback for you!’ Cordray enthuses. ‘You can really use it to your advantage.'”
Much more in the full article here.
“The CEO of the new app called Peeple, a ‘Yelp for humans,’ is defending her new product after critics called it ‘irresponsible’ and ‘the third circle of hell,'” Andrew Ramos reports for WPIX. “According to the app’s founders Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, the app was created to ‘find the good’ in people and not as a cyber bullying tool.”
“Reviews are based on a 5-star rating. Negative reviews, a rating of two stars or less, are not immediately published,” Ramos reports. “The reviewer and reviewee get 48 hours to hash it out. If they can’t come to an understanding, the negative review gets published. The reviewee then gets the opportunity to defend themselves on the app.”
Critics slammed Peeple,” Ramos reports. “The response was so aggressive, the company’s CEO attempted to shut off the comments section of their Facebook page — an attempt that was met with irony. One critic tweeted, ‘founder of #peeple, an app designed to collect unsolicited feedback doesn’t appear to like unsolicited feedback.'”
With any new concept there is naturally fear. When the people found out that the earth was round instead of flat and that we revolved around the sun instead of the sun revolving around us naturally people were upset and confused and they pushed back with all that they had. Bringing a new idea to market when people don’t believe that the world is genuinely a good place filled with amazing people there will be push back and fear. We look forward to proving that the people in this world are genuinely good and positive and they will uplift you on our app with over 80 percent positivity. — Peeple CEO Julia Cordray
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: These two ditzes are about to get much-needed wakeup calls. As if Facebook isn’t bad enough!
Imagine being forced to “hash it out” over 48 hours with some asshole you were unfortunate enough to cross paths with in the distant past – unbidden! Let the lawsuits over lost time, invasion of privacy, etc., etc., etc. fly until the whole thing implodes.
Apple should not approve this app for App Store inclusion.