So what is Peeple?
It is a “Yelp for people” app that allows you to rate people in the same manner as you would a spa, a restaurant or a movie in hope to affect some sort of change in a way that is possible when criticizing or praising customer service. However, it has unanimously enraged the world through the Internet, with virtually everyone arguing that such an app and its methods should not be used.
Peeple has yet to be launched; it will be launched in November. Its purpose was to give users a platform for which to assign reviews and ratings of one to five stars to anyone and everyone they know – this includes their former bosses, exes, co-workers, neighbors and so on, so forth. One of the so-called negative parts about Peeple is that you cannot opt out of it; once someone puts your name in the
Peeple system, it is in there for good and you cannot delete bad
reviews. That apparently defeats the whole purpose of the app. But it was this part that upset the most people.
The founders of the app, Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, argued that because people do so much research into buying cars or houses, why not do such research on other aspects of your life? Ms. Cordray was quoted by the Independent as saying that she wants to use Peeple to “spread the love and positivity” and “that’s feedback for you. You can really use it to your advantage.
Despite the founders’ intentions, the app has spawned intense outrage on social media. Thousands of tweets were posted blasting the Peeple app, or the founders of the app themselves. One Twitter user who analyzed the bulk of the tweets, Jessica Thomas, said that “the app would have a 2 star rating if Twitter voted. (77% negative sentiment).” Another user, Danielle Sandler, tweeted, “#peeple sounds like an app that wants to increase the suicide rate.” Yet another, Fern Hill, tweeted, “Let’s rate the people behind #Peeple. My score: Awful, Greedy, Hate-Enabling, Should-Be Shunned and Shamed. #RatePeople.”
The backlash against Peeple influenced development of other similar apps away from the direction Peeple was heading toward. Algorithmic swipe-style dating app, The Grade, added a feature that allowed users’ matches and people they know in real life leave reviews on their dating profiles. The app developers added this feature after taking feedback from app users. According to The Grade’s CEO Cliff Lerner, users felt that the app could be more transparent and could curb bad behavior even more effectively by incorporating direct user feedback into the algorithm. He said, “The most requested feature by women was a way to influence a male match’s grade based on interactions outside the app, such as a date, email or text interaction.”
The Grade uses a “A+” through “F” grading scale based on profile quality, responsiveness, and now peer-reviews. But the app avoids the inevitable negative reaction that Peeple got by eliminating the blank spaces where you could write whatever you feel like about the person and instead offer yes/no review questions like “Is X a quality person?”. Should users answer “no,” a drop-down menu with a series of reasons to explain why you said no appears. These reasons include inappropriate content, lies about age, etc. Also, the app allows users to pick from a series of hashtags from a preset list to describe a person. Users who leave reviews also can specify how they know the person, such as “co-workers” or “friends.”
Some see a problem with this aspect right there. The question is why go on a dating app to review a friend or co-worker? The only reasons specified were that such act only served to boost the ratings of friends and co-workers to help people meet someone on The Grade. The app does cross-check with Facebook to actually confirm this, but it is unsure if the app does not allow any reviews to show up that come from people they know or not.
So the question begs: are the Peeple haters right? Who knows….
Christopher Witt
Reporter