This seems... like a bad idea. I don't really know how else to put it. Ratings are already such a subjective and sometimes reductive practice. I'm not sure what good would come of this? Apparently if you're given a bad review, it gets sent to you first and then you can contest it privately with the reviewer, but I don't see that as going well either.
@veronica this idea has been tried many times, and typically fails — for the reasons you've mentioned. There's just not enough incentives in the world to keep people on their best behavior, and when given the chance, without shared context, people will tear each other down. This is why reputation.com and more exists (I don't like reputation.com; only mentioning them because they illustrate my point about the secondary market that exists to "hide" negative information from Google and elsewhere).
I'd love to have @Kazanjy come and talk about his previous efforts to build Unvarnished and then Honestly.com.
I'm working right now with the funny people who put on Comedy Hack Day (http://comedyhackday.org), and every single time, they tell participants "Go wild, but do not build Yelp for People." Not even as a joke app, in a *comedy* hackathon. Apparently soooooo tempting.
There was an episode in season 10 of "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" that was literarily about an app like this. It ended up with Dennis loosing his mind because all his interactions with people, had to be even more fake, cause he didn't want bad reviews about him.
I'm sort of surprised at the across-the-board negative reaction to Peeple. I mean, I'm not into the idea personally, but worse ideas have launched before? What's the deal? Did Secret, Yik Yak, etc get a similarly strong reaction when they launched?
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This app deserves a downvote and dangerous in the hands of the Internet Trolls. There's more harm vs good here...
Our app had photo ratings and Apple made us remove them to keep it in the store. Nothing can promote negativity or bully type behavior. If they plan on having an iOS app it might be a challenge. Then again Lulu exists.
@dflanegan yeah, but Lulu finally allowed users to opt-in, I don't think you can opt-out of Peeple. And they're building for iOS now, with Android coming too.
This is the concept I often use to illustrate short-sighted thinking about the wisdom of crowds. This particular implementation seems to be a harassment magnet that unfairly burdens the targeted to address any problems. Throw in the inability to opt out and the ability to send unsolicited texts to targets, well, yikes.
Calling this a positivity app shows such short sightedness I'm speechless. Shut it down before it becomes overwhelmed with teenagers telling each other to kill themselves. Seriously. Shut it down.
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