Peeple, The Notorious "Yelp For People" App Has Arrived

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Remember that Peeple app everyone was calling the "Yelp for people?" Well, it looks like it is finally out but it's not even close to what it started out as. What is the point of an app like this when every "recommendation" you write has to approved by the person you wrote it about and they can delete any comments written about themselves. :confused:


The app, which was created by two friends in Calgary, Canada, allows users to rate other users in three categories: personal, professional, and romantic. The idea is to provide "a reference check for the people around us," the creators say on their website. "The Peeple app allows you to better choose who you hire, do business with, date, become your neighbours, roommates, landlords/tenants, and watch, teach, and care for your children."
 
So they take the one feature that made it remotely interesting and make it entertaining...How would this thing be remotely useful for screening folks, as the developer asserts, if the individual being screened has ultimate veto on their ratings. Utterly baffling.
 
I look forward to watching everyone from privacy advocates to Anonymous doing all they can to ruin this horrid idea and make it completely non-viable.

The original idea was even worse, but there' more than enough "big data" intrusion on the daily lives of people today. It takes a toll on society when everything you do or say can be recorded in perpetuity, judged for all time by anyone and everyone. The original idea would have been even more monstrous and I am glad that those behind it allowed some controls - the ability to veto negative things etc.... but I do wonder if the service will be able to survive with that intact. We're a society obsessed with others' failures and transgressions, so I wonder if there will be enough pressure (ad money, capital etc) to get them to rescind the control people have over their profiles.

In an absolutely ideal implementation I could venture this could be semi-beneficial - where people essentially only had positive reviews, sort of like a place to provide easy references for those you know etc. However, even at that if it caught on "Why don't you have have enough Peeple reviews" could be used to discriminate against others the way "Why don't you have a Facebook/social-media account and/or more friends/followers? You must be hiding something, anti-social, or a pariah" is today in some circumstances. Regardless, I don't think we need yet another service adding to the "you're always being watched and judged, analyzed, sold, rated, all on a permanent record that can be accessed by just about anyone, forever" culture.
 
Last edited:
For the shit talker in your family - Peeple.

Isn't this like LinkedIn, but more personal? I don't see it being very good, especially with the user having to approve and can deny shit.
 
Let the egomaniacs cultivate their Peeple profile, then later on change the ToS to make them pay to remove negative content. "Nice profile there. Shame if something were to... happen to it."
 
So basically it's yet another way for people to hate people online?

I was worried about the lack of diversity in the talking-shit-about-people market.
 
LightningCrash said:
Let the egomaniacs cultivate their Peeple profile, then later on change the ToS to make them pay to remove negative content. "Nice profile there. Shame if something were to... happen to it."
Click to expand...

This right here, it'll be Yelp all over again.
 
It's for the best.

They came out with an idea, that had horrific slanderous consequences, and a potential for real privacy violation.

Once it was revealed to the media, the backlash began, and then the lawyers got involved, and this is what remains of the original idea.

While I agree that this kills it and makes it useless, I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing.
 
I think it's a good idea, it really just saves you time going through facebook and other things to figure out the "quality" of a person...
 
Youn said:
I think it's a good idea, it really just saves you time going through facebook and other things to figure out the "quality" of a person...
Click to expand...

The person can remove negatives and approve the reviews. If it's all good, they are either a good person or they didn't allow the negatives. Real honest people would leave the negatives.

Plus, my online attitude is a lot worse than in real life. I'm much nicer in real life and not an a-hole. A smart ass, sure. But, I'm not a dick.
 
Yea, it all comes to implementation. I'd be cool IMO if it showed how many reviews were removed to get an idea how picky or concerned a person is about how they appear to the world. Ur_Mom might have 0 (zero) reviews or users blocked, and that'd make him/her cool in my book. Seeing 1000s might be cause for concern :p

Of course, anyone can create a forum thread with a poll about a particular person, and that person would have no control over that. Freedom of speech and all... So if there is a place like this where they do have some control, that's OK too.
 
Youn said:
Yea, it all comes to implementation. I'd be cool IMO if it showed how many reviews were removed to get an idea how picky or concerned a person is about how they appear to the world. Ur_Mom might have 0 (zero) reviews or users blocked, and that'd make him/her cool in my book. Seeing 1000s might be cause for concern :p

Of course, anyone can create a forum thread with a poll about a particular person, and that person would have no control over that. Freedom of speech and all... So if there is a place like this where they do have some control, that's OK too.
Click to expand...

Plus, I'm sure I've pissed off a few people over the years. Sometimes, you have a bad day or two people just don't click.

I see this being real hit or miss. I wouldn't put much faith in it, personally. Some people would. I'm more of a "I'll judge for myself" kind of guy, and I know a lot of people that have done some real shitty things in their past. They are still very good people, and I'd stand behind them any time. So, while they may get some shitty reviews, they are truly some good people.
 
Xaeos said:
I look forward to watching everyone from privacy advocates to Anonymous doing all they can to ruin this horrid idea and make it completely non-viable.

The original idea was even worse, but there' more than enough "big data" intrusion on the daily lives of people today. It takes a toll on society when everything you do or say can be recorded in perpetuity, judged for all time by anyone and everyone. The original idea would have been even more monstrous and I am glad that those behind it allowed some controls - the ability to veto negative things etc.... but I do wonder if the service will be able to survive with that intact. We're a society obsessed with others' failures and transgressions, so I wonder if there will be enough pressure (ad money, capital etc) to get them to rescind the control people have over their profiles.

In an absolutely ideal implementation I could venture this could be semi-beneficial - where people essentially only had positive reviews, sort of like a place to provide easy references for those you know etc. However, even at that if it caught on "Why don't you have have enough Peeple reviews" could be used to discriminate against others the way "Why don't you have a Facebook/social-media account and/or more friends/followers? You must be hiding something, anti-social, or a pariah" is today in some circumstances. Regardless, I don't think we need yet another service adding to the "you're always being watched and judged, analyzed, sold, rated, all on a permanent record that can be accessed by just about anyone, forever" culture.
Click to expand...


There is a fascinating book called : Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. It was published in 2011 and discusses a lot of the long term ramifications of the "immortality" of our actions in the digital age. Your "permanent record" is no longer a toothless threat.
 
fadedlogic said:
There is a fascinating book called : Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. It was published in 2011 and discusses a lot of the long term ramifications of the "immortality" of our actions in the digital age. Your "permanent record" is no longer a toothless threat.
Click to expand...

I put little faith into people's online personas vs. their real life ones. There are some real bad asses on the internet that live perfectly normal lives and wouldn't hurt a fly. You can be anyone online, and some people go for it. It may not reflect their real life, though. So, take it with a grain of salt when judging people. Of course, a lot of people do judge them by what they say online....
 
Thanks, Fadedlogic - I'll look into it. Not sure if I've read that one or not.


Ur_Mom said:
I put little faith into people's online personas vs. their real life ones. There are some real bad asses on the internet that live perfectly normal lives and wouldn't hurt a fly. You can be anyone online, and some people go for it. It may not reflect their real life, though. So, take it with a grain of salt when judging people. Of course, a lot of people do judge them by what they say online....
Click to expand...


That's just it though - more than ever, people are conflating their online and offline personas, mostly voluntarily! This is mind-boggling to me, but I think this is to some degree age-related. I'm going to make a hypothesis that we at the [H] have an audience that skews older than most tech sites - after all, [H]ardOCP is independent (ie not owned by gawker, slamming clickbait headlines around etc) and one of the longest running enthusiast hardware sites on the net, predating web-2.0 and the social media explosion. Many who are 40+, 30s, or perhaps to some degree 20s - remember a time when anonymity was an important part of the Internet experience, for better or worse. Yeah, you'd have Internet tough guys and trolls, but you could sign up to discuss sensitive subjects on different sites with a ton of different screen names if you wished, requiring only an email address at most! Today, largely because of Facebook and others who venture to monetize "big data",. this isn't the case. The data-mining cage has slowly closed around people, making it seem normal to share everything you do, linked to your real world presence with only the faintest of obfuscation if that!

The very same generation (younger 20s and below) that has grown up never knowing different than the US perpetual "War on Terror" , doesn't remember an Internet where personal privacy, openness of technology/platform, and freedom to speech were primary allures! That is what is so worrisome, they lack the basis of comparison and thus have been told by corporate vested interests that it is totally normal to share as much of your personal, meatspace identity online as possible. I don't think this is going to get any better (and in fact, will likely get worse) unless we as a society enact stringent reforms that enshrine personal privacy as a right
 
fadedlogic said:
So they take the one feature that made it remotely interesting and make it entertaining...How would this thing be remotely useful for screening folks, as the developer asserts, if the individual being screened has ultimate veto on their ratings. Utterly baffling.
Click to expand...

The only way I see it being useful as a screening tool is to post a record of how many comments someone got relative to the number publicly displayed. It's a completely factual stat without a lot of concrete info attached so probably very, very defendable against libel or slander attacks. However someone with a nasty ratio is either rally hated, or under an attack of some sort, and you can mitigate the latter by rate limiting submissions.

It's still a stupid concept unless you believe you will be helping humanity by telling disliked people they are disliked.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top