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Controversial people-rating app Peeple goes live, has a plan to

prot from users negative reviews
Posted Mar 8, 2016 by Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa)

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Peeple, the controversialpeople-rating application that lets its usersrate and review
anyone, is not a hoaxor vaporware, as many suspected following the media backlash
surrounding the unveiling of the companys intentions last fall. The Washington Post even
called the app terrifying, given that the app didnt plan to allow users to opt out of being
reviewed a featurethat remains in the version that launched this week.
With the apps debut, the company is trying to present itself as having a more positive aim
and image, with gestures toward anti-bullying and settings for hiding
unwantedrecommendations. However, there are still valid concerns that the company is
planning toprotbyselling access to the hiddennegative reviews left on its platform.
In case you missed it the rst time around, theCalgary-based startup comesfrom Julia
Cordray and Nicole McCullough both non-technical founders who outsourced the apps
development to Y Media Labs. The appwas described as a Yelp for humans. That is, you
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cansign up toleave reviews of anyone you know from co-workers and bosses to exes
and friends or even local service pros.
McCulloughs LinkedIn prole said she was inspired to create Peeple as a means of vetting
people, like contractors, babysitters or neighbors. Of course, services for rating
professionals and businesses, including Googles business reviews, Yelp, ZocDoc, Angies
List and others have existed for some time. Peeples differentiator was that it wanted to
venture into the personal space, as well.
It was unclear at the time if the founders were genuinely naive of the problems such an
app could incite, or if they were smartly playing up the all press is good press angle to
encourage viral buzz about the service.
But when the app didnt launch as expected in late 2015,it was written off as vapor
andsimply forgotten.
Now Peeple has actually gone live.

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In a press release, the founders wrote of how much they were harassed following the bad
press the app received, which they said was ironic as the complaints involved concerns
about the potential for cruel bullying, threats and abuse that could take place on its
platform.
The company also said it made several changes in light of those concerns, including giving
users full control over what goes on their prole, offering the ability to deactivate their
prole and more. The company noted, too,that no one can add you to the app making
it sound as if being reviewed on Peeple is an opt-in experience.
Thats not entirely true, however.
Peeples own website saysyou can still write recommendations (i.e. reviews, but not
necessarily positive ones) for anyone whos not on the app, then choose to invite that
person to join Peeple.
In other words, even if youre not participating, someone could write your review. Sure,
that review might not be public, but it exists in a digital format on the companys servers.
If you choose to join Peeple, you can decidewhich reviews appear on your prole.

The Truth License a way to buy access to negative reviews

The concerning aspect to Peeple is that its considering offering access to these hidden and
negative reviews as a paid subscription.

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Called the Truth License, Peeple says that paying users would be able to readanything
that has been written about a person, whether or not the person published the reviews on
their prole.
Or, to sum up: Peeples plan is to prot by selling access to everyones negative reviews.
Co-founder Cordray claried to TechCrunch that the Truth License is not actually live, but is
something the company is considering as a future feature alongside other in-app
purchases like in-app search credits, gifts and personality testing.
That being said, the fact that its on the table at all and promoted in the companys press
release should give users pause for concern.

Weak anti-bullying measures, too

Not only that, but the company doesnt seem to have a solid plan to proactively prevent
cyber bullying through the service. Its terms apparently prohibit things like profanity,
bullying, health references, disability references, condential information, mentioning
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other people in a recommendation that you are not currently writing a recommendation
for, name calling, degrading comments, abuse, derogatory comments, sexual references,
racism, legal references, hateful content, sexism and more.
But Peeples Terms are hard to read, as theyre only linked to in the app itself, and are
several pages long. But this snippet should give you an idea of what Peeple is really up to,
noting that:
Once Content is published it may not be able to be removed, and that by joining, you hereby
irrevocably grant to Peeple the continuous, non-exclusive, royalty-free right to use your Content
for any purpose whatsoever and in any format. These rights shall be assignable, transferable,
and licensable by Peeple.
Um, no?

In practice, it doesnt seemthat Peepleplans to actively police users on the service, either.
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Asked what Peeple would do if someone violated the terms by creating a fake Facebook
account (that is, for the sake of publishing negative reviews without being associated with
them directly), Cordray responded that the fake accounts would be removed.
But, she added, keep in mind we ask for your help in combating this by reporting and
blocking users.
And lets remember that to block and report users, you have to be a user which mean
youve agreed to Peeples terms.
In short, it appears theplan is to reactively handle abuse claims, much like larger social
services like Twitter do (and struggle with) today. But for a service that involves providing a
blank slate forthe sole purpose of lettingusers write people recommendations, not having
some basic, automated moderation system in place to at least block profanity andother
keywords is either a glaring oversight or an intentional (and callous) decision.
If the latter, its likely one thats designed to beef up the companys private database of bad
reviews marked for sale.
I mean, this whole thing is in such bad taste that even though the app is live, its hard to
believe that were still not being trolled here somehow.
(Unfortunately, its impossible to test the app without agreeing to Peeples onerousTerms,
so we chose to opt out. Though a fake Facebook account would allow for testing this app
safely, creating that account would violate Facebooks terms, which we are declining to do.)
One possible spot of hope is thatApple has a policy against apps that promote
harassment(i.e. Section 14.1 of its Review Guidelines), so its possible that the
companywill actually step in at some point to ban Peeple from its App Store.
Peeple is liveon the iOS App Store for the time being. (TechCrunch is choosing to
notprovide a direct link.)
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