21–30 of 32 posts
The PR effort behind this app is amazing. I feel equally intimidated and flummoxed when I try to imagine how they achieved such marketing success. Why did anyone care about this particular app before it started the frenzy, and why does(did?) it continue to grow so much?
From the Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09... > Positive ratings post immediately; negative ratings are queued in a private inbox for 48 hours in case of disputes. If you haven’t registered for the site, and thus can’t contest those negative ratings, your profile only shows positive reviews. This seems like this would strongly disincentive anyone from registering fo…
With anonymous unsubstantiated claims, would such a service not disintegrate in a big class action ball of libel?
I would make sense to me if the conversation was around "Why build an app specifically to encourage the behaviour we already mostly wish didn't exist on the internet". The fact that people act this way, even with their real names attached on Facebook, makes a story. That someone is trying to focus that aspect of human behaviour and encourage it with an app makes a story. That it's a widely held opinion that this app would immediately become a toxic hellhole of garbage content and trolling makes a story.
Instead, people are pretending that this app adds something new. Twitter is already used, very frequently, to name and shame people or to rate them negatively in some way. And they don't get to "opt out" either. I can't opt out of some blog or Facebook post or mass email saying nasty things about me. There is literally nowhere on earth were this is the case. The concept of being able to opt out of anyone being allowed to mention you in a medium seems to have been invented for this story.
The same goes for the "how can we be sure a rating is justified or the rater even knows the ratee?" or any of the other concerns. They all boil down to "anything that lets you publish speech online allows you to libel/slander someone online". Everything I read about this insults my intelligence in a fairly novel way.
This idea already existed. http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Gossipreport.com
The date is wrong, though. It was more like 2007/08. They had strong PR going, from sheer outrage alone. There was a segment on Dr. Phil, where he proceeded (to his credit) to tear them a new one.
They were aiming to become the TMZ, for regular people. The site was real, it existed. I never found anyone I knew on there, but apparently they had real people (in addition to the number of obviously fake profiles to get people to stay and join). Not sure why it was shut down. They were running with a skeleton crew, so I doubt it was lack of funding. Most likely it was the backlash and the realization that it would cost a fortune in legal fees (defamation of character, anyone?)
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319096
Snopes page: http://m.snopes.com/2015/10/01/peeple/
And of course, there's the problem of "Peeple the thing" versus "Peeple the app"
Submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10318966 (no comments)
Article: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/peeple-the-thing-versus-peeple-...
IANAL, but curious - would this actually be legal? With anonymous unsubstantiated claims, would such a service not disintegrate in a big class action ball of libel?
Snopes suggests it's vaporware: Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10319096 Snopes page: http://m.snopes.com/2015/10/01/peeple/ And of course, there's the problem of "Peeple the thing" versus "Peeple the app" Submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10318966 (no comments) Article: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/peeple-the-thing-versus-peeple-...
Domain Name: forthepeeple.com
Updated Date: 2015-10-02T15:06:29Z
Creation Date: 2014-10-30T23:09:22Z
Archive suggests there was something parked there in December 2014
https://web.archive.org/web/20141217043318/http://forthepeep...