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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

> Even if used properly by 100% of people 100% of the time it would still be a bad idea and fundamentally could never have worked.

Then how do you explain the success of Yelp, which is basically the same thing but for businesses? Or the school system, which is already designed around rating people? Or safeorscam, which was the same thing but for drug dealers? Or LinkedIn testimonials?

Certainly there are a ton of challenges to coming up with a good implementation — business, social, epistemelogical, etc. But I think the possibility space is too large to rule out the possibility of a feasible implementation.

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> Then how do you explain the success of Yelp, which is basically the same thing but for businesses?

Businesses aren't people. You can't bully a business into suicide, for example.

> Or the school system, which is already designed around rating people?

On academic merits. And sure, there's social rating, but it's not a public Internet page saying "untrustworthy liar" that anyone can find.

> Or safeorscam, which was the same thing but for drug dealers?

See businesses.

> Or LinkedIn testimonials?

Perhaps a fair comparison, but that's not evaluating objective worth or something, it's evaluating employability and is as cordial as business tends to be.

Also LinkedIn Testimonials are approved by the person being reviewed.

There is a significant difference between rating someone in a market context and rating someone in a social context. People hold different norms between the two, and what Peeple failed to realize is the reaction people have when those norms cross over and are violated.

Imagine rating your friend's dinner party the same way you'd rate a restaurant on Yelp, and you can get a sense of the difference.

> There is a significant difference between rating someone in a market context and rating someone in a social context.

And that's why I said that coming up with an implementation that accounts for these sorts of issues would obviously be challenging. These specific founders may or may not be smart enough to do it, but that doesn't say anything about the inherent possibility of doing so.

I'm not saying I have a good solution, because I don't, but I'm also not willing to bet that there is no solution out of hand. And while I fully expect that this startup won't be successful, if only because of the difficulty of the problem, I also don't think it's fair to trash talk the founders without at least taking a look at the actual mechanics of their system.

> Then how do you explain the success of Yelp, which is basically the same thing but for businesses?

Yelp is successful as a business, but I consider its impact on businesses to be negative, because Yelp has a perverse incentive to let businesses influence Yelp reviews. Naturally, businesses complain about Yelp, even though consumers like it. For the same reason, people would complain about a rating system for people.

> Or the school system, which is already designed around rating people?

This is perhaps the most toxic and least successful part of the modern education system.

People are extremely sensitive about being judged.

If someone had posted something ruinous for someone else's reputation, which also happened to be false, there's always libel lawsuits. Beyond that, to quote Mrs. Feynman's question to her famous husband, "what do you care what other people think?"

It's a whole lot more than 'sensitivity'. It's an anonymous abuse engine which holds no merit to begin with. What, exactly, would be the benefit of such an app?

"Hey, I just met this great girl and she seems nice - oh, here on Peeple I see that 27 people in high school said she smells funny and one person says she murdered a baby."

With no verification or checks, what exactly is the point of this app, other than to be used to abuse people to suicide, ruin marriages, get people fired or other similar nefarious tactics? Are people really going to be all that interested in using an app to say 'hey this dude seems swell'.

What's going to prevent people from accusing random men of pedophilia, or random women of cheating on their husbands, or saying some person uses cocaine all of the time at their employer, without proof of any of these things or even a real connection to someone?

>What, exactly, would be the benefit of such an app?

Extortion, blackmail, peer pressure and public humiliation come to mind. I don't know what the benefit of honest reviews would be for anyone, though.

This certainly seems like an idea better suited for the black market, however, since all the ways I can think of to make money at it are bound to be illegal somewhere, if not everywhere.

People != Corporations. Although I can see some similarities between Yelp and Peeple, they are for rating/reviewing two fundamentally different entities.

Though I agree with you, The SCOTUS would seem to disagree with you ;-)

Yes but fortunately the last two letters of SCOTUS means it doesn't apply to 96% of humans. Peeple is/was canadian.

> the success of Yelp

Extorting businesses to suppress bad ratings, probably.

> the school system

Do you really think the quality of education is "successful" or something to be proud about?

> LinkedIn testimonials

That's a source for good reviews, not mixed reviews.

you cannot compare the success of Yelp, that is for services, people are not services!

and do you really assume school rating system is a correct method?

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