Sharing your opinion is protected speech, by lying is not always protected speech, particularly if done with the intent to financially hurt someone.
I have seen false rape claims, false claims of child abuse, neglect, etc.
With zero repercussions, of course.
Some social problems just don't have technological solutions.
Those ten reports could be made by one person. That one person might not even know the person they're accusing. That one person might be a man. That one person might be a bot.
You'd have to ignore the last three decades of online identity, trolling and social media pitfalls to not recognize that.
And please don't compare reviewing a can opener on Amazon to accusing someone anonymously of a heinous crime on an app built by one person.
But I'm not sure I'm going to convince you with words so I'll suggest this:
Go and build this app.
Build it, see what happens. Nobody else has been able to crack this but maybe you can.
It might be relavent to who wins the lawsuit, but sometimes the mere existence of a lawsuit is pretty painful.
I mean if witches didn't do anything surely they wouldn't be hunted down.
A well-designed system will maximize utility for the former, and minimize utility for the latter. An app where women can leave what are practically anonymous reviews for men is not such a system.
This isn't all of the people, but in my experience in life it's more than enough to make this app impossible to filter.
A lot of men have had experiences like this one. Either directly or they know someone it happened to. Yeah #NotAllWomen but way too many will exploit the feminist #BelieveAllWomen culture to gain even trivial benefits. An app devoted to letting women anonymous gossip and engage in reputation warfare without fear of consequence, or even fear that the man might reply in self defense, is going to get flooded with women like the taxi passenger.
Go read some statistics on the number of women harassed, abused, raped, and killed every day—every single day—because they are women.
Go ask your mother, your sister, your wife, your female best friend, when they had their last abusive encounter.
Go ask your friends of both genders what the worst things are that could happen to them when walking home at night, and compare the responses.
Go read some historic accounts of how women were treated for… pretty much all of history.
Go look up news articles of what can happen to women when riding a taxi. Spoiler: it’s not just a threat.
Yes, there are some abusive women out there. Yes, it’s fucked up when that happens to you. But trying to insinuate the levels of violence against men would be even remotely comparable is just plain awful.
By people going on the same sort of rants like you just did.
Some People are terrible, especially when they think they can act without consequences.
Does that excuse men doing bad things too? No.
But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
After the big war, some Germans were quick to point out that their people had suffered when they were displaced from the land they occupied in Poland, for example, and that "both sides had suffered". I assume you're also incapable of understanding why the victims of the Nazi regime were completely aghast by that?
> But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
What do you suggest to do instead? Sexual violence is often a crime with only the perpetrator(s) and the victim as witnesses. In most cases, rape doesn't leave persistent traces. Rape victims tend to be in shock, however, and often need time to process what happened. Your suggestion seems to be that we should question these claims?
Judging these cases correctly is incredibly complicated, and claims of wide swaths of men falling prey to abusive women don't really help anyone affected.
Yes, we should question those claims, and any others. Or everyone who wants to be shitty will do it via that route. It’s basic shitty human behavior.
That it screws actual victims is why people gaming the system should be punished.
But not challenging these claims just makes more victims too. And eventually people will just tune out accusations, because the shittiness has gotten too pervasive. And then the predators/shitty humans will get be doing more actual rape eh? Which is terrible.
This is why it’s also prudent to be very careful who anyone is alone with, favor video recording of public spaces, etc. as well. Because the best way to avoid a situation is to make it as difficult as possible for the situation to occur, and minimize the chances of any ambiguity. Which is also shitty for everyone.
Personally, I also don’t trust the stats because I’ve seen many (5+) women retcon clearly consensual behavior (that they were even bragging about before!) into ‘he raped me’ when someone tried to shame them for it later, or there was some leverage they could get out of it. I had one who literally admitted to me when I investigated that she was doing it to punish the guy for refusing to date her later. Another was fine until she went home and her mom gave her crap about her dating behavior, and then all the sudden it was rape. Until we started to interview her for her story, and then she admitted it was consensual.
I very much believe actual rapes and SA’s occur. I personally have literally never seen an accusation for rape or SA that stood up to even the lightest scrutiny, within the environments I’ve been responsible for. And not because I was trying to avoid them!
The joys of being a manager of mixed sex groups eh?
If we could figure out the actual truth of these situations, then we could punish actual offenders and not constantly be in this BS situation.
That's not what it is intended for, but many people after relationships end can be extremely emotional and sometimes very spiteful. It's not uncommon for people to embellish or lie about the truth to make themselves look better and the other person look shitty. Especially if you're the one being dumped, you may be even more likely to engage in petty behaviour.
I personally have experienced an ex making up a sexual assault story. This kind of app didn't exist then, but she even went as far as reporting me to the police. Luckily the police investigated and could easily discern it was a lie. Going to the police is obviously a much higher burden than using an app, and yet many females still go make false SA claims there. Do you really think it wouldn't be a common problem for people to do the same in an app at a much higher rate?
People often believe things like SA claims without any evidence and will often even attack people trying to defend the person or insist on some kind of proof. It means that someone making up bull crap on these apps is going to be treated like it is true, yet the rates of lies would likely be pretty high.
People can just be so crazy when it comes to relationships/love. Especially when it comes to people in their teens or early 20's, the brain isn't fully developed and dealing with these emotions is even more challenging and leads to even more rash decision making.
The more common it is, the more damaging false claims of it are. It's a self-defeating linear relationship.