Peeple, is a human rating app that allows people to review other people in same way products and places are reviewed, is finally to launch a moderated version after a time period of beta testing in North America.
The app received hate speech from various social media groups and channels but the founders said, “Peeple isn’t evil, and you’d better be ready because it’s coming soon whether you want it or not”.
As explained by one of its co-founder, their main objective and vision about the app is to make a safe place for netizens to manage their online reputation. Whereas the flipside of that was to create a space where one can protect his greatest assets such as house, car or children etc by avoiding interaction and services from wrong people. The idea was to allow people to lookup for anyone around them on the app and take better decisions.
Initial Features/Dis-features of the app that made it controversial
#1 No Account deactivation – You cannot deactivate your account and hence your could be essentially rated on the network that maybe you didn’t want to be in.
#2 Anyone can put you in – Anyone could add you to the app and you receive a text notification letting you know about it. There is no way to move out from it as there is no account deactivation feature.
#3 Star rating on humans – Start rating is one thing no one want to get less. It is a common feature used by many online services such as eCommerce stores and apps but this time it would work over human beings.
#4 Reviews cannot be deleted – The app doesn’t allows you to delete reviews though they would get automatically expired after a year in order to reflect people’s strength to reprogram themselves and change for the better.
New moderated app version with less controversial features:
Peeple, subtitled “where your character is your currency”, met denunciation on social networks, blogs and news when the concept was first publicized last year in October; the Washington Post also called it “the terrifying ‘Yelp for people”.
The app received negative tweets, comments and protest thru social media accounts, the founders say they have received death threats, shareholders were being threatened, tons of harassing emails that they had to go offline and deactivate their social accounts.
But now a moderate version of the app has been planned to made available for download via Apple’s App Store from Monday onwards:
The new moderated version still allows people to review other people as this is the basic concept behind the app but now some big changes have been implemented to Peeple app:
#1 No star rating – the star ratings is replaced by a tally of the total number of recommendations received.
#2 Full control over profile – Users will now have complete control over what is shown on their profile.
#3 Ability to deactivate account – Now the users may deactivate their profile and stay out of the system.
#4 No one can be added without consent – Now no one can add you to the Peeple app without your consent.
Peeple is currently available only to iOS users in North America.
Mechanism to control nuisance
No one can be anonymous on Peeple’s platform. It provides you common user blocking and reporting features to flag inappropriate users. The application provides you the control of your profile and uses a double authentication process with Facebook and a PIN number that is texted to your smartphone.
The sources say, 10,000+ people have applied to be beta testers for the app and 500 invitations are accepted from over 1,500 invitations issued in mid-January.
Fault-findings & continual criticism
Although most bothersome features have been removed from the new moderated version of Peeple app but now the founders have planned to bring some of them back in the name of premium license.
In the coming days, a premium, paid for service called The Truth License will be introduced allowing subscribers to browse all reviews of other people, no matter they are publicly posted or not, no matter users have full control over the visibility of their profiles.
This is practically the same fault-finding now with a premium privilege and this might bring continual criticism to the app. The update will make the app almost the same founders wanted it to be when it was first publicized, the only difference is now this privilege is only for the paid users.