“Peeple”? No idea. Maude, cancel my 10:30 so I can read this post.
What is “Peeple”?
Perhaps you’ve already heard about this proposed new app, “Peeple,” that’s designed to be a sort of Yelp for people. The premise is that anyone with your cell phone number can create your profile and post a review of you. Yes, you personally. You’re alerted via text message. If you do nothing, Peeple only posts “positive” reviews, meaning reviews of 3 – 5 stars, regardless of written content. If you claim your profile, you receive your negative reviews (2 stars or fewer) via your Peeple inbox. You have 48 hours to try to “work it out with the person” and convince them to “turn a negative to a positive.” If you can’t, the review goes live, and your only recourse is to defend yourself publicly. The founders of Peeple, Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, have repeatedly said that there will be no opt-out feature, meaning anyone who has– or who can find– your cell phone number can create a permanent profile for you without your consent, inviting others to post reviews of you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
I don’t know . . . sounds like a harassment engine . . .
Cordray and McCullough have given vague assurances that they will have structures in place to minimize harassment and enable people to contest reviews with misleading or incorrect information. They claim they will personally review all negative reviews (again, not in content, just in star count), and that anyone violating the terms of service, which bans, according to their website, “profanity, bullying, health references, disability references, confidential information, mentioning other people in a rating that you are not currently writing a rating for, name calling, degrading comments, abuse, derogatory comments, sexual references, mention of confidential information, racism, legal references, hateful content, sexism, and other parameters in our terms and conditions” will be booted.
In case you were wondering, these are the people making decisions about what constitutes “racism” on Peeple. (Source: forthepeeple.com)
This Can’t Possibly Be Real, Can It?
Peeple is such a spectacularly bad idea that, in addition to the massive online outpouring of WTF, some people began looking a little closer at Cordray and McCullough (pictured above), among them Snopes, and started to float the idea that Peeple is likely “vaporware” (a nonexistent product announced but never produced), a hoax created to underpin a reality show Cordray and McCullough were creating about the development of an app. Peeple’s site features no less than ten “webisodes” entitled “Peeple Watching Documentary– 2 Best Friends Building an App in Silicon Valley in 90 Days.”
Another clue is the app’s website. As a writer who has done some professional copywriting for tech companies in the past, it’s immediately obvious to me that the copy in all sections has been written by an amateur. It’s rife with writing errors. Suspiciously so. Check out the first quote above– it mentions “confidential information” twice in the same list. The site also includes a note entitled “An Ode to Courage” that’s so self-serving and poorly written, it makes me wonder if the entire enterprise is a satire of app developers: “Innovators are often put down because people are scared and they don’t understand. We are bold innovators and sending big waves into motion and we will not apologize for that because we love you enough to give you this gift.”
While bad writing alone doesn’t point to a hoax, it certainly adds to the enormous lack of professionalism that is underpinning much of what’s creating suspicions.
Hmmmm. I was going to pose for this picture, but now that you mention it, that DOES sounds suspicious. Do go on.
Their failure to address basic, obvious concerns about privacy, consent, and intrusion demonstrates they have suspiciously low interest in probable legal complications.
They seem to have no understanding of social media harassment, which would be shocking for people creating a social media app. They appear (pretend?) to believe that possessing a cell phone number is proof of personal knowledge, when everyone online knows that to be laughably inaccurate. Their report and review policies are suspiciously weak, as if no one with expertise in the matter was consulted.
Finally, they have no legal right to the name “Peeple,” which belongs to a company that makes smart peepholes for your door (which actually look super-rad; you should check them out). Cordray and McCullough didn’t even bother to check the availability of the brand name before diving in. (Cordray appears to have belatedly– just last night, in fact– created a new twitter handle, @peeplereviewapp, and is offering $1000 for the “best new name.”)
Now that IS suspicious. Archibald, bring the coach around. We’re leaving.
If It’s Just a Hoax, What’s the Big Deal?
Whether the app is vaporware or not, Peeple is a Very Bad Thing.
Remember: Cordray and McCullough are clear that reviews with 3 – 5 stars will automatically post, regardless of content, and without your consent. Harassers and stalkers know precisely how to game systems, and it doesn’t take a genius to sort out that a damaging, harassing, or abusive review, carefully worded so it doesn’t violate the ToS, will automatically post if you attach a 5 star rating. There are millions of people out there who understand all too well the potential dangers that Cordray and McCullough have been callously brushing off.
Apart from the ongoing struggle with online harassment of women, there are specific vulnerable populations that are terrified of this app, and for good reason. There are places in this country where a person would be fired if their place of employment discovers they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. There are places in this country where transgender people have no legal protections. There are transgender people whose lives are at risk if their identities are discovered, particularly low-income people and people of color. Gay and transgender teenagers have astronomically high suicide rates as it is, exacerbated by bullying. Just asking people to click through a “yes, I am 21” screen does exactly nothing to protect a kid. How long will Peeple’s review process take? Two days? A week? While a profile outing or bullying a teenager remains up?
There are tens of thousands of people hiding from abusive exes or stalkers, and Peeple presents an enormous danger to them, even from well-meaning people. All it takes is a 5 star review from a customer or co-worker detailing the excellent service Name O’Person provides in Specific City, and boom. The damage has been done. Peeple won’t allow the profile to be taken down, and the review can’t be contested because it’s positive. Even if the profile could be taken down, there’s no way for it to be taken down quickly enough to protect people adequately. The internet is forever. There are people who barely escaped murder hiding in cities far from their abusive exes, keeping as low a profile as possible. Peeple has announced, essentially, that it plans to out them all, but LOL, “turn a negative into a positive!” Peeple is “a positivity app!”
People all across the country are terrified about what Peeple’s scorn for consent might mean for them and their families. Will I lose my job? Will I lose my children? Will I have to race into hiding, desperately seeking housing and a new job, because the man who swore to murder me will discover where I work? What if I can’t afford to move when I’m outed? Will my transgender college student, away from home for the first time, be bullied into suicide? Will my transgender daughter be killed on the street on her way to work? Will my stalker be able to trace where my children go to school if our location is posted?
And sure, there’s nothing stopping people from outing each other now– and they do– but Peeple is built specifically to aggregate and disclose information about individuals without their consent. Peeple’s sole function is to judge others without their consent, and deny them the right to opt out.
AND DENY THEM THE RIGHT TO OPT OUT.
Unlike other social media sites, Peeple enables others to create a profile for you without your consent, and denies you the right to delete comments on that profile, block harassers, or delete your profile entirely. Cordray and McCullough have decided that they, not you, are the appropriate judges of what constitutes your “confidential information,” as well as what constitutes “harassment.”
Peeple would be one-stop shopping for harassers and abusers, and that is terrifying millions of people while Cordray and McCullough brush off their concerns with casual cruelty.
If Peeple launches, there will be attendant invasion of privacy lawsuits launching, one hopes, in time to shut it down before it can get anyone killed. But the damage it’s doing right now– the terror it’s spreading among vulnerable populations, real people whose lives are on the line– is unconscionable.
I can almost understand wanting to launch a real app, and just lacking the expertise and intelligence to understand that your app is the worst idea ever, and why, and how to address those issues before you destroy your brand, someone else’s brand, several thousand lives, and your professional reputations.
But I CANNOT understand people who would persist in a hoax after being told, repeatedly, that they are scaring the living shit out of millions of people whose lives they would be putting at risk.
A Note To Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough
Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, if this is vaporware, a hoax, and/or a fake premise upon which to launch your web series, you are truly despicable. You have repeatedly demonstrated no concern whatsoever for the personal safety or emotional and psychological well-being of our nation’s most vulnerable people. You’re terrifying people because you desperately want to be rich and famous. Well, you got the famous part all right– I hope infamous is close enough. If your app is real, and if you have one decent cell in your body– either of you– you will make this app opt-in, or you will allow people to pre-emptively opt out and/or delete profiles created for them before they go live.
Finally
I think the best and/or most frustrating part about all of this is how upset Cordray’s been over the criticism, and how ludicrous she looks trying to silence it while denying that right to others. It’s been a banner couple of years centuries for clueless, self-serving, arrogant, basic white girls, (here you go; with my compliments; help yourself; just one more; treat yourself), but this takes the cake.
