Peeple

Submission 18,160

About

Peeple is an upcoming application set for release in November 2015 that will allow users to post public reviews for people they know in real life. The app has been called a "Yelp for people" and has been widely criticized for its omission of an "opt-out" feature for those who do not wish to participate.

History

On August 9th, 2015, an app page for Peeple was created on Facebook.^[1] That day, the Peeple YouTube channel posted several videos with the app's co-founders Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray, including a behind-the-scenes episodic reality series titled "Peeple Watching Webisode" (shown below).

[This video has been removed]

Features

The app will allow users over the age of 21 with valid Facebook accounts to review other people selected under the relationship categories "personal," "professional" or "romantic." To add a new person to the database, their personal phone number must be provided. Positive reviews submitted will be displayed immediately, while negative reviews will remain in queue for 48 hours to be disputed by registered users. If a user has not registered to the app, only positive reviews will be displayed on their profile.

Criticism

The app has been criticized by many as an invasion of privacy and a potentially harmful harassment tool. On September 21st, 2015, CBC News^[6] published an article titled "Peeple app lets you rate human beings like restaurants." In the comments section of the post, several readers expressed a wariness toward the app (shown below). The following day, The Daily Dot^[5] published an article about the app, which noted that Internet commenters were giving the app "low ratings."

On September 30th, The Washington Post^[2] published an article titled "Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’", which described the app as "invasive" "objectifying" and "weirdly dystopian." The same day, Fortune^[4] published an article titled "There will soon be a Yelp for people -- and it sounds truly awful." On October 1st, Redditor mwcope submitted a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] asking "What is Peeple, and why is Twitter angry about it," to which several users cited the many privacy concerns about the application. The same day, BBC News^[8] published an article about the online backlash toward the application.