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Peeple: The app that lets you rate other people whether they like it or not

Attention all internet trolls, keyboard warriors and general purveyors of online abuse: there’s a brand new app geared towards making your efforts very easy indeed and its coming your way this November.

Peeple, an app created by Nicole McCullough and Julia Cordray, allows you to rate other people much in the same way certain apps allow you to assign a star rating movies, or restaurants or a hotels.

But here’s the best part: the plan is to allow anyone to add anyone else to the database and start voting on their looks and personality, without requiring consent from the votee. So if you don’t like someone you can upload all their details and start canvassing negative opinions by way of rankings from 1-5. Nice.

To make it worst, all you need – according to Peeple’s official site – is to know the object of your vilification on Facebook and their phone number, and you can enter their details and slate them to your heart’s content. This capturing of personal details without consent raises interesting protection of personal information questions…

Here’s another great feature – there’s no opt-out clause. Oh sure, negative comments are quarantined for 48 hours, and the target will be notified via text that someone has said something about them on Peeple’s service, so they can contact you and ask you why you don’t like them. But as stated on Peeple’s website, their photo and phone number can only be removed if “it violates our terms and conditions once you report it”.

It’s possible that Peeple was created with the best of intentions and that Cordray’s assertions that Peeple is being created for users to make their “life better and have the opportunity to prove how great it feels to be loved by so many in a public space” are true. But anyone who has cast half an eye at the online space knows that the moment you gift people the opportunity to do down someone they have an issue with, they’ll seize it with both hands and usually – because, you know, ‘the internet’ – it’ll be a far harsher treatment than one meted out face to face.

Peeple was a lousy idea back in the old days of the internet when there was a website called ‘Hot Or Not‘. In the spirit of taking the high road, we’ll refrain from adding our unwanted personal opinions of McCullough and Cordray.

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