This app lets you score your friends (and enemies) With the tagline “character is destiny”, the announcement of Peeple – an app that lets you score your friends like Uber drivers – seems to mark the logical endpoint of social media. Apparently taking everybody’s teenage insecurities as inspiration, the creators claim Peeple will enable customers to research their friends in the same way they will a car before purchase. Social media is already rife with online “ratings” (i.e. abuse) – so a platform dedicated to scoring people you know, regardless of whether you like them, just spells trouble. Even with arbitrary protective measures, such as an age limit of 21 and required confirmation that you know the subject, from either a personal, professional or romantic standpoint, the app seems like a horrible joke. And accordingly, an article by Newsweek suggested it might be just that – pointing out that the concept was just so bad that it was most likely a hoax. But it doesn’t seem that everybody is into intrusive networking: Peeple was met with such a backlash when it was announced last Friday that the creators issued a statement today, insisting that the site would be completely positive and fully moderated. Which demonstrates that crowdsourcing opinions can come to some good. The internet is making us more connected than ever before, but it’s not all bad guys out there: civic social media is letting neighbourhoods offer each other a hand with the chores. Still hungry for more? Sign up for our weekly supplement featuring the latest news, profiles, features and innovation
Peeple Power
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