ByPovilas S
Shazam for spoken word
3 years ago
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Idea
Spook Louw Mar 10, 2022
Platform to leave reviews and comments about people
Image credit: Hannah Smith
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The idea is simple, to create a review platform that focuses on individuals rather than businesses.
Why?
Simply to see other people's experiences interacting with a certain person. Just like other review platforms, except that your profile is connected to your phone number on a similar system to Truecaller.
How it works
By entering a person's phone number you will be able to see what other people have said about this person. You would not need to make use of the app yourself to be reviewed, users can create a profile for you simply by connecting reviews to your number. However, to personalize your profile and react to reviews you will need to download the app too.
It will not be anonymous, and you will obviously be able to dispute bad reviews and explain your position. That said, as with similar apps for businesses, a couple of bad reviews might be attributed to people being vindictive, but if you start building a large collection of bad reviews, it might lead to people avoiding you.
Conversely, it could also lead to people trusting you if you have many good reviews.
Potential problems
I realize that there will be some bullying and unfair reviews on such a platform, this could be remedied by monitoring peoples activity, people who always leave negative reviews that are disputed could be filtered out so that their reviews do not appear on your timeline or affect your rating.
Another issue is that people may simply change their phone numbers when they have too many negative reviews. This would be inconvenientfor them though, and if the reviews were accurate, they will probably just reflect the truth after a while again.
I don't see any ethical or moral problems with this idea, even though it does feel a bit strange to review people, if we can do it with businesses and drivers, justifying it by saying it protects the customer, the same should be true of personal relationships.
3
Creative contributions
A social credit score system
You are talking about a social credit score.
Two brilliant TV shows depicted how it goes wrong.
A sitcom Community did it first.
An episode of the anthology series Black Mirror had an equally powerful take.
Also, there were multiple attempts (1; 2; 3;) at dating apps that wanted to use this principle. It seems to me that they all failed, or shifted their model. Many guys are ready for a lot in terms of dating, but even they draw the line at being judged freely by people who don't have any repercussions for what they said about you.
In the age when Instagram and other social media apps are looking into turning off likes on photos as they know how much they damage people's mental health, looking to add an element of written reviews seems ill-placed.
I fail to see why would you trust the ratings of the mob? Or an individual for that matter?
If someone goes on a bad date, it's a two-way street. Additionally, for one person, a date with a super Star Wars fan is boring, for another, it would be a dream one. Yet the reviewer might not recognize or disclose what made the date bad for them.
You would nearly have to give as much time to exploring the reviewer and their validity as you would spend on the initial contact with the person being reviewed when you meet them and examine them yourself.
I think we already have a lot of similar services for reviewing others, but divided into more precise aspects of our personalities. LinkedIn for our business endevaours, Uber or AirBnb ratings for shared economy services we provide, same goes for selling/buying things on sites like Ebay.
Doing it generally will just cause more fake politeness, more mental stress, and give more power to those willing to play the popularity game instead of focusing on producing propper results.
While the people who want to be labeled like this freely already utilize social media in this manner. Likes and comments.
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Review the person's handling of a situation, instead of his general character
I laughed out loud when I read the title. It's brilliant, but mean. I think the platform you're talking about is called Twitter. The problem with these platforms is that it motivates people to leave bad reviews. It's almost an outlet for people who are angry with you. Seldom that it attracts people you have helped.
A slight variant would be to review people's management skills. As an example, John called five friends to go clubbing, but he arrived late or didn't offer to buy a round. One of the friends would set up a group and invite only those who attended the event to review John's behaviour.
This method would make the criticised person feel that his friends are judging his behaviour for one outing and not his general character. The perk is that he learns from his mistake and improves without feeling attacked.
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jnikola3 years ago
I also feel that this is a good way forward. eBay, LinkedIn, or Airbnb, which Miloš Stanković mentioned, basically do the same. They rate your politeness, cleaners, hospitality, sticking to buying or selling terms, being honest about your skills, etc. In a scenario that Spook Louw mentioned, a person can have a bad day and it could be rated as generally boring, bad mood, or impolite, which would be wrong. Rating a specific task seems more legit, plus, it couldn't easily lead us to the scenario of the Black Mirror episode :D, which all of you should watch!
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Povilas S3 years ago
Goran Radanovic I agree with what you say in the first paragraph, but regarding the second two - one's behavior is hardly separable from their character. "He arrived late" - it might have happened because of objective reasons like being stuck in a traffic jam, etc. but the initial reaction of a person reading this in most cases would be that he is being judged because of his character.
He might explain himself if he had objective reasons for the things he's blamed for like "I was stuck in a traffic jam, I didn't offer a round because I'm in a hard financial situation right now", etc. But what if he is simply not punctual and he didn't offer to pay for drinks because he simply didn't feel like? We're inevitably moving into a field of human relationships here and it's complicated.
What if instead the app would be dedicated to reviewing people who work in a certain industry and the behavior related to their service only? You could review any person working in any industry as long as you had interactions with them during their duty time. It would be more convenient for both the business owners and the customers if there was a possibility to leave a review/rating directly about the worker rather than mention a worker in the review about a business.
I initially thought that this was what the idea is about, only after reading your contribution did I realize that it's way more general.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Fair enough, but I mean on most social media sites the comments about a person is not localized, you might see people bickering or calling each other names, but those aren't real reviews.
What I had in mind would be more for getting a sense of a person you have just met. This does not mean that you should not work with or socialize with someone just because they don't have a good rating, but if you meet someone it could be beneficial to know how others have experienced that person.
This would essentially act as a safety mechanism for buyers in the informal market, meeting sellers for the first time, or even for people who meet someone while out. Imagine a guy at a club gives a girl his number, but when she saves it, she sees a bunch of reviews saying that he is not a good guy, she could still decide whether she wants to contact him again or not, but at least she would have had a bit of warning and might approach more cautiously. The same would be true of people who prey on strangers and use them to buy them drinks and food, locals always know about them and how they operate, but newcomers always fall victim, if they build a reputation, new people might not fall for their tricks.
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Why phone number?
I'm wondering why are you emphasizing using the phone number as means to link the person to the review platform? Why not just use real name and surname (accompanied by their picture for example or a birth year or any other means of additional identification)?
What if you don't have that person's phone number but want to see their reviews? And what if you don't have their number but want to review them? You can relatively easily find nearly any person on social media even if you don't know their name, so you can find their name out easier than their number.
And if you have their number it's a good chance that you know them personally at least to an extent, that's why you have it, so you don't need reviews that much as people who don't know them at all.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Because having a person's phone number suggests that you do actually know them on some level, so it's just another step of verification, you don't want people to be making remarks on someone they have never interacted with. But apart from that, it also just makes more sense logistically, if you only have a person's name, there would be thousands of profiles with the same name, in order to add any additional information like location or picture, to help filter the results, you need them to add the information and grant you access to it first, meaning you would only be able to create profiles for people who also use the platform, and nobody with a bad reputation would.
Many people have the same name, nobody has the same phone number.
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Povilas S3 years ago
Spook Louw Ok, but what about the people who want to see the reviews? Then also only those who got the number from somewhere (and that's most likely the person him/herself ) can see the reviews, you are less likely to want to see a review about someone you already know. People rarely exchange phone numbers with someone they newly met, it's way more common to exchange social media.
So there would be no name or other personal information attached to the reviews feed, only the number? I think if you don't use a certain phone number for long enough or refuse phone service attached to it, it might get ascribed to another person soon enough. That would cause a lot of confusion and misunderstandings on such platform.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Povilas S No, there would obviously be a name attached to the number, and there could even be way more information. I mentioned that you would be able to personalize your own profile. Still, the primary identification would be the phone number, this is the primary way that people would be able to find you, even if you don't use the app yourself.
I understand what you are saying about people not exchanging phone numbers, but I maintain, if you don't even have someone's number, then you are probably not in the position to be reviewing them, and if you are interested enough to want to read about them, then you might as well get their number.
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