I have all the social graces of a warthog, and when in high dudgeon, a passed off one at that. It may have escaped y'alls noticing but, somehow I doubt it. So if I end up on peeple I shall wear my dishonor with pride!
Slander-as-a-service: Peeple app wants people to rate and review you – whether you like it or not
This could be the most odious idea the internet manages in 2015: Peeple is an app that lets people rate other people, whether they like it or not, and plans to launch in November. The Yelp-like defamation-as-a-service – someone can put you in a database that you can't be taken off, rate you 1-to-5, and comment on you as a …
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Thursday 1st October 2015 06:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wonder what will happen...
When the CEO finds herself on there and is torn to shreds by every involuntary participant?
I suspect you'll discover that the names of the executives get the Zuckerberg treatment: somehow, that won't be public.
Is the pool of innovation so far dried up that people have to go for crap that can ONLY cause harm? Given that this happening in the land of the
lawyersfree, I give this until it turns a bit of profit before it is sued into the ground for libel, forcing it to disclose downvoter identity.-
Thursday 1st October 2015 07:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wonder what will happen...
"before it is sued into the ground for libel, "
The whole USP of this appalling site is that the US has almost no protection against libel other than extremely large amounts of money.
However, the fact remains that people will not merely be putting information on the site; they will be rating other people using methods provided by the site operators. To me that looks like an argument against common carrier.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 07:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wonder what will happen...
The whole USP of this appalling site is that the US has almost no protection against libel other than extremely large amounts of money.
Good point, although I suspect that exactly the people that *have* that sort of money will appear on the site first, and I give it about 10 seconds live before this will go political. I'm willing to bet that one of the first people to appear on there will be Trump, and I want to watch that when he decides he doesn't like it - he's not exactly known for his gentle, diplomatic touch.
That's worth prepping popcorn for, I think, but I suspect you won't be halfway through the bag before the site is a smoking hole in the data centre :).
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:30 GMT rh587
Re: Wonder what will happen...
"and I give it about 10 seconds live before this will go political. I'm willing to bet that one of the first people to appear on there will be Trump, and I want to watch that when he decides he doesn't like it - he's not exactly known for his gentle, diplomatic touch."
Apparently you add people using their phone number. They get an SMS informing them they have been added and is supposed to ensure that "you can only add and rate people you know".
Clearly the developers have never heard of doxxing. It may be 10 minutes before someone gets Trump on there rather than 10 seconds, but he'll end up there nonetheless.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 18:51 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: Wonder what will happen...
Don't forget the business model is selling out all the personal details of involuntary participants. If anybody ever hands my phone number to scum like this they are going to get a rather nasty phone call from me.
I also wonder what happens if they wind up flooded with wrong numbers. Heck I just got a phone call asking for someone named Jane, what if I get a text from this vinegar and water pair letting me know that Jane was just ratted on pee-pal? What recourse does poor Jane have?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 07:29 GMT Voland's right hand
What lawsuits
This is illegal in more than half of the world on basic data protection grounds, defamation law, libel law and god knows what else. It would take less than a day or two to get an injunction and a week to make it permanent to shut down a service like this in Europe on basic data protection grounds. The same goes for at least some USA states which have a basic resemblance of data protection legislation.
It will be interesting which jurisdiction will this operate in. I do not see it working in California and New England states. They all have legislation this runs afoul of.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 12:38 GMT Christoph
Re: What lawsuits
"but you can bet the terms and conditions will tell you the service will be covered by the laws of the State of California (or perhaps Delaware)."
But that is irrelevant. The person who signed up to those conditions is not the person being slandered. They can put whatever they like in the T&Cs but it makes not the slightest difference to the person suing them - except maybe proving that the site as well as the user is liable.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 06:18 GMT heyrick
Ha ha. "This video has been removed by its user". Deletion good enough for them; good enough for the rest of us.
I'd like to see how far the "covered by the laws of X" go when this app crashes into British libel law; especially given that you don't need to accept their Ts&Cs if somebody else can add you and rate you and you aren't even a user.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 06:35 GMT heyrick
Re: @heyrick
I'll reach for a bag of popcorn; as wouldn't some jurisdictions consider their app to be the entity publishing and disseminating the content in question, regardless of who put it there?
Another on Peeple enjoying the right to deletion: https://m.facebook.com/comment/replies/?ctoken=1052702411430776_1054608977906786&count=16&showcount=13&ft_ent_identifier=1052702411430776&gfid=AQCRXnMmugF4EZnk
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Thursday 1st October 2015 06:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Self-defence
>You can respond to a nasty-gram, but Peeple won't delete stuff just because it's unbiased, unfair, or flat-out untrue.
So a bit like the database used for DBS (CRB) checks then, or virtually any police database.
Wouldn't be surprised if it is a state funded site, what better way to fill your boots than getting other people to do it. Now what's the name of the head of my local police force, I hear he's been a naughty boy.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 08:47 GMT Teiwaz
Re: I may be sexist....
Certainly matches the criteria for really nasty vicious girls-school bullying and intimidation that often ends up with a suicide.
Pretty much the worst resulting idea formulated from the nastiest teenage vendetta impulses.
The women contemplating this are going to end up creating the kind of really damaging traumas of the like so far inflicted by the likes of revenge porn sites.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 12:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I may be sexist....
It's OK - we've disowned them already. Members of Homo sapiens they may allegedly be, but that's no reason to smear us women with the tar that those two creatures so richly deserve.
Their utterly anti-social creation falls firmly under the heading of 'just because you CAN do it doesn;t mean that you SHOULD'.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 19:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I may be sexist....
It's OK - we've disowned them already
LOL, I always thought "defrocking" to be an entirely different event :). He did put a joke icon on it anyway, and I think we can assume that members of either sex that attend this site have at least a functional sense of humour and a liking of the absurd :).
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Friday 2nd October 2015 20:11 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: I may be sexist....
"Their utterly anti-social creation falls firmly under the heading of 'just because you CAN do it doesn;t mean that you SHOULD'.
...but since it will make us rich, fuck'em, lets DO IT!!!
Maybe I've seen too much US TV and films, but they look like the stereo-type rich sorority girls who get everything handed to them on a plate and never, ever see any "bad stuff" because the world is just all pink and full of fluffy bunnies and pink unicorns and pink...erm...stuff. The sort who can hand out nasty put downs with a big creepy grin and then wonder why "other people" not part of "their" group get upset.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 08:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I may be sexist....
I may be sexist....
.... but why I'm not surprised this gossip app has been created by two women?
That has an uncanny resemblance to the "I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture" statement by Alex Carter-Silk so I hope that your post won't be seen by Charlotte Proudman (she of "I will publish this private conversation because I think he is sexist" fame)...
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Thursday 1st October 2015 07:34 GMT dan1980
The way Cordray defends/justifies the service by saying that "innovators are often put down because people are scared and they don’t understand" smack of the defence that so many cranks trot out: "they laughed at Einstein". (The Wright Brothers, Columbus, Galileo, etc . . .)
You're not "innovators" and the reason people are against your idea is not because they "don't understand"; you are taking an existing idea (ratings) and applying it to a different target (people rather than businesses) and the reason people think that's a rubbish idea is because it bloody well is.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 10:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Innovators are good when they conceive true new clever ideas that make life better. Innovating just for the sake of changing may lead to stupid or dangerous ideas. Even Jonathan Swift mocked innovators like those...
"persons went up to Laputa [...] came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot."
You'd call that "disruptive", today....
"“That he had a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.” He said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment.”"
(Gulliver's Travel, Part III, Chapter IV, Balnibarbi).
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Thursday 1st October 2015 12:46 GMT I ain't Spartacus
This reminds me of the DISC analysis that a corporate
bullshiterconsultant wanted to put everyone through. I'd not heard of that one, but it's similar to Myers Briggs, in that there's no scientific basis for it - but it's an amazing tool for sorting people into handy personality types so you can patronise them properly.Apparently if you retake the test a couple of days later, 50% of the time you'll get a totally different result.
Anyway the website of the company what do it has this little blurb about why the test is great, and not at all sinister, oh no. And it says something like, if people are against this test, it's probably because they feel they've got something to hide. Nice!
Still, at least they're just greedy and incompetent. They're not actively harmful, unlike this charming new website.
Sometimes I think we should have special cases were lawyers are banned in disputes, and the decision is completely down to the weight of numbers on each side, and how many iron bars they happened to have brought along. The owners of the site might find themselves slightly outnumbered...
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:29 GMT Stoneshop
Lawyers
Sometimes I think we should have special cases were lawyers are banned in disputes, and the decision is completely down to the weight of numbers on each side, and how many iron bars they happened to have brought along. The owners of the site might find themselves slightly outnumbered...
A couple of lawyers won't make a difference regarding being outnumbered or not, but it'll be increasing the motivation on the side of the bar-wielders.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "This could be the most odious idea the internet manages in 2015"
"laugh-at-a-cripple.com?"
Considering how much television nowadays is the equivalent of just that - though mainly with intellectually or emotionally disabled people - it isn't much of a stretch.
Our ancestors visited Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics, we have Big Brother and its many, many offspring.
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Friday 2nd October 2015 11:19 GMT Turtle
@Arnaut the less re: "Laugh-At-A-Cripple.com"
"laugh-at-a-cripple.com"
Maybe I'm naive, but I actually tried to log on to that site. Turns out, very surprisingly, that it doesn't exist. Color me gobsmacked.
Well here's the cripples - emotional cripples, at any rate - that I'm laughing at: McCullough and Cordray. I hope this follows them around for the rest of their lives. Because it really says something about them as people, or as they might prefer to have it, peeple.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 08:37 GMT VinceH
I note from the Washington Post article that if someone doesn't sign up for Peeple, only positive reviews will appear for them - which sounds like the developers have tried (and failed) to address the obvious objection.
The reason they've failed to address the problem is because like everybody that is publishing personal details online, they are undoubtedly 100% confident that their servers are entirely secure and will never be prised open and the contents spewed out for everyone to see, including those negative reviews that haven't appeared on the system - and they will continue to be 100% confident of that... until it happens. (At which point, it will only have "affected a small number of people")
Another problem: They're using people's mobile phone numbers as a means to ensure a "reviewer" knows the person they're talking about (and presumably the same for anyone checking out the reviews - else how does someone distinguish between John Smith, John Smith, John Smith, and John Smith?)
Which is great... unless it's bloody easy for random people to get your mobile number, which for some of us it (necessarily) is.
The idiocy is strong in this one.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 11:20 GMT TheOtherPhil
Exactly... Some of us make our contact details available on purpose - but that won't stop the wrong ones being used.
As someone with an unusual surname you'd think it would be difficult to mix me up with anyone else; except there's someone with the exact same name, same age (within a couple of months) same geographic area, same business sector, and no relation. I get his linkedin requests and sales calls all the time.
Just hope he's not upset anyone lately.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:20 GMT Turtle
Re: Only "Positive" Reviews.
"if someone doesn't sign up for Peeple, only positive reviews will appear for them"
Who the fuck is going to vet all the reviews to see which are actually positive? Oh, I know! They are going to implement an easily-defeated algorithm, of the same type, no doubt, that enables Craig's List to keep children off of their prostitution pages.
Are they possibly attempting to deceive themselves, in addition to everyone else?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:42 GMT VinceH
Re: Only "Positive" Reviews.
"Who the fuck is going to vet all the reviews to see which are actually positive? Oh, I know! They are going to implement an easily-defeated algorithm,"
Quite literally, yes.
The Washington Post article mentions that the "reviews" will be accompanied by a five star rating - and I can't see it now in that article, so I may have read it in the early hours elsewhere (El Reg's own Chris Williams tweeted some links about it), but the fools behind it said something along the lines of one or two star reviews would be considered negative (three presumably being neutral and four/five stars being positive).
If so, to get a negative review about someone instantly published, accompany your review with three stars.
As I said, the idiocy is strong with this one.
I'd also like to know what happens when a victim changes their mobile phone number. (One member of my family seems to do this on a regular basis.) Will it end up with multiple profiles for one person if that person doesn't actually create an account so it can track their number changes?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 18:13 GMT Turtle
@VinceH Re: Only "Positive" Reviews.
Thanks for the response.
Here's a sample review: FOUR STARS Her skills were mediocre but she was reasonably clean and only wanted $20. And she was nice enough to warn me about her shall we say "medical condition" - not everyone will do that. I've paid more for better but I've also paid more for worse.
Any algorithm that will catch that will make it impossible to talk about vast swathes of human relations.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 08:46 GMT My-Handle
Want to opt out?
Make a comment against your own phone number, listing the name as "####" or some other useless string of characters. Leave a similarly useless comment. I'm guessing that the app limits one name per phone number, and if they don't delete profiles then no-one will be able to create another, more accurate profile with your actual name.
Hey, why not write a trivial script to post comments against large swathes of phone numbers, naming each of them as "####". Let's see what Peeple does about that. Remember, no deleting profiles.
Although, I didn't see anything anywhere stopping someone creating a profile about you using the WRONG phone number. That would leave people with no way of opting out, responding, or even being aware of such a comment being made...
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:23 GMT Elmer Phud
Several born every minute . . .
"and we will not apologize for that because we love you enough to give you this gift. We know you are amazing, special, and unique individuals"
Sheep spotted -- led towards the abbatoir.
They might moan later but the social engineering comes straight from the Dummies Book of Scammers.
Can they be offered an 'online security scan' at the same time?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:40 GMT Dr. E. Amweaver
Things...
Too many things to say on this one. I really need the reg to introduce bullet points. Or a powerpoint upload.
In brief:
- Founders claim they believe people are "genuinely good". Have they been on this thing called "the Internet" lately? Even basic commenting functions get abused in more creative and imaginative ways than the most paranoid, tinfoil-hatted mod can code against. This isn't just feeding the trolls, it's giving them a smørgasbørd. Which is, of course, pleasingly Norwegian on both counts.
- Founders are upset that multiple fake profiles of them have been created in the last 24 hours. Sheesh. Imagine that. People using your information without your knowledge to criticise you. Irony is clearly not their strong suit.
- Somewhere out there, $5m of VC money and $50k of US government grants went into producing this. I'd like to meet those funders, as I've been busily adding value to Tower Bridge through monitoring, rating and curating the footfall on a daily basis, and I believe that gives me rights to resell shares in the bridge and its traffic.
- The whole thing is probably a PR stunt for Charlie Brooker's new Netflix series. Or if it's not, their PR team need to hire those two immediately.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:07 GMT Shades
Re: Things...
"I really need the reg to introduce bullet points"
El Reg did, a while ago, but you need at least a bronze commentard badge for the HTML to work. See HERE for more details.
Note to El Reg: Can you please put anchors in the above referenced page so we can directly link to sections of it?
Yes, I realise this is OT but I'm trying to get my post count up to get my badge back (I lost it after briefly finding something called a "life")... I found the extra formatting really useful.
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Friday 2nd October 2015 01:14 GMT Steven Raith
Re: Things...
" (I lost it after briefly finding something called a "life")"
I...I don't understand....?
Steven "not getting out much" R
PS: Oh, as per everyone elses comments, this'd be hilarious if (as we must assume) it weren't real. It sounds like one of those things they came up with in The IT Crowd.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:53 GMT Andy 73
What is actually annoying
..is that those of us with the technical ability to create a decent X-as-a-service app/website/whaterver, and the self awareness and maturity to recognise the difference between a good idea and a very silly one are then faced with the challenge of getting press attention for our projects.
Yet a train-wreck like this can sail through everyone's sanity screens and land slap in the middle of a few international publications as a funded 'ongoing' (for the moment) business.
I appreciate that the ability to market an idea is a separate skill from the abilities to conceive or implement it, but it still grates.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 09:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
hopefully be ignored, but...
I should hope any employer - certainly any you might care to work for - would have the nouse and intelligence to pretty much disregard anything this thing might have to 'say'.
That said, the scary thing is that while official influence from such a sewage feed might not be part of corporate hiring policy, people and bias are human - and how can you prove that you didn't get that interview / job because of something written about you?
What makes me sad however is the continued commoditisation of the human experience. Getting to know people, make friends, hiring - all used to take judgment, time and experience. And if you met someone you didn't get along with, well then that's all part of the tapestry I'm afraid.
Equally scary is how well this will be received by the post-millenial generation who only know each other via glowing rectangles. To them, this will be no bother at all.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 11:57 GMT Fonant
Have you watched the videos? They are so corny, scripted, and full of meaningless buzzwords I'm almost certain this is a massive viral hoax.
I think it's very clever, and very sophisticated hoax. Just about good enough to be believable, and obviously bad enough that people will spread the word like wildfire!
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Friday 2nd October 2015 20:32 GMT John Brown (no body)
"I think it's very clever, and very sophisticated hoax. Just about good enough to be believable, and obviously bad enough that people will spread the word like wildfire!"
Yes, that has crossed my mind too. Maybe it's another "Carlos hoax"?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 12:09 GMT RegW
Bizzzt bizzzzt
Perhaps these people are really genuine about helping society identify good and bad people. Perhaps they simple don't understand that the bad people have access to the internet as well. There are some really unpleasant people out there that are going to abuse their efforts.
I think that's really sad.
Anyway ...
Igor. IGOR!!!! Fire up the random person generator. Attach it to www.fakenamegenerator.com and let's get this database full of crap. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hurrh. Hurrh. Hurrh. Hurrrr.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 12:10 GMT D Moss Esq
"We are a positivity app" ...
... that's what the Doge said, way back when in Venice, as he launched the bocche dei leoni denunciation app, "we still welcome everyone to explore this [hole-in-the-wall] village of love and abundance for all".
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Thursday 1st October 2015 13:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "We are a positivity app" ...
"While these lions’ mouths were a pipeline to the State, they were not, despite popular lore, sinister snitching posts where your enemy could anonymously rat you out – fairly or unfairly – and wait for the Council of Ten’s reps to pop by and drag you off to swing from a gibbet. On the contrary, there was a sophisticated process through which anonymous denunciations were considered. Serious evidence and investigation were always needed before any action was taken. "
In other words, if the Doge wasn't long dead you would have libelled him, because the Venetian system was simply much better run and more secure than any social media outlet, anywhere.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 16:34 GMT earl grey
But i don't HAVE a mobe
So how will someone be able to list my number one rating?
And how will someone be able to tell me from the other 4,935,252 others with the same name?
And how can i log in without a mobe to list for their data collection and scam service?
And how long until the app disappears under a load of lawsuits? Even if they go bust, stuff never goes away from the interwebs. How will they enforce my ability to disappear?
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:06 GMT disgruntled yank
Fair enough
"“ This app will allow us to better choose who we hire, do business with, date, let babysit our kids, become our neighbors, roommates, landlords/tenants, and teach our children.”
Sure. Never date a [member of the appropriate sex] who uses Peeple belongs up there with Nelson Algren's three nevers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Algren#References_in_popular_culture)
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Thursday 1st October 2015 17:28 GMT Turtle
“Why Don't You Like Me?”
"The service promises to quarantine bad reviews for two days, giving the victim a chance to contact the reviewer and ask 'why don't you like me?'"
I can answer that question right now! The answer is... "Because you didn't give me $50 to not write a vicious review about you. Now fork over the money or I'll give your number to all of my real friends and they'll slander you too."
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Thursday 1st October 2015 19:15 GMT x 7
if my understanding of English law is correct, if the website is visible by users in the UK, then the website has been effectively published in the UK - making the publishers / authors of the site subject to UK legal action. even if they are not resident in the UK.
It doesn't matter where the website is based, or the nationality of the company or people behind it: if its visible in UK, its actionable in the UK, Given the kind of awards UK libel actions attract, they really should think carefully before proceeding.
They look like a pair of Essex blondes anyway - too thick to think over what they're doing
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Friday 2nd October 2015 13:45 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
Great for lion killers, apparently.
One of the fools behind this was interviewed on the World Service around 4am today, and I happened to catch it.
She was trying to explain that it would help give a rounded view of people, and dug up the example of the lion-killing dentist, saying that if their app had been around, people would have a fairer view, because it would include comments from before his 'problems'.
I think that if you have to try and justify your horrific web service by saying that it would help present a better view of a sadist who shoots wild animals for fun, you're on pretty dodgy ground.