Should You Be Worried About the "Yelp For People"?

Update: In a LinkedIn post, CEO and cofounder Julia Cordray changed the course of the conversation around Peeple. She wrote that changes were coming to the app and that users will now only exist on the app if they opt-in, and no negative reviews will ever make it to your page (or so the company believes).

Original story: In what feels like a truly dystopian nightmare, a new app that will launch in November will let people rate other people. As anyone can imagine, the Internet is in a current state of uproar over the idea of such an app existing, as many believe it will lead to bullying and harassment.

The app, called Peeple, will let users give people both reviews and one to five star ratings. To do so, the reviewer needs to be 21 or older, have a Facebook account, and use their real name to write anything on the app. If they want to review someone who is not on the app, they will be prompted to enter the other person's cell phone number, so that the reviewee can receive a text notification that they've been added. The scary part of this app is that no one can opt out from the service — once your name is in the database, you're in the app forever. But if you decide not to sign up, only positive reviews will appear on your profile, as negative ones can only go up if you're registered and can approve or dispute the review.

Within 24 hours of The Washington Post writing the initial story about the app, the Internet collectively lost its mind over Peeple, which many are calling the "Yelp for people." Several believe that despite all the safeguards the cofounders can put in place, the app will only lead to people writing awful and offensive reviews. Even celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Mara Wilson are outraged and posted their discontent on Twitter.

Other people are just clearly dumbfounded that this idea exists.

Even Yelp has distanced itself from Peeple.

The cofounders, Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, believe otherwise. "As two empathetic, female entrepreneurs in the tech space, we want to spread love and positivity," said Cordray to The Washington Post. "We want to operate with thoughtfulness."

However, while the Internet is freaking out and concerned over people's lives being put on an app to be reviewed, it's worth noting that in order for an app like this to work, people need to opt in and love what it does for them. We've seen this time and time again with social networking apps and the ones that succeed tend to be those where people can share positive messages about their lives, while keeping in touch with their friends and family.

Just a few weeks ago, Instagram hit 400 million users. This isn't only because of the rise of smartphone photography, but because Instagram is a space where people feel like they can share images of their lives without being harshly judged. After all, the way to show love for an Instagram post is by tapping the heart icon. Over on Facebook and Twitter, you do the same with a like and favorite. Inherently, these social media networks at their very core try to spread a feeling of positivity for its users. This doesn't mean that hateful comments and messages don't pervade their way to users — they definitely do and are issues that continuously need to be addressed — but its users still enjoy the product.

So before we continue to get upset and angry over an app like Peeple, let's let it launch and see if people actually start using it to leave reviews — good or bad. Most likely, the app will falter and quickly fall off the App Store to become another failed social media experiment and a perfect reminder of why something like this is destined to fail.