"Unvarnished: Controversial Yelp for Individuals" - Anonymous
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Almost everyone has a Michael Scott or a Dwight Schrute in their office, and if you’re not sure you do, just be glad there aren’t cameras following you around all day because you’re likely that guy. Everyone at one time or another has had a frustrating time with their boss or coworker. However, we’re not all clever enough to make that situation funny enough to watch on a Thursday night. Most of the time, if we want to relieve some of that job-related stress we go to a trusted friend or colleague to vent, but what if we could tell our boss what we think … and do it anonymously?
The folks at Unvarnished are working on giving you just such a venue. Unvarnished has been described as a Yelp for individuals, in that, you can leave comments and rate someone’s work performance. However, when a commenter leaves a remark on your page not only is the commenter anonymous, but good luck trying to get that comment taken down. The review by Mr. Anonymous will stay up on Unvarnished until he or she decides to take it down and because of web archives will be on the internet basically forever.
Before I dive into tackling Unvarnished (this “Yelp for people”) I wanted to quickly establish what some local Austinites found as the basis for Yelp’s usefulness. I spoke with Alexis Lanman, the director of events at both LaCondesa and Malverde, (which are both located on the corner of Second and Guadalupe) to get a better idea of how Yelp affects her business. “I think Yelp is beneficial both to the businesses and to other readers,” says Lanman. However, when asked about the potential of an “anonymous” Yelp, she said she was worried “a lot of businesses would be posting fake positive comments and defensive responses to reviewers. It would skew the rating system and no longer be a useful application.”
Unsure if a Yelp user would feel the same way, I asked a Ms. Ironic (not her real name), what she thought about an anonymous Yelp and she said, “I believe that a large part of Yelp’s helpfulness comes from being able to identify users within the Yelp network. On Yelp, I trust certain sources and have my doubts about others. This would be impossible without knowing who the user was. If there was no user identification feature for Yelp I don’t think it would be as helpful and would be less inclined to use it.” Ironic, went on to say that the Yelp community was very close knit and does a great job policing itself. In fact, they reward consistent and healthy use of Yelp by giving the user a higher and more trusted status, such as an Elite User, “and they don’t just give that out,” says Ironic.
Some Yelp users and restaurants in Austin appear to believe a large part of Yelp’s helpfulness springs from the accountability associated with its users. The Yelp program is similar to ebay in that the Yelp users and restaurants (and the Yelp algorithms from what I understand) trust a comment by user who is invested in the system, much like on ebay where its users have a tendency to purchase an item from someone who has sold many items and still has a good reputation. However, if you take away the user’s accountability the site seems to lose its primary function of informing their users of the true “public opinion.”
So is it possible that Unvarnished would assist in “public opinion” of an individual? Did you believe Ms. Ironic? Ultimately, I think Unvarnished will be useful, but for how long and to what degree is the question. The site needs to protect itself and its users. Whether it can do this will likely ride on whether the IT and legal team at Unvarnished created a system that is effective enough to stop fraudulent and defamatory claims. The Texas code on libel and defamation reads:
A libel is a defamation expressed in written or other graphic form that tends to blacken the memory of the dead or that tends to injure a living person's reputation and thereby expose the person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or financial injury or to impeach any person's honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or to publish the natural defects of anyone and thereby expose the person to public hatred, ridicule, or financial injury.
In the legal field, this is what we call that a broad statement. It would seem that you open yourself up to a significant amount of unneeded liability by creating a site where you have a control over potentially defamatory posts. However, the amount of actual liability will depend on the end-user agreement, terms of use agreement, and releases Unvarnished will require its user to agree to. Additionally, the IT department will have the daunting task of creating a significant protective mechanism on the backend for its users. Currently, the site requires the user to maintain a Facebook account and comes equipped with some complex algorithms that seek to determine whether a comment is fraudulent or not. If these measures can keep the defamatory and fraudulent statements from occurring it could provide a secure forum to provide an honest review of an individual. However, I haven’t heard of anything preventing the user from convincing friends to write satisfactory reviews. Everything being equal, this just brings us back to where we are currently with the Linkedin “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” comments. As a result, if the site works well it will keep out fraudulent and defamatory claims (which is a big if), but it still leaves “fake” friendly posts and other posts that just anger users potentially into filing a lawsuit (there is no restriction on a drunk user or a user after he gets into a fight with his boss or co-worker).
