Manners on the Internet is a problem. Unvarnished wants to make that a much bigger problem.

Unvarnished creators are essentially trying make LinkedIn and Angie’sList procreate. It allows users to rate and review individuals, for the expressed purpose of helping you “get the inside scoop on other business professionals.” The site encourages anonymous reviews that can not be erased. In other words, it’s a site intended for unverifiable flaming of individuals.

Surely this would only be inflicted on people who join the site and invite others to review them, right? Wrong. Joining the site is the only strategy offered by the sites creators to manage your reputation once you are already on the site (how convenient for a site looking to rapidly increase membership). You could be on the site gathering anonymous reviews without ever even visiting the site.

Unlike ChatRoulette, which was a neat idea that inevitably was used for some nefarious purposes, Unvarnished seems specifically designed to cause harm to individuals without any real higher calling other than generating press (in which we are complicit merely by condemning the site.)

For veterans of LinkedIn and Ebay this seems a questionable enterprise to engage in. It also seems to be one that the site is not prepared to police, instead relying on information from a third-party site (Facebook) for age-verification and community guidelines for controlling user behavior. The guys who founded this site are savvy and experienced enough to know that neither of these methods will control anything. They are instead relying on optimism that users of the site will be “honest, but fair” in their anonymous reviews.

Do you think this site will create “honest, but fair” reviews that will be useful in a business environment, or just provide a viral way to talk about people behind their back?

Filed under: Internet Safety News