Roles Flipped
Online, people rate everything, from restaurants to movies to books. Given how freely we rate our purchases and experiences, would it feel odd to be the one getting rated? To be the ratee, not the rater? Uber, the ride sharing app (company), allows for just that! The person getting the ride rates the driver via Uber’s app. But also, as Adam Greenfield says : “What riders are not told by Uber — though, in this age of ubiquitous peer-to- peer media, it is becoming evident to many that this has in fact been the case for some time — is that they too are rated by drivers, on a similar five-point scale. This rating, too, is not without consequence. Drivers have a certain degree of discretion in choosing to accept or deny ride requests, and to judge from publicly-accessible online conversations, many simply refuse to pick up riders with scores below a certain threshold, typically in the high 3’s. ” How did that make you feel? Most of us curse our politicians for not being willin...