As the BBC reports, Peeple’s website, Twitter and Facebook page were all taken offline earlier today. The closure of the social media accounts left many of the app’s haters stunned. However, it wasn’t long before some visitors to the peepleforpeople.com website were being displayed a new landing page.
The page says “Join the positive revolution #oct12”. The BBC reports that one of the app’s co-founders, Julia Cordray, said in an email: “We look forward to October 12, 2015 where we will be taping for an exclusive talk show and will expose our concept to the world. World’s largest positivity app for positive people launching November 2015 on iOS and Android.”
Cordray did not provide any details on what the “exclusive talk show” will involve and gave no explanation of the sudden closure of the app’s social media accounts. Peeple’s premise of allowing anybody to publicly rate and review each other online, without any opt-out option, has led to widespread negative criticism of the app and its founders.
The strange closure of Peeple’s social media accounts has suggested that the entire app may be a hoax. Myth-busting site Snopes.com recently published a report that highlights how vague many of the app’s details are, although Cordray later publicly debunked this theory on LinkedIn. Even so, the sudden swarm of media reports and subsequent removal of websites has already led many to conclude that Cordray is pulling off an elaborate attention-seeking exercise.
Cordray claims Peeple will be the “world’s largest positivity app” despite the flurry of negative criticism and widespread rejection it has received so far. She recently admitted she had received death threats from members of the public, many of whom have posted negative feedback online only to have it removed from Peeple’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
Opponents have noted the hypocrisy of this, calling on Peeple to abandon itself immediately if it won’t even play along with its own app. Co-founders Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough’s aim to build what they claim is only a “positive” system has so far resulted in only negative feedback – feedback that they seem rather too willing to ignore.
