While reviewing our idea we must consider its social and ethical impact. What follows is a collection of considerations that we have anticipated our service may expose.
- Businesses and by default employees could be harmed or have their reputation diminished by users poor reviews. Could lead to loss of business/revenue.
- No way to be certain that crowd reviews are correct. Susceptible to gaming/slander. Rival venues may use it as a platform to belittle rivals however the likelihood would appear small as registering a number of accounts and going through the process of reviewing would be costly in terms of time and would not represent a great strategy by any rival business.
- Hard to reconcile that much of one’s experience is based on the performance rather than the venue. Many venues are perhaps just shells for those attending a hard-core punk concert for example. Those who review venues may actually be reviewing performances and the connection they felt at specific events instead of the actual venues.
- Do contributors of other languages/specific hobbies receive equal possibility to contribute? Some venues may have specific clientele or of a certain nationality that do not feel comfortable contributing. Whether that be through language barriers or privacy reasons linked to the venue. Therefore the venue may become negatively viewed in relative terms because of its inability to attract enough meaningful positive reviews, crucially however to counteract this point it does not mean the venue is any worse. It will only suffer having very few reviews.
- Those not literate or connected to the internet have little way to contribute. Some subsections of society may have less of a say.
- Privacy of contributor has to be protected. Someone could perhaps work out who they are from the venues they review.
- By asking crowds to do the work for free you no longer fairly reward work, if Be Seated asks for contributions, which it would of paid for previously it may recoup an unfairly large proportion of profit which may be to the detriment of those who contribute.
- The time they take to do the reviews might be better served elsewhere.
- People may be passionate to contribute in the community but unaware they are being exploited by Be Seated.
- Those who review have no real say how their reviews are portrayed or used. Service could in theory edit them or present them in such a manner that isn’t representative of a user’s true feeling.
- Their hard work may not in the end be used.
