[btilly]

I heard about you guys on NPR, but didn't call in because I was driving. I have a few concerns.

1. Your basic value proposition rests on getting people to pay money to have the ability to respond to things said about them. That's going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

2. Many people (like me) have deliberately chosen to not join facebook. We can't even try to address issues we see.

3. Identity is much more complicated than you acknowledge. My name is Ben Tilly. I'm at Google. People by the same name can also be found in a US college, doing graphic design in New Zealand, and being a nurse in England. Just to name a few that come up off of the top of my head. How do you tell which Ben Tilly should be able to respond to a bad comment about someone named Ben Tilly at Rent.com?

4. Anonymity is not so easy to protect. Only a small fraction of people comment online. A given manager only manages a small number of people. If a negative comment appears, frequently it is surprisingly easy to make an educated guess. If the comment is at all detailed, an analysis of writing style will usually confirm that guess. Unless a large fraction of people in your environment are commenting, the level of anonymity is limited. (Particularly if the boss can get access to proxy logs saying who was visiting getunvarnished, when.)

[randallsquared]

Many people (like me) have deliberately chosen to not join facebook. We can't even try to address issues we see.

I wouldn't call this "can't". If you actually couldn't use their preferred identity provider, that would be different (and it could happen; I had a lot of trouble getting a Facebook account at all a few years back, due to my unusual name). But choosing not to sign up is not the same as not being able to sign up.

[btilly]

In NPR they said that they had checks that your Facebook account was sufficiently well established. They didn't say the exact criteria, but my impression was that it needed to have existed for a certain time, and have had certain levels of activity on it. This is to prevent people from creating throw away accounts, commenting libelously, then disappearing.

The unintended consequence, of course, is that people who don't have a Facebook account can't just create one. Instead you have to create one, use it until you have a sufficiently well-established identity, and only then can you use their service. Which is a high barrier for people who actually don't have a Facebook account.

[outotrai]

I think he means that he shouldn't be obligated to sign up for or get involved with any service that he doesn't want to just to protect his reputation. Sure, you don't have to pay the mafia protection money, but what happens if you don't?