Part of the problem of rating inflation comes with the removal of problematic listings.

My girlfriend & I discovered large patches of mushrooms growing out of the master bedroom carpet in an otherwise very unhealthy AirBnB. I wanted to write feedback on the house, but I couldn't warn others since AirBnB's policy in such cases is to remove the listing. I spotted the listing not long after with a clean slate. I'm sure they cleaned the place, but I'm also sure they didn't tear out the floors and fix the root problem. Too bad no one will know since the ratings won't be a source of info in such cases.

The way to solve this would be to have an overlay everywhere, such as the one that tha browser extensions afford where you can see a layer of reviews that are truly independent.

Maybe AR will open a new door there... I know it would be an extremely hard problem to solve - it might involve cutting-edge techniques in AR, AI, computer vision and so on - but I think there might be a billion dollar market there.

The pain certainly exists as reviews could be useful, but they're trash almost everywhere (Uber, AirBnB, Google, Amazon, Deliveroo, etc.) due to platform-owner incentives.

Interesting. I wouldn't try to do this with "true" AR (magic leap / hololens) - not enough benefit - but just a location aware layer would do it.

Seems like you'd want to pair it with a browser extension (want to avoid making that booking in the first place), and the back-end engineering is very similar to what (IMO/AFAIK) you'd need to support similar reality overlays in "true" AR.

I mention AR because browser extensions would work well on the web, but you'd only be able to do the same on mobile with a system that cooperates, and there's a slim chance that Apple and Google - esp. the latter - would allow something of the sort to materialize. Plus of course with AR you could take it to the streets!

As for the business model of this independent platform, one could still make a ton of money out of it as long as its revenue-generating incentives were disaligned from the review scores, and I really think that's not such a hard problem to solve.

Ohhh. Phone as browser in physical space, AR as extendible medium.... I like.

For the AR-ish part... Oh, widgets! Right? Like clock, or weather, or the news thing. Constantly (modulo performance) update what you're showing on the widget based on location. Or dynamic notifications; "this is how many reviewed locations we know of at this location".

>on Airbnb is that everyone just rates everyone high to either avoid rating retaliation

I thought this is a non-issue because airbnb withholds reviews until both parties have written a review?

>or to avoiding seeming like a dick / hard customer. I suspect it's the latter -- there really is no upside to being an honest critic.

I personally don't understand this. If a place is legitimately bad, it's not being a "dick / hard customer", it's telling the truth. The upside is that you added slightly more information to the market.

Ever consider that she gets higher ratings because shes a woman?

True, it's also based on ethnicity. I when i lived for a while in a country with a wide anti-Russian sentiment, i saw my Uber rating going down, moving to the one more friendly to Russians, it went up... I would assume than minority people have it hard.

I gave up giving anything other than 5 because if I do that, I get hounded for an explanation. I know they think this "proves" their dedication to excellence!!1!, but it mostly proves that the ratings are essentially bullshit.

I’m in the same boat. I’m not worried about ratings creep for providers; normalizing based on a user’s other ratings is a solved problem. But being forced to write 300 characters about why you gave a 4 instead of a 5 means I only rate less than 5 to legitimately warn the public.

> I've never made an Uber driver wait for me, I'll greet the driver, and I can't imagine how someone can be a better customer.

This is really the bare minimum. I know a ton of drivers who care less about wait time than some other annoying tics their customers might have. I've lived in a region where the median rating seems to be around a 4.4. I've never met someone with a 4.1 uber rating.

I'm going to postulate that you're being VERY rude in a way you don't know. Maybe have someone ride with you and critique your behavior.

Do you have an explanation for this? It sound like something straight from science fiction about dangers of automated society.

Does it need a lot of explaining? Presumably the workers are in it because they need the money. If a customer hits your rating they're threatening your ability to make the money you need, so there's no reason not to ding their rating in retaliation if they ding yours. And the other workers don't have a reason to care, you're making their clients more nervous to hand out imperfect scores too.

It's a regional thing. I have thousands of rides and a 4.86 so I know that's easy. But I know that drivers in India and Turkey just always fire off these 3 star ratings and stuff so when you travel you gotta be careful.