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Ratings Gone Wrong - David Perell

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Historically, the internet has been a gift for people with obscure tastes. I like Derek Thompson’s framing: the internet is like Tokyo. The Japanese city is famous for all kinds of strange shops, which make economic sense in a city with 40 million people, but not in a small city like Des Moines, Iowa. That’s why, on the internet, you can be niche at scale. From dating to Airbnb apartments to Pez Dispensers on eBay, the internet is an incredible matching machine. A newsletter like Monday Musings works better as a global email newsletter than a local neighborhood magazine. If the internet wasn’t so unbelievably massive, I wouldn’t write it. For reasons I’ve discussed before, mass media catered to the masses. That’s why the commerce companies who advertise on mass media focus on the averages, not the extremes. The internet is different. It’s a gift to people with obscure tastes and strange obsessions. Unfortunately, five-star ratings cater to a world of averages. By de-risking our experie

Five-star rating systems are broken. And for all the greatness of the internet, I can’t believe we’re still stuck with them. Historically, the internet has been a gift for people with obscure tastes. I like Derek Thompson’s framing: the internet is like Tokyo. The Japanese city is famous for all kinds of strange shops, which make economic sense in a city with 40 million people, but not in a small city like Des Moines, Iowa. That’s why, on the internet, you can be niche at scale. From dating to Airbnb apartments to Pez Dispensers on eBay, the internet is an incredible ma

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