An honest opinion?

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Ratings have become increasingly vital currency for helping us choose businesses or services and deciding how to spend our money. Review sites such as TripAdvisor have irrevocably altered the hotel and hospitality industries, for instance, while 84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation.   

The reliance on ratings is even more keenly felt in the gig economy, where they play a fundamental role in how peer-to-peer platforms such as Uber and Airbnb operate. Customers turn to ratings to decide which services they use and, in many cases, feedback is directly linked to a provider’s overall success – for instance, Airbnb listings with ‘superhost’ status receive greater exposure in the site’s search results, while a bad Uber rating could cost the driver their job. 

Perhaps this is why positive reviews seem to have become the norm on gig- economy platforms, with little in the way of poor ...