As its name suggests, The Grade asks people to rank other users on a scale from A+ to F based on three criteria: quality of messages, profile photos and description and, finally, peer review. The latter covers inappropriate behavior online and in person, whether they’re in a relationship or if their profile is fake (or they spam other users) and, in an age of rampant airbrushing, whether they lied about their age or physical appearance.
“ Lying is rampant in online dating. More than half of online daters say dates have ‘seriously misrepresented’ themselves in their profiles. Another study found nearly one-third of men and one-fifth of women say they lied about their age. ”
Lying is rampant in online dating. More than half of online daters (54%) say dates have “seriously misrepresented” themselves in their profiles, a 2013 study by Pew Research Center found. And, in a separate study of users on BeautifulPeople.com, a site where existing members actually rate newcomers to see if they’re attractive enough to belong to the site, nearly one-third of men and one-fifth of women say they lied about their age.
These days, everyone’s a critic. Or so it seems. “It’s kind of like Yelp meets Match,” says Jason Krafsky, who co-founded the advice site The Social Media Couple with his wife, Kelli. On the positive side, he adds, it looks like it will give a broader perspective about a person. “It would be interesting to see the grade of the person by type, family, exes, co-workers,” he adds. “I expect all the Cs and below would likely have to quit the site.”
Like other dating sites that rate users, The Grade doesn’t allow people to write comments to help prevent people from engaging in cyberbullying, says Clifford Lerner, chief executive of SNAP Interactive Inc., US:STVI which makes The Grade. “We want to bring accountability in dating,” he says. “It has led to a lot more low-quality users who were hostile and offensive and the main reason was there was no accountability for their behavior.”
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“If you lie about your age, they’re going to see that you have lied when you meet or they will eventually have to tell you,” Lerner said. Now you can do something about it for the next person who comes along, he says, by rating someone as “not a quality person” and privately choosing the reason why so The Grade can keep track of user behavior, and others can view the overall grade.
The good news: You can also choose to rate someone as a “quality” person. If a reviewer selects “Yes” to their match being a quality person, they are redirected to a screen on their phone where they can select up to five positive hashtags describing that person — including #adventurous, #boyfriendMaterial, #greatSmile, #hilarious, #perfectattendence — that show up on their profile for others to see, but the raters will always remain anonymous.
While many daters grapple with math on their first date (“Could he really be 35 if he graduated in 1985?”) or confess their real age in the face of incontrovertible evidence (“I campaigned for George Bush for president, No. 41 not 43”), there are worse things than lying about your age. Up to one-third of users on some dating sites targeting singletons may actually be married, according to market research firm GlobalWebIndex. Hence, Lerner’s mission: “We want to weed out the creeps.”
This story was updated on Feb. 14, 2017.
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