Fake ratings

https://odb.org/2025/02/18/no-fake-ratings

Ephesians 4:22–32 (NIV): 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body. 

This thing about false ratings is that it is very much a challenge of our contemporary living. I don’t think we had this issue more than 10 years ago. It’s a recent phenomenon due to the birth and growth of e-hailing like Uber (entered Malaysia in 2014) and Grab with the latter taking over the former for the Southeast Asian markets in 2018.

The Chinese have this belief that we should always give others a new road to walk on. Meaning to say, rather than destroy someone’s livelihood, we let them continue to make a living. In other words, the same way we treasure and protect over our own rice bowls, we don’t go around disturbing or destroying other people’s rice bowls. That probably explains why some people will still give a 5-star rating even for a terrible ride experience. We possibly sympathise with the driver’s predicament needing to drive Grab for a living, knowing very well that Grab actually provides people who are unemployed or laid off a lifeline to continue earning without resorting to crime.

Yet, as Christians, we are called to speak the truth and not perpetuate lies. We could argue that Ephesians 4:25 was written in the context of speaking falsehood to cause harm or, as per the Old Testament law of do not give false testimony against your neighbour. Perhaps it could be rationalised that way, but the Word of God nevertheless stated that we are to put off falsehood and lying, and not speaking the truth is falsehood.

I believe the practice of putting off falsehood is a good one as one lie may lead to another, and after some time, it becomes a habit to lie and may permeate our lives. We will eventually forget our own lies, and thus, in our inconsistency, we will come across as speaking with forked tongues. Surely, as children of God and a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ, we need to preserve and protect His name in our lives!

I think the solution to this predicament is to give a 5-star for a genuinely good experience and a 1-star, for a really bad experience or just don’t rate at all. Compliment when praise is due, but there is perhaps no need to praise (give a 5-star rating) when it is bad. Why lie and compromise our own standards to give an undeserved compliment? As believers, we try to be truthful as much as possible, but if the truth destroys, we should refrain unless speaking the truth is necessary to rebuild someone and make him or her a better person.