If you ever want to feel humbled or oddly reassured, Google yourself. You may discover that a bunch of strangers have been publicly scoring your performance, assigning stars for "knows the difference between PIPEDA and PHIPA," "marks fairly," and "tolerates questions that begin with, 'This might be a silly question.’” I discovered a while ago that, along with pretty good Uber and Airbnb scores, I also have an entry on one of those "rate my professor” sites. Mercifully, my students have been kind — so far. But as many colleagues can attest, the experience isn’t always positive for the person rated. A harsh post can linger, attracting clicks long after the semester is over and reputations have moved on.
Once confined to professors, physicians and landlords, these "rate my…" platforms have expanded into areas you’d expect and a few you probably wouldn’t. The latest frontier, which I learned about from my law students as they pitched topics for their video‑podcast assignment, lets people rate their dates from online apps. The intended audience appears, as a general rule, to be other women, who can scan warnings about creepy or threatening behavior before deciding whether to meet a potential partner. On its face, there’s an incredibly clear public‑interest rationale: sharing lived experience to reduce risk and empower informed choices. In other words, if we crowdsource the safety of restaurants and rideshares, why not dating — arguably a heck of a lot more important?
But even a quick and informal privacy impact assessment reveals harder edges. These sites trade in personal information — names, photos, workplaces and even snippets of chat — and render value judgments about character and conduct. Unlike a consumer product, the subject can’t be returned to the manufacturer for repairs and a fresh batch number. The posts are sticky; the algorithms are thirsty; and the advertising technology is delighted. Attention equals revenue, and so a business model emerges where platforms profit at the intersection of free expression and the diminution of another person’s privacy and reputation.
This is where things get complicated and very Canadian. We cherish freedom of expression, and rightly so. We also treat privacy as a quasi‑constitutional value embedded in our laws and jurisprudence. Add the reputational stakes of defamation and the public‑interest role of journalism, and you have a four‑way tug-of-war: privacy, free speech, free press and platform economics. Each has an important claim. None is absolute.
Start with expression. Posts that warn others about predatory or unsafe conduct are not only speech. They can be life‑preserving speech. Our courts have recognized defenses for responsible communication on matters of public interest, and we’ve long accepted that robust commentary, even when sharp‑edged, has a place in a healthy democracy. We also recognize the press’ vital role in surfacing information that the public needs to hear, including about people who would rather not be written about.
But rate my date entries are rarely edited by journalists with access to legal counsel. They’re user‑generated, lightly moderated at best, and often unverified. That doesn’t make them valueless, but it should make us cautious. A false or exaggerated accusation can cause immediate, serious harm — jobs lost, relationships strained, and mental health impacted, all without the procedural safeguards a newsroom might deploy. Even true statements, collected and amplified out of context, can become a form of perpetual digital punishment. Unlike an old newspaper left in the recycling bin, the search box never forgets.
Then there’s privacy law. Canada’s private‑sector privacy statutes focus on purpose limitation, proportionality, safeguards and accountability. They also contain exemptions for journalistic, artistic and literary purposes. Where exactly do crowdsourced rating sites fit? Platforms often claim a public‑interest or journalistic‑adjacent mantle, but that’s obviously not a perfect fit. Meanwhile, the federal reform conversation continues with more debate than closure. For individuals caught in the crossfire, the result is a patchwork of remedies that require time, money, and stamina to navigate — luxuries not everyone has.
And yes, let’s follow the money. These sites typically monetize through targeted ads, which means profiles, behavioral signals and engagement metrics are being harvested and packaged. The more heated the commentary, the more clicks, the more data, the more revenue. That incentive structure leans away from careful verification and towards maximum visibility. Platforms may offer takedown processes or appeals, but the harm can long outlast the remedy if those systems are slow, opaque or inconsistent.
So, what should we do? I don’t pretend there’s a silver bullet, and I’m distrustful of anyone who says there is. But there are constructive, distinctly Canadian steps our regulators could lead, ideally in concert across jurisdictions:
- Provide guidance on when rating sites qualify for journalism‑related exemptions and when they do not. If a platform asserts public‑interest reporting, it should meet standards for verification, corrections and accountability.
- Encourage minimum due process standards like identity verification for posters (privately, not publicly), notice to the subject with a chance to respond, rapid pathways to challenge demonstrably false statements, and clear service-level agreements for review and resolution. Think procedural privacy to match our substantive privacy.
- Limit the collection and display of sensitive identifiers not necessary to the stated purpose. Introduce sunset periods: posts should not be immortal by default.
- Where platforms claim safety as their raison d’être, require demonstrable, independent assessments of moderation quality, bias and consistency, especially for sites that monetize through targeted advertising.
- Publish aggregate stats on takedowns, reversals, average response times and outcomes. Sunlight won’t cure everything, but it discourages performative policies and rewards real stewardship.
None of these ideas mean we have to pick a winner between privacy and speech. It’s about making room for both by insisting that platforms bear responsibility commensurate with the influence they wield and the profits they capture. We already ask this of sectors that handle ostensibly sensitive information, so I don’t see why we can’t consider asking it of businesses that intermediate sensitive judgments about people too.
For my part, my own rate my professor page didn’t declare me the pedagogical equivalent of a one‑star motel with cockroaches — phew. But the fact that I drew a light straw doesn’t absolve the system. A society that leaves reputations to the whims of anonymous star ratings and frictionless virality is one where privacy harms become the cost of doing business, and the business is very good indeed.
To my students who surfaced the ‘rate your date’ site for class discussion: you did what we hope future privacy pros will do — spot a real, messy human problem where law, policy and technology collide. To regulators across Canada: this is fertile ground for practical, harmonized guidance that protects privacy, safety and expression. And to anyone tempted to see this as simple — either "let people speak" or "take it all down" — I recommend the humbling experience of finding your name on any kind of ratings page. It’s a quick education in why nuance matters.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see whether my latest reviews still say "funny, in a dad‑joke kind of way." I choose to see that as a compliment.
Kris Klein, CIPP/C, CIPM, FIP, is the country leader, Canada, for the IAPP.
