Brazilian Dude Pissed About His Lulu Rating Sues the Company

A Brazilian law student who’s pissed about his apparently low rating on the no good, very bad dating/non-consensual objectification app Lulu is suing the company, arguing that allowing anonymous and disparaging comments to be posted about a person is unconstitutional under Brazilian law.

According to the Daily Dot, Felippo de Almeida Scolari, a 28-year-old law student toiling away in São Paulo, filed suit against the app in early December, a move that likely influenced the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office to launch a civil inquiry into Lulu and Facebook (for anyone who doesn’t know about “Yelp for boys,” Lulu lets women assign hashtags to men according to their strengths and weaknesses, i.e.#MadJarOpeningSkillz, #GnomeDick). Back when Scolari initially filed suit, he explained to the Telegraph that he was most upset about his Lulu ranking because he hadn’t even authorized his personal details to be used on the app:

I was disgusted because I didn’t authorise my details to be used by this app. I have a girlfriend and she learned about it because a mutual friend sent it to us. She was annoyed because she didn’t like seeing this kind of thing written about me.

As tempting as it may be to talk about shoes and their being on other feet (women, after all, have been dealing with non-consensual internet exposure since the Triassic era of the internet), Scolari is right — Lulu represents the worst reptilian brainstem urges people have to anonymously objectify and expose others. The legal challenges in Brazil have apparently had an effect on Lulu, too — the Daily Dot notes that, since late December, users who’ve tried to log on to Lulu in Brazil are politely informed, “Lulu is on vacation, happy Christmas. We are renovating during the holidays and we will be back soon.”

Lulu has amended its policies to allow men to opt out of the app, but such a change obviously undermines Lulu’s entire purpose. Brazil’s social media laws are being fiddled with right now, and Lulu could be in serious trouble if it can no longer operate as a repository of mean, Yelp-like reviews of humans, since Lulu, though a U.S.-grown enterprise, has so far found its biggest market in Brazil.