Bitrated.com originally started as an arbitrage service to provide consumers with the “protection" of what they have come to expect. The Bitrated Payment System allows for users and merchants to make reversible e-commerce transactions, since GPG contracts are apparently too hard to grasp. The two parties doing business each nominate and agree on a third party to act as a trust arbiter. A transaction is then structured through the payment system requiring 2 of 3 of parties wallet signatures to release the funds to an address.

On February 18th, Bitrated relaunched their service focusing on their reputation system which is an abominated version of the real Web of Trust. Their FAQ specifies ratings are determined through three components:

Reviews: Historical ratings for trades the user was involved with.
Web of Trust: Trust relationships within the Bitrated Web of Trust network (see more below).
Online presence: We allow users to leverage their pre-existing online reputation by extracting and analyzing various metrics from their online accounts, such as their Reddit karma, StackOverflow reputation, Twitter followers and more.

Any sort of Bitcoin financial rating based even partially on “Reddit karma” or “Twitter followers” seems nominal in value. Nearly 3 years ago, hanbot stated about the true WoT:

Millions of dollars' worth of trade happened [on the WoT] (literally). Compare that to the measly tens of k's or whatever in any other venue. So no, the WOT is for the BTC millionaires, the other venues are where silly/geeky/whatever kids gather.

"We provide the tools, but let the market decide. It's all up to you.”, says the Bitrated FAQ. However if the tools are bad, what can you do?