Mentimeter should not automatically solicit feedback from a presenter's audience without the presenter's consent. As a paying customer, I use Mentimeter as a tool to conduct interactions that I design with my audience. I therefore find the recently introduced mandatory feedback feature remarkably intrusive. Mentimeter now independently asks my audience to evaluate my session – including its structure, clarity, examples, and pace – without me requesting or authorising this, and apparently without giving me any way to disable it. This is not just an issue in teaching. Consider using Mentimeter for a single audience question during a job talk, conference presentation, customer pitch, or another sensitive professional setting. Mentimeter may subsequently ask the audience to rate the presentation. Participants have little reason to know that this evaluation was initiated by Mentimeter rather than by the presenter. In a job talk, for example, this could create the bizarre and potentially damaging impression that the candidate is asking the selection committee to rate their performance. The fundamental issue is presenter autonomy. Mentimeter provides the technical platform, but it cannot know the social or professional context in which that platform is being used. It should therefore not add its own questions to an interaction initiated by the presenter. Whether, when, and how my audience is asked for feedback should be my decision. This feature should be opt-in. At the absolute minimum, paying customers must be able to disable it.
