Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me • Hacker News Board

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#211

Post by EyeballKid » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #36

Anyone notice that the media is eating this up? But let me tell you the media also lent its support to this website. I was watching CNBC a few years ago and they had the CEO of Ashley Madison on and had a great time talking about their "brilliant business model", and how great the site was. No one seemed morally repulsed then. Well I was curious just from a business perspective (and curious how many people would actu…

That kind of site appears to be soooo easy to get media coverage for. I wrote a blog post a couple of years back covering a similar UK-based site and how good they were at getting stories planted in the papers. Those free-loving libertines at the Daily Mail especially seem to lap it up :-)

http://unsourced.org/blog/illicit-sex-and-free-advertising.h...

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#212

Post by rdancer » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #143

mayaross wrote: post #34

One thing that struck me about this is that all the messages from people worried their data are from men. Troy even states that explicitly: "very close to 100% of the emails I got were about men having accounts on the site". Why is that? Is it because men are more likely to cheat, or because men are more likely to need the help of online services to do so? I suspect both are true, but can say with confidence that the…

Yes, technically men cheat a little more than women, according to studies that aren't done by dating companies. But the 'why' is varied. It's illogical to say "they cheat because they are more likely to cheat". They cheat because of many factors, but according to surveys, they cheat more often out of a need for physical satisfaction, while women cheat more out of a need for emotional or intimate satisfaction. As far…

> men cheat a little more than women, according to studies

Women admit to cheating less than men, and this is reflected in a bias of studies whose methodology includes self-reporting. In general, women self-report about one third less sex partners than men. That presents a curious mathematical problem: who are all those extra men partnering with?

Let's say the average reported number of sex partners for males is 11.7 [1]. Now that means that the set of men has a number of connections into the set of women times 11.7. Say, the number of men in the set is 31M [2], then the number of connections is 362.7M. For the set of women, the numbers are 7.7, 32.2M, and 247.94M, respectively.

The connections can terminate in either of the sets, so we can have M-M, M-F, or F-F connections.

At one unlikely extreme, we could have no heterosexual (M-F) pairings at all, so that means 11.7 gay partners for men, and 7.7 lesbian partners for women. Clearly, this isn't the reality, not even in the UK. But even if we map all the connections from the female set to males, we'll end up with 247.94M hetero connections, no lesbian connections, and 114.76 connections from the male set onto itself, or 8.0 hetero + 3.7 gay connections per male, and 7.7 hetero + 0 lesbian connections per female.

There may be a large number of spinsters, and a small number of gay people may be skewing the mean away from the mode for the males, but the important take-away is that, mathematically, hetero-sexual partnerships always draw from both sets equally, and therefore the mean number of heterosex partners is always the same across the whole population.

[1] http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Results-of-UK-S... [2] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-...

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#213

Post by roymurdock » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #201

roymurdock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that women (and men for that matter) find confidence attractive. You don't have to be in a relationship to be confident. I would be careful of conflating the two. From my experience, most women are not interested in holding sex as a trump card. Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will a…

> Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals. transfire explicitly was addressing the condition of men seeking sex , which is not the same as mean seeking "companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of cr…

Interesting. I like your argument a lot. Its logical conclusion is the prostitution industry, which is dominated by men paying for sex with women.

Still, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that most people are looking for some mix of physical intimacy (sex) and emotional intimacy (companionship).

There will always be imbalances where needs are not met, but to posit that most women use sex as a tool to manipulate men that are less than perfect doesn't sit well with me.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#214

Post by njharman » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

marrs wrote: post #99

njharman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name…

Facing divorce because your name appeared on a list is more than just embarrassing.

To expand on Retra comment. Either;

You are facing divorce cause you cheated on your spouse.

Despite not cheating, your name is on list. Your spouse is still divorcing you because there were other issues and it was coming name on list or not. Or, they're psyco (can't understand name on list is not cheating) and good riddance.

You have healthy marriage.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#215

Post by Retra » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:15 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #198

Retra wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're painting an incredibly immature picture of how real relationships work.

Relationships, sure--but courting appears to be what is being talked about here. A subtle but very important difference.

You're making a distinction that I wasn't; what I've said applies to courting just as well.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#216

Post by njharman » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:16 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #95

njharman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name…

You're assuming the false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content, including the bad stuff. I would think it would be trivial to collect relatively innocent concepts and flood the net with them. Such that the nym "VLM" would now and forever be associated solely with thousands, perhaps millions, of facebook posts of cute kitten memes. That would be easy to filter, but its not like w…

"Innocent concepts" are in the eye of the beholder.

And don't forget the True you will still be online. A service that only works if you yourself are limited to no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary. Is really no service at all.

> false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content,

It probably does or will be easily detected and machine filterable. There's already algo's that make good guess if some texts were written by same person.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#217

Post by Frondo » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #205

Frondo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think very few people would consider cheating on one's spouse or partner to be a form of white lying. I also do business with a lot more people where I'm doing business with the owner themselves. If I'm looking someone in the eye and shaking their hand to do a deal, and then they turn around and lie to their spouse (someone they ostensibly owe a lot more to than me), that's hard for me to reconcile. Maybe you don't…

All the CEOs I'd consider "evil" have been faithful from what I can tell. You're making an argument you can't support for reasons that seem 100% emotionally hysterical to me. "Look at other women?! I'm not buying his product!" This is no different than "A Hindu running a company? No thank you sir! I only go with good honest Christian men!" In a large company the CEO does little more than attract investor money and re…

I do not find people who cheat on their spouses or partners trustworthy. That is my argument. You can feel differently. Calling my argument hysterical or unsupported makes me think you don't know what those words mean.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#218

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

rdancer wrote: post #212

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, technically men cheat a little more than women, according to studies that aren't done by dating companies. But the 'why' is varied. It's illogical to say "they cheat because they are more likely to cheat". They cheat because of many factors, but according to surveys, they cheat more often out of a need for physical satisfaction, while women cheat more out of a need for emotional or intimate satisfaction. As far…

> men cheat a little more than women, according to studies Women admit to cheating less than men, and this is reflected in a bias of studies whose methodology includes self-reporting. In general, women self-report about one third less sex partners than men. That presents a curious mathematical problem: who are all those extra men partnering with? Let's say the average reported number of sex partners for males is 11.7…

> mathematically, hetero-sexual partnerships always draw from both sets equally

Uh, no, not from the sets under study. You've ignored time and space. The sets under study are the set of men and set of women currently living in a particular countries. The sets from whom their past partners are drawn (even assuming purely heterosexual relationships) may include people no longer living at the time of the survey, as well as people who are alive, but not living in the country under study (either at the time of the survey, or even ever.)

If you managed to get responses from representative sample of all men and women who had ever lived (which, you know, is logistically tricky), then you could validly argue that all heterosexual partnerships must draw evenly from both groups. But you don't, so you can't.

The imbalance could just be that UK men are more likely to have had past relationships with women not currently living in the UK than UK women are to have had with men not currently living in the UK. (It could also be the kind of reporting bias you suggest, and there are certainly other sociological reasons to suspect that such reporting bias is at least partially to blame -- its just not, even without bringing into it questions of same-sex pairings, the kind of mathematical necessity you make it out to be.)

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#219

Post by gnufied » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 7:31 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #168

Karunamon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve is known for asking for PII for things such as recovering accounts that have been hacked (to wit: fax in your driver's license or other photo id and a physical CD key from one of your registered games)

In same time Steam support accounts are completely independent from Steam store accounts. Anyway my point is: Steam is not dating website or social network that collect tons of your personal information. By not having account deletion procedure they don't hurt anyone's privacy, but just save average user from one more possible pain in ass for no reason (because they wouldn't be able to delete accounts for real anyway…

For majority of users who use any kind of ingame purchase (dota, TF2 hats) - Steam stores credit card information etc. I know one can pay using Paypal but I dunno how many users use that option. So, Steam does store personal information of users period. It is not very different from any other service.

On other hand, allowing users to delete their accounts can help with kicking serious gaming addiction. It usually takes time before you can level up a new account for playing at skill levels you were. Part of me thinks, Valve does not allow deletion of accounts precisely because of this.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#220

Post by Frondo » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

betenoire wrote: post #195

Frondo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about cheating because it tells me that the person is OK with lying to people close to them. If they're OK lying to their spouse, my concern is that they're also OK lying to a customer. If people want to have an open marriage or practice polyamory, fine, that's entirely up to them. The deception is the thing here that is problematic.

And how do you know which is which? If you see a name that you recognize that used AM, do you ask them to clarify which bucket they belong in, or do you just assign them one yourself?

The site, as far as I know, bills itself as a place to find cheating partners.

The poly people I know seem to have their own places for finding potential relationship partners. The poly people I know are also all quite open about their relationship choices.

If I saw a name I recognized on Ashley Madison, I'd assume they wanted to cheat and keep that hidden from their partners.