The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#51

Post by 55555 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 3:56 AM UTC

air7 wrote: post #42

BadassFractal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gold mine for social engineering. Age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, employment status, interests, aspirations, lots of information based on their Instagram feed about things like travel destinations, friends, parents, pets etc. I'm sure the conversations themselves include a lot of personal information that one wouldn't want floating around the web.

How would one go about monetizing this data?

Make a publicly indexed dating site for people into bestiality and just upload all of these profiles to it. 'Restore' all of the accounts using their emails and password hashes. Like Ashley Madison, charge people money to delete their profiles. Accept only bitcoin.

Thank you for granting me this exercise in creativity... now please don't do this.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#52

Post by ggm » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:01 AM UTC

julienmarie wrote: post #50

ggm wrote: post #48

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple" Now we hav…

I made that mistake when launching my first dating website By trying to be more efficient. Unfortunately, this market is not about dating, it's a dopamine delivery market. You want to keep people long, increase your LTV, show them an ever better possible "match" so you never settle. You don't want them to actually meet someone. Hence the crappy chat features ( while the rest of the tech stack is usually pretty solid…

Right. The apparent business model is "supply service to person x for service y" but the actual business model is "keep user online long enough to make them valuable eyeballs to sell to somebody else, be it another consumer of service, or an advertiser, or whatever"

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#53

Post by nikanj » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:02 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #41

nikanj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand the bit about the noise. It's like saying it's harder to find a partner in a bigger city, because there are so many other people? As long as the gender ratios remain similar, I don't understand how a higher amount of users results in worse dating odds. Are you referring to the paradox where the same ultra-hot 100 people get all the messages, were the site's population 100, 100k, or 100 million?

In a big city a good looking woman will accumulate 5 or maybe 10 thousand right swipes within a few weeks. How is she ever to get to your profile without you doing something to bump yourself to the top of the queue? There's physically no time in the day for her to even swipe that far.

But shouldn’t there also be thousands women on the site? Are you saying there’s 1 woman with 10000 matches, and 9999 women with 0 matches? Or that there are 10000 women, with 10000 matches each?

Wouldn’t it make sense for the dating site to optimize it so that the women with the least matches get to the top of the queue, so you have a better chance of a mutual match?

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#54

Post by matte_black » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #19

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

So, just to get an idea, i can buy 1million profiles including pictures for 130 Euros, which I should be able to match against stolen credit card lists (do those come with addresses?) and even old stolen passwords. I mean, yikes.

It's a gold mine for social engineering. Age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, employment status, interests, aspirations, lots of information based on their Instagram feed about things like travel destinations, friends, parents, pets etc. I'm sure the conversations themselves include a lot of personal information that one wouldn't want floating around the web.

I don't think the conversations are for sale.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#55

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:20 AM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #54

BadassFractal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gold mine for social engineering. Age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, employment status, interests, aspirations, lots of information based on their Instagram feed about things like travel destinations, friends, parents, pets etc. I'm sure the conversations themselves include a lot of personal information that one wouldn't want floating around the web.

I don't think the conversations are for sale.

Nope, probably free for the taking through an obscure, unsecured API endpoint/route.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#56

Post by scythe » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:32 AM UTC

julienmarie wrote: post #50

ggm wrote: post #48

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple" Now we hav…

I made that mistake when launching my first dating website By trying to be more efficient. Unfortunately, this market is not about dating, it's a dopamine delivery market. You want to keep people long, increase your LTV, show them an ever better possible "match" so you never settle. You don't want them to actually meet someone. Hence the crappy chat features ( while the rest of the tech stack is usually pretty solid…

The only honest incentive is if you charge a high price for a successful relationship. The downside is you have to send people a bill when they get married.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#57

Post by aesthesia » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #48

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple" Now we hav…

A college student in the 1960s with no computer experience or access started such a service: https://slate.com/technology/2014/03/before-okcupid-and-matc...

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#58

Post by matte_black » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:36 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #55

matte_black wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the conversations are for sale.

Nope, probably free for the taking through an obscure, unsecured API endpoint/route.

Any case studies?

I once found a vulnerable API endpoint for a staffing company and ended up exporting their whole client database.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#59

Post by therealx » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

air7 wrote: post #42

BadassFractal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gold mine for social engineering. Age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, employment status, interests, aspirations, lots of information based on their Instagram feed about things like travel destinations, friends, parents, pets etc. I'm sure the conversations themselves include a lot of personal information that one wouldn't want floating around the web.

How would one go about monetizing this data?

Some people have - searchable databases for collections agencies/the police/private eyes/anyone looking for someone else.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#60

Post by ggm » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

aesthesia wrote: post #57

ggm wrote: post #48

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple" Now we hav…

A college student in the 1960s with no computer experience or access started such a service: https://slate.com/technology/2014/03/before-okcupid-and-matc...

Hilarious!! Talk about "the road well travelled"

There is no good old idea, but that somebody else didn't think of it first. I bet somewhere out there is a statistician from the 1940s with a box of those cards with holes and notches you used as a DB "join" method over fields saying "...have I got a story for you..." (I used them in school btw. I had a real moment in DB class learning JOIN and thinking back to how we did selection over multiple criteria from these cards)