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Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

nytimes.com

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Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#151

Post by Shaddox »

I worked for about 3/4th of a year for a dating website. The market is ...unique, to put it nicely. Employees are constantly poached. When my boss told me this I couldn't believe it but it actually happened. During lunchtime, it became an often occurrence for someone to come and talk to me to try and reveal secrets.

Also they had a lot of people on payroll to pretend they're available girls on the website, in order to increase engagement and lure subscribers. One of them was a huge biker dude and it was hilarious. The truth is that on all these dating website, as someone else pointed out, the ratio is about 30 guys to 1 gal so building a dating platform is hard.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#152

Post by cameronbrown »

dvt wrote: post #63
cameronbrown wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there's a clear (and artificial) skewing of supply-demand curves. What makes it artificial? Also, there's strong evidence that roughly twice as many women have reproduced than men across human history [0], so if we're reducing it to a number game women have always had the ability to be more picky than guys. What's different today is Tinder/OLD let's them access a much larger area, whereas in the past they wo…

Even if this were true (the research is speculative at best), the dating app pool is skewed far worse than a 1:2 F:M ratio. > ... they're just a more efficient dating market than in times past. This might be true if women were actually going on dates and starting relationships. Except that no one is. We are a lonely bunch[1]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials...

Disappointing tbh..

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#154

Post by davnicwil »

CM30 wrote: post #145
bigwavedave wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the only profession aside from medicine that exists to eradicate itself.

Not quite. Teaching counts too, with the the end result of a good tutor being that they're not needed any more (same with a college or university).Quicker you pass say your driving test, the less money the instructor makes.

> Quicker you pass say your driving test, the less money the instructor makes

Only if people never recommend driving instructors to friends and family. If they do, a driving instructor who consistently has people passing their test quickly is much more likely to make more money long term

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#155

Post by foobar_ »

caseysoftware wrote: post #109

Years ago, I briefly consulted for a dating website and fundamentally their business model is broken and their incentives are completely misaligned with the users': https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website

That was a good read.

> Even when you are paying for the product, you may still be the product..

Damn ... can you think of any other segment where this works as well?

From my experience, most fraudulent businesses seem to be with one time customers.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#156

Post by __david__ »

newnewpdro wrote: post #107
jdm2212 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing with a gmail address -- just do myemail+uniqueid@gmail.com, because gmail drops everything after the + for routing the email but still tells you which address it was sent to.

Unfortunately, being part of the standard, it's become fairly common to strip this from email addresses. It's more effective to have an entire domain at your disposal and just invent $vendor-specific-thing@mydomain.com whenever an email address is needed. On the server end all you need is a catchall to handle it, and you can blackhole whatever addresses become spam magnets (while also knowing which vendor's responsib…

It is not part of any standard. + is a valid email address character and is not special in any way.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#157

Post by systemcluster »

input_sh wrote: post #137
Splatter wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is that very many sites know of this method and simply trim the "+uniqueid" from a gmail.com address before inserting it into their database.

Pay for your email address to solve the problem. On my email provider, I can create a catchall alias: *@example.com will end up in my johndoe@example.com mailbox. So, instead of doing johndoe+hn@example.com, I can do hn@example.com.

If your email provider does not offer a catchall alias option, this is also achievable with an email forwarder (e.g. mailgun), provided you are ok with giving another service provider access to the content of your received mails.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#158

Post by Twisell »

guessmyname wrote: post #95
jdm2212 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing with a gmail address -- just do myemail+uniqueid@gmail.com, because gmail drops everything after the + for routing the email but still tells you which address it was sent to.

I used to do this, but it is troublesome some times because some websites use libraries that strip or replace the plus sign and the final email ends up being an address that you don’t have access to. Most of the time this is not a problem because you can create the account again with the correct email, but I have lost a few good usernames in some popular websites because I pulled this trick on them, Gravatar is one o…

I was once at the receiving end of business talk clearly addressed to someone else on my gmail account.

At first I believed it was some scam but it soon got clear that my account was accidentally siphoning mail from someone using this supposedly clever scheme...

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#159

Post by masonic »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #119
dvt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer? They are all trash and the space is ripe for disruption. The best of the bunch is probably Hinge, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel. But like I said, getting a date off these apps is like pulling teeth. I've reverted to asking girls out in person at coffee shops, social gatherings, etc. Even if you get rejected, it at least makes for a good story.

Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel are trash outside of extremely large metro areas. Bumble is ok, it's more user friendly than Tinder. OkCupid has a terrible user interface but in terms of pulling dates it's been the best for me. Good on you for talking to girls directly, that really is the way to go. Super hot women don't tend to bother with online dating, and if you can approach confidently you'll be able to land much h…

OKC wasn't useless back when usernames were unique and persistent; you could save the URLs for review later.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#160

Post by torben-friis »

Lewton wrote: post #146
yumario wrote: post #45

Rewriting one of my earlier comments: I have used Tinder (owned by Match) before and it was one of the must frustrating experiences ever. First, they do shady things with your data. Since I made a Tinder account I been getting constant ads for random dating sites. This have been going on for months. God knows how many companies now have my data. Second, they employ dark patterns: 1) Easy account deletion. Why does th…

Re 2. They changed it so swiping left on someone who liked you no longer decreases the like counter Also before that if you were out traveling the likes you got while on the road will not show up in your stack when you leave the area where you got them Also if you swipe left on someone and you’re in their stack and they swipe right on you, they’ll show up in the count The rest is still super scummy, but the “rules” o…

I've used tinder in the past, and I remember there were recommendations online to completely delete your account and start from scratch from time to time if you suddenly found yourself unsuccessful, to get around potential shadow bans or just having fallen in a pit of the algorithm.

Do you happen to know if that was a valid strategy, and if it still is?

I always wondered if it was/is actually possible to completely reset your data, considering they have pretty strong links to you like payment information.

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