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

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161–170 of 508 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dating apps are a failed idea. If you're a man and have any imperfections appearance-wise you'll go on these sites and get no responses. In college I did hundreds of swipes and sent a bunch of messages on OKC and got nothing because I wasn't a human Ken doll. I could've spent all day in the gym and gotten plastic surgery and spent hundreds on whatever wardrobe was in style but why do all that for people who can't app…

The people on dating apps aren't really bad. The problem is the male-female asymmetry. On most dating sites men outnumber women five to tenfold. Additionally, most guys will spam likes and messages to hundreds of women. The hyper selectivity of women on these sites is mostly the result of trying to keep their heads above water. You should be aware that the "experiments" people have posted online aren't necessarily un…

Although I don't condone the "experiments" (of which the bias shouldn't be a concern so long as they're accurately presenting the data - you can't get much more accurate than screenshots, which out of the principle of charity it makes some sense to give credence to at first glance) I wouldn't blame men for feeling bitter and loveless after online dating experience. You'll find countless men (and women, but for different reasons) feeling utterly hopeless and defeated after experiences on online dating apps. You've put yourself out there, people have seen your profile, and people didn't like you. Getting zero matches (other than bots) after a few months can cripple one's self-esteem.

If you were to complain about it, you're either hit with advice from the infamous rules 1 and 2 (1. be attractive; 2. don't be unattractive), or you'll get some advice which is well-meaning but hardly actionable. The one I see most frequently is "try and meet people at bars" (it's hard to imagine this working today, and it almost requires one to be a drinker - and even then it's harder not to come off as creepy) and "join some activity groups".

The real kicker is that many activities that you already enjoy are biased to one gender or the other (say, compsci/engineering hobbies and chess tend to be heavily male-centric in real life meetings), and it's very hard to find the passion for an activity if you started doing it just to try and find a date (and people will usually pick up on the fact). It can also leave one feeling superficial and creepy to do so.

I know many men (and some women) who've decided to give up. Men because they have lost hope on account of not having a strong enough appearance to persuade someone to read their bio, which often reeks of desperation anyway (one may be short, another may be fat, yet another may be ugly, yet another just prefers Android[0][1]). Women because they only feel valued for their appearance, or just for being a woman, rather than what makes them who they are.

I expect the problem to get worse, where online, centralized dating platforms become the norm, and when it's harder to make friends in real life, in which getting to know someone first outranks any consideration of appearances. If you're not already friends with someone, it's very easy to accept or reject on what is immediately visible - one's appearance.

[0] https://www.cultofmac.com/563567/iphone-vs-android-could-be-...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14619158/apple-iphone-goo...

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okcuipd (and Sparknotes!) co-founder Christian Rudder wrote an article entitled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" saying exactly that. When Match Group acquired them, they took it down. I found a mirror, though. https://web.archive.org/web/20190429100515/https://static.iz...

That’s brutal. My new hypothesis is that Match acquired OKC just to get Rudder to STFU.

The OKC blog was also full of good advice and interesting research about how online dating works. In some sense it was probably considered a threat that was revealing trade secrets.

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

#164
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you change if you were to build a new dating app to disrupt the market?

I have a lot of thoughts on this, so excuse the long post (maybe I'll write a blog post on it at some point): First, there's a clear (and artificial) skewing of supply-demand curves. There are probably like 30 (active) guys for every 1 (active) girl on these apps (looking at you, Tinder). This creates an imbalance where women are incredibly selective while men end up being incredibly non-selective (e.g. swipe right o…

There's some group out in New York as I recall that has a curated singles mingling thing. Tell the organizers a little about yourself and what you're looking for, and when they have a group of people that might click they host a nice evening where the whole group shows up and mingles.

Of course, there's still plenty of potential for abuse or simply misuse, but not really any more than any personal relationship. This strikes me as being basically that meetup/date cross you suggested.

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

#167

Juicy part from the actual complaint. Since at least 2013, Defendant has maintained the following five deceptive or unfair practices to induce consumers to subscribe to Match.com and to keep them subscribed. First, until mid-2018, Defendant sent consumers misleading advertisements that tout communications from persons Defendant identified as potentially fraudulent users of Match.com and led consumers to believe that…

> led consumers to believe that the communications are from persons interested in establishing a dating relationship with them.

reminded about that Ashley Madison actual ratio in their database of something like 3 real girls to ten of millions of men, with the employees&bots producing all those "communications"

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

#168

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.

>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. Unfortunately, there is a mathematical theorem (greater idiot theorem) that makes it technically impossible to generate a new random string that becomes an inbox that goes to your inbox. How do I know that it's technically impossible? Because otherwise Gmail…

Outlook and Apple already offer this service, it’s not impossible.

The + need not have been intended as a spam filter; I use it for bona fide filtering of separate clients’ projects.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If only it were possible to encrypt emails, oh well

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's specified in RFC5233 [0], by "standard" I meant codified in RFC form, like everything else we treat as open internet "standards".

[0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5233

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