The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective • Hacker News Board

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#31

Post by zeveb » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #25

zeveb wrote: post #4

> But in the future, apps could identify sexists/racists/homophobes by their social media activity and preemptively blacklist them from joining. (Maybe this would aid the industry’s problem with harassment, too.) I don't think blackballing people due to statistical inferences about their behaviour is any better than harassment. > I’d guess the findings were racist: OkCupid statistics show that even though people say…

> I don't think blackballing people due to statistical inferences about their behaviour is any better than harassment. What? Harassment is active disruption of your life. Hiding you from someone's search results or "compatibility" list is not. It's not a great future, but let's have some perspective and not equate apples with oranges.

Blacklisting people is active disruption of their lives, too. If it's based on statistical modelling, not actual misdeeds, then it's not even based on what they've done.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#32

Post by bsaul » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

dogruck wrote: post #15

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

To me the frightening thing is that people seem to be unable to differentiate between no data and the negative case. For example * No Fitbit data == "You're inactive * No Open source github commits == "you dont like code" * Few Facebook friends == "you dont have friends" * Few Instagram posts == "You dont do anything"

You're right, but I think you're overly simplifying the problem by ignoring the alternatives. At one end of the spectrum, insurance companies, or dating apps, have essentially no data. So every person is charged equally, which I think is unfair (some might disagree). To improve, companies collect data via a questionnaire. The obvious problem is people lie -- often unintentionally. The next step is to use genuine data…

"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

As someone who worked for an online marketing company and designed its tracking system, i can tell you that’s the most frightening part of it. Everything is logic,and is a logical evolution or improvement of the previous state.

Every intrusion of foreign company into your private life will be done for your own good, or at least for the benefit of the society. You don’t even need an evil genius at the head of some powerful tech company for 1984 to happen, because it’s simply the logic of the whole system we’re living it, that’s meant to go this road.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#33

Post by pwinnski » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:29 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #4

> But in the future, apps could identify sexists/racists/homophobes by their social media activity and preemptively blacklist them from joining. (Maybe this would aid the industry’s problem with harassment, too.) I don't think blackballing people due to statistical inferences about their behaviour is any better than harassment. > I’d guess the findings were racist: OkCupid statistics show that even though people say…

Something can be normal and racist at the same time. Racism is pretty normal.

I think wanting to produce children with someone of the same ethnic background as oneself is very mildly racist, but it's not nothing.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#34

Post by dogruck » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:34 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #32

dogruck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think you're overly simplifying the problem by ignoring the alternatives. At one end of the spectrum, insurance companies, or dating apps, have essentially no data. So every person is charged equally, which I think is unfair (some might disagree). To improve, companies collect data via a questionnaire. The obvious problem is people lie -- often unintentionally. The next step is to use genuine data…

"the road to hell is paved with good intentions" As someone who worked for an online marketing company and designed its tracking system, i can tell you that’s the most frightening part of it. Everything is logic ,and is a logical evolution or improvement of the previous state. Every intrusion of foreign company into your private life will be done for your own good, or at least for the benefit of the society. You don’…

I hear you. I'm concerned about all of the privacy that we are giving away. That's one reason I'm not on Facebook, and decline most "deals" at retailers.

My point is that it's important to consider all of the trade offs.

The Algos have pros and cons.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#35

Post by QAPereo » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:43 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

To me the frightening thing is that people seem to be unable to differentiate between no data and the negative case. For example * No Fitbit data == "You're inactive * No Open source github commits == "you dont like code" * Few Facebook friends == "you dont have friends" * Few Instagram posts == "You dont do anything"

Strictly speaking, most people wouldn’t even understand your first sentence.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#36

Post by forapurpose » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

What I find most disturbing is the viewpoint underlying this article, an emerging faith in AI and a magical ability to divine things about the world, with no discussion of its strengths and limitations, its false positives, false negatives, true positives, etc.

It's starting to approach that point in the adoption curve where skepticism fades and people think of it as the solution for (or threat to) everything, rather than as a tool that is good at some things and not at others and that has characteristics like accuracy. With AI and the widespread blind acceptance of our surveillance society, that could be a dangerous point of view for the public to embrace.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#37

Post by Analemma_ » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

ksikka wrote: post #10

Dating apps/sites that employ the strategy of "get as much data as possible and match intelligently" have failed to compete for users against Tinder, the dumbest, simplest dating app that hardly does any intelligent matching at all. This implies that it's not the sophistication of a dating app that matters, it's the simplicity and ability to attract a userbase that in turn attracts a larger userbase etc in a virtuous…

Tinder is doing a lot more intelligent matching than you think. The CTO of OKCupid (which is owned by the same parent company) was on a podcast a few weeks ago where he briefly discussed some of the algorithmic challenges of Tinder. They include:

- it may not seem like it, but Tinder does try to pick people it thinks are most likely to produce a match, based on-- to be brutally honest-- your attractiveness (as determined by who has swiped for you) and the other person's

- it then orders them approximately from most likely to least likely, but it has to know how often to start over, because eventually as you go down the list you'll eventually start running into people that you're less likely to swipe right on than the people you already passed up

- carefully arranging things so that "super likes" have a reasonable chance of producing a match while also not inundating very attractive people with nothing but super likes from people they will never respond to (which would drive them off the service)

It's a tough challenge and Tinder is not at all a "dumb, simple" dating app.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#38

Post by noir_lord » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #30

bdamm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that people who avoid social networks will start to form increasingly independent social circles from people who generally engage in social networks. Furthermore, these circles will change over the lifetime of individuals. For example, I was an avid user of IRC back in the late '90s. That medium formed my social experience and those people became many of my life-long friends. These days many of my friends f…

IRC is a successful form of social media that centered around communication and enriched our physical lives. It's nice to hear others have also held onto the friendships from that time. When I hear people excited about slack, I see it as the modern day irc client, also focused around communication. ICQ/AIM took a big chunk out of irc, but it still didn't allow people to connect in channels. Now we have networks where…

Not only held on to them but still making new ones, I hang around in an offtopic channel for a framework I don't even use any more because I made friends with a bunch of the people in there, hell I'd say half the channel doesn't use that framework anymore but a lot of us are solo devs in companies that aren't software companies so it's become our de facto water cooler.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#39

Post by noir_lord » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:56 PM UTC

dogruck wrote: post #15

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

To me the frightening thing is that people seem to be unable to differentiate between no data and the negative case. For example * No Fitbit data == "You're inactive * No Open source github commits == "you dont like code" * Few Facebook friends == "you dont have friends" * Few Instagram posts == "You dont do anything"

You're right, but I think you're overly simplifying the problem by ignoring the alternatives. At one end of the spectrum, insurance companies, or dating apps, have essentially no data. So every person is charged equally, which I think is unfair (some might disagree). To improve, companies collect data via a questionnaire. The obvious problem is people lie -- often unintentionally. The next step is to use genuine data…

> The next step is to use genuine data.

Or the way the world is going the next step is a startup that sells an arm that tricks smart watches into thinking they are on a human arm that is exercising regularly...

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#40

Post by thaeli » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC

ksikka wrote: post #10

Dating apps/sites that employ the strategy of "get as much data as possible and match intelligently" have failed to compete for users against Tinder, the dumbest, simplest dating app that hardly does any intelligent matching at all. This implies that it's not the sophistication of a dating app that matters, it's the simplicity and ability to attract a userbase that in turn attracts a larger userbase etc in a virtuous…

Also, for dating sites in particular, doing an excellent job of matching can be bad for business. Successful matches, especially for users seeking long-term monogamous relationships, mean they stop paying for your service. This is most extreme for the services that are practically marriage brokers, and that's where y ou see the "lots of data" approach most often.

At the other extreme, apps like Grindr and to a slightly lesser degree Tinder aren't hurt by doing "too good" a job, since more of their users don't stop looking because they found one good match.