Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 508 posts

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

#321

Post by [deleted] »

srbby wrote: post #302
burneraccount12 wrote: post #295

Dating threads on HN honestly could be confused for incel message boards on Reddit. Some real quotes from this thread: 1. "As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone." 2. "I know a few women that use Tinder: they are alone, late thirties and never got anything serious out of Tinder, but they use it to reassure their attractiveness" 3. "Bumble's rule is that Men are not…

>If you want to improve your dating prospects, get in shape. Anyone can get in shape, doesn't matter how rich or successful or handsome your face is. That's exactly the problem: men have to get in shape to get women who are way below their looks. And that's all. Men see this as unjust. Whether this is unjust or not is a matter of opinion which you may or may not agree on, but it's an opinion nonetheless. Also with 5…

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by r0pchainer »

burneraccount12 wrote: post #295

Dating threads on HN honestly could be confused for incel message boards on Reddit. Some real quotes from this thread: 1. "As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone." 2. "I know a few women that use Tinder: they are alone, late thirties and never got anything serious out of Tinder, but they use it to reassure their attractiveness" 3. "Bumble's rule is that Men are not…

You’ve perhaps forgotten 7. Call men incels because they’re not bowing down and bending over backwards to modern feminism.

To everyone else, get off of dating apps, and if you’re looking for a serious partner for a solid long-term family, find someone from an eastern society, and preferably move to that part of the world. Enjoy whatever lays you get here, but do not get married. Society in the western world is no longer conducive to raising a functional long-term family.

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

#323

Post by devb »

fetbaffe wrote: post #310
burneraccount12 wrote: post #295

Dating threads on HN honestly could be confused for incel message boards on Reddit. Some real quotes from this thread: 1. "As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone." 2. "I know a few women that use Tinder: they are alone, late thirties and never got anything serious out of Tinder, but they use it to reassure their attractiveness" 3. "Bumble's rule is that Men are not…

You don’t seem understand at all. Biologically males are supposed to make contact with females, that is how every species works, but we as humans has now created an environment where that is either frowned upon or ridiculed.

This is untrue. Jacanas, phalaropes, sandpipers, and topi antelopes are just a few counterexamples of your ridiculous assertion.

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

#324

Post by gruturo »

amdavidson wrote: post #276
gruturo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met my previous girlfriend on OkC, with whom I was for 3 years, and the current one, 1 year and counting, hopefully a lot of counting. There are definitely fewer people than e.g. Tinder, but they tend to be a lot more real vs spammers / scammers / engineered profiles designed to keep you in. Most Tinder matches were bots, most OkC matches were actual people. Of course this is with a sample size of 1, in Germany. Yo…

"...with whom I was..." Is that grammatically correct? It appears to be, but wow does it ring strangely in my ear.

English is not my first language, but yes, to my knowledge that is grammatically correct.

Maybe it is a bit ambiguous, although from the context it should be reasonably clear that I was with my (now-ex) girlfriend for that period of time, and not with OkC itself :)

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

#325

Post by vorpalhex »

burneraccount12 wrote: post #295

Dating threads on HN honestly could be confused for incel message boards on Reddit. Some real quotes from this thread: 1. "As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone." 2. "I know a few women that use Tinder: they are alone, late thirties and never got anything serious out of Tinder, but they use it to reassure their attractiveness" 3. "Bumble's rule is that Men are not…

Odd that you take those quotes to all blame women when several of them are about dating apps and the companies that run them.

Your further insinuation that this audience is in anyway "incels" because they don't care for dating apps or struggle at dating is frankly gross. That you immediately start with advice for them to get in shape (as if that's their problem) is awkward and rude and assuming.

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

#326

Post by oldmanthrowit »

SaturateDK wrote: post #279
oldmanthrowit wrote: post #256

OKCupid and Tinder, I think, are the only honest dating sites, and they've gotten far less so the past few years.

Not surprising... the new owners of both OKCupid and Tinder is Match Group.

OKCupid held onto their integrity as long as they could. After the HotOrNot-derived dating apps popped up, and the Match purchase, they definitely lost their way. If I had to date again, I would just meet people at bars, without OKCupid's rather effective personality matches (engaged to one person I met there, married another, slept with dozens), dating apps mostly seem pointless.

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

#327

Post by notyourday »

megous wrote: post #311
notyourday wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only major remaining website that tries to match people based on interests is OKCupid. And even it is changing every few months. Unfortunately, the success of Tinder and move to mobile phones first ruined most of the dating websites, which try to emulate its success. Because people mostly use phone nowadays for dating websites, long profiles are mostly gone, sending long letters is gone, many conversations are…

Yeah, no. Noone needed to read some long ranty message to the end, on the "long form" dating websites of the past. And I doubt there were even that many long form messages from men, given how many women complained in their profiles that they don't respond to "Hi! How're you?" and demanded men to put more effort in.

That's exactly what the long-form dating sites brought to women's inboxes. It was either tomes that would assemble into "War and Peace" within a couple of months without her participation, greatest hits like "So I'm in your area and I am just going to say I'm horny, how about we go to a motel and you give me a blow job" or "Hi. How are you".

Think of it as her being a customer and you being a sales person at Best Buy. You want to sell her a specific TV ( your commission is higher ). Are you:

a) going to start by printing a manual and all technical documentation and chase her around the store with it?

b) walk up to her and say "This TV is great for watching porn" as the intro?

c) Say "Hi. How are you?" and just stand there looking at her?

None of those three approaches are going to close your sale. The customer is telling you that (c) does not work, you sort of understand that (a) does not work and your brain should tell you that (b) is probably not what you lead with. At least I hope your brain tells you that about (b).

So now you have these inputs and she is still in your store and you can still make a sale and a commission. What do men who are unsuccessful with women do? They throw a temper tantrum about her not giving them a chance to sell the TV!

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

#328

Post by matwood »

willmacdonald wrote: post #315
srbby wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you want to improve your dating prospects, get in shape. Anyone can get in shape, doesn't matter how rich or successful or handsome your face is. That's exactly the problem: men have to get in shape to get women who are way below their looks. And that's all. Men see this as unjust. Whether this is unjust or not is a matter of opinion which you may or may not agree on, but it's an opinion nonetheless. Also with 5…

and women don't have to get in shape/loose weight/worry about looks???? Woman have a far tougher time on Tinder style apps. Men are much more visual when choosing, and women have to stand out so much more than men. Getting in shape is just looking after your body and health, you should do that for yourself. Don't think you have to be a 'gym bro'. I have yet to meet a woman who is actually attracted by guys who presen…

> Don't think you have to be a 'gym bro'.

Yeah, people often think either it's try to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or sit on the couch all day. There is a very wide spectrum between those two extremes.

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

#329

Post by 0xcafecafe »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #250
dhnsmakala wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is people misrepresenting themselves something you encounter frequently? Seems like a short sighted move.

It's the paradox of choice. If you get to pick from many, and people are just a photo + description, it's easy to get more picky than you'd normally be. If someone asked me if I want to date an overweight woman. I'd say no. But if I met a great person, and she happened to be overweight, it wouldn't really matter to me that much. So, within limits, I could accept being 'lied to' on a dating website.

Reminded me of this excellent talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

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

#330

Post by bglusman »

LeonM wrote: post #203

I've tried a number of dating websites in the past year, and all of them are like this. First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs. The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engage…

I don't know about the ratios (or how a user looking through could really tell what the true ratio is) but as far as none of them having a decent matching algorithm... I'm a big fan of OkCupid here... (I know they were aquired by match but they still operate independently AFAIK) I interviewed for them 12-13 years ago but never worked there, but they were Harvard math guys who founded SparkNotes and "opensouced" an early version of their basic matching algorithm in 2004 or 2005 on their blog, I'll see if I can find and post here or perhaps someone else will share bit the gist was only using the intersection of questions you both answered, and both of you don't just answer the question but also give how much you care about the answer to this question and "acceptable" answers from your match (if you care at all, if not answers don't matter) and they use those to customize weight of each question in matching... I don't know if it has any special romantic matching qualities but it's WAY better than anything else I've tried for a metric of people worth meeting and who you'll sometimes have INCREDIBLE amount in common with, when match percentage is over 90 or 95%... I've dated two 96+% matches for over a year FWIW.

EDIT: couldn't find original blog post but this article seems to have some of the same math/details in less entertaining form https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2016/06/08/okcupid-math-o...

Post reply on HN