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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

#421

Post by CuriouslyC »

toastal wrote: post #348
CuriouslyC wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the fact that deceptive profiles negatively impact the experiences of everyone they interact with. Robbery? People just want to enrich themselves. Rape? People just want to pleasure themselves. The nerve of society to criminalize these behaviors, we should all get the fuck off our collective high horses.

If you're going to say adjusting a photo angle is equivalent to rape, please never use a dating website.

If you're going to be so obtuse that you can't understand a logical analogy, please never debate people on the internet.

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

#422

Post by guskel »

jellicle wrote: post #352
notyourday wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In my empirical observation it is not correct. Dating is local. The proportion of men and women on the sites in a locality will roughly match the proportion of men to women in the dating pool…

This. The experience of women on dating sites is this: lots of messages from men that basically say (often exactly this): "Wanna fuck?" Like, that's the whole message. Except there's almost always multiple misspellings, no matter how short the message is. So it's more like "U wanna fuk?". And then those men go on their local message boards and complain that no one is responding to that pithy, well-crafted message and…

It really is that hard though. There's plenty of men that follow all of your advice and receive hardly any matches.

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

#423

Post by guskel »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #194
vanderZwan wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That blog was amazing - one of the best overviews of the realities of dating published anywhere at any time.

The Dataclysm book is even better and goes into more detail.

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

#424

Post by xwdv »

mcv wrote: post #213
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 think the most effective way to stand out is for women to contact men. With men spamming all women with meaningless messages, there's little point for women to respond to men contacting them. But if a man received a message from a woman, it's more likely they're real and not a fake profile, and that they're actually interested. But dating sites that create fake profiles and use all these dark patterns to try to con…

It sounds like a good idea, but on average women are the absolute worst at first messages.

A site where women message first means their first message is a limp cold “Hey”, after which you are expected to craft some sort of interesting and thoughtful message for them to grace you with their response, otherwise they’ll just move on to one of the other hundred men available.

Online dating cannot work without the asymmetry in the dating game being resolved.

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

#425

Post by dang »

lightedman wrote: post #411
dang wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an account is established, we usually tell people we're banning them and why. Shadowbanning on HN is mostly for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or trolling. You're right, though, that there are still false positives in such cases, and those suck.

"Shadowbanning on HN is mostly for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or trolling." You routinely shadowban people you disagree with. Or post-limit them. You don't get to act innocent here when I guarantee you're just as guilty of these dark patterns as every other site.

> You routinely shadowban people you disagree with

We don't ban people we disagree with. If we did, hardly anyone would be left unbanned.

As for shadowbanning, the practice is as I described it: if the account is established, we tell people we're banning them and why (your account was an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15615092). If an account is new, different rules apply: we (meaning some combo of software and moderators) have to make a guess about whether the account is legit or not. If the guess is that they're spamming or trolling, we shadowban the account. We guess wrong sometimes, but we do what we can to correct those cases. And we're always happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe that they'll follow the site guidelines in the future.

Rate limiting is a separate issue. If an account posts too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or gets involved in flamewars, we rate limit how much they can post in the future. It's annoying and crude, but it's one of the few software tools we have to prevent comment quality from degenerating too quickly. Again, people are welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we take the rate limit off if they commit to not repeating that behavior. It's not hard to get an account unbanned or unpenalized if you really want to use HN as intended.

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

#426

Post by notyourday »

megous wrote: post #356
notyourday wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Think of it as her being a customer and you being a sales person at Best Buy." Well that's the wrong approach right there. I'm glad to serve the needs of the other person, but I'll not approach someone with this mindset at the beginning (like sales people have to do). My approach at the beginning is that of exploration, and careless fun. I certainly don't want to start a relationship in a subservient role. Anyway, h…

> Well that's the wrong approach right there. I'm glad to serve the needs of the other person, but I'll not approach someone with this mindset at the beginning (like sales people have to do).

And how is it working for you? Because this seems to be the approach advocated and practiced by the "nice guys" who complain that they can't get a date.

> You walk up to someone, start opening your mouth for a word, and they swipe you aside, ignoring you.

It is great! It is called "No product market fit!"

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

#427

Post by taigeair »

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'm actually working on a new type of dating app that addresses this conflict of interest.

Most dating apps want you to be addicted (single and swiping) to their screens so that they can keep earning billions of dollars from subscriptions, power-ups, and ads. Even if you aren't paying, they want you addicted to their platform for their paying members. There is a serious conflict of interest.

We are different. We understand users want to find someone, so they get on with their lives-- to have amazing life experiences with someone they like. We give our users exactly that and our main revenue stream is tied to that. Just like Uber and Lyft sell rides because customers want rides-- we sell adventure dates because our users want breathtaking dating experiences.

We also hate screen addiction. We want to be in the background, so people can focus on living in the moment. And every day, we'll sprinkle their lives with like-minded, kind people and travel opportunities.

Would love your feedback on it. Here's more info I wrote about our business model:

https://blog.fairytrail.app/2019/09/reinventing-online-datin...

Also I am happy to share my user data with the community too.

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

#428

Post by jrnichols »

mixmax wrote: post #208
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 think this can be 'disrupted' either * Tinder disrupted the online dating scene by introducing the feature that you can only write someone after you've liked their profile, AND they've liked yours. That makes a huge difference, and solves the spam problem.

Tinder most definitely has not solved the spam problem. I think it's gotten even worse over the past couple years.

Photos with spammy gmail addresses and URLs written in them has been on the rise recently too.

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

#429

Post by taigeair »

makomk wrote: post #277
shartshooter wrote: post #17

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…

Wow, apparently they had a stock line they used when customers paid them money to try and view those messages that were sent by fake accounts, got a message saying the account was unavailable instead (because it had been deleted for being fraudulent), and complained to Match.com that they thought they'd been swindled: "Please be assured, Match.com does not send members misleading notifications, e-mails or winks profe…

I'm actually working on a startup where my business interested on aligned with users. We are monetizing mostly through trips, so we can't have fake users and send fake messages. Those won't result in real trips.

This aligns our financial incentives with our user's incentives to have amazing experiences with someone they like. We also have a product for couples, so we won't lose 100% of our users.

More info if you're interested: https://blog.fairytrail.app/2019/09/reinventing-online-datin...

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

#430

Post by jrnichols »

magduf wrote: post #373
LunaSea wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And typically they don't or just write "hi" and wait for the men to answer.

The other thing some will do is just not say anything, and wait for you to use your one daily "extend", to show her you're really interested in her and not just right-swiping everyone.

or they won't write to anyone, and they're merely collecting matches for self validation.

Bumble is also (or was) loaded with fake profiles too. I had a friend see my own profile on there, with a city that I wasn't in (but had been) and there's no indication that I wasn't an active user - I had deleted the Bumble app 6 months before. I did finally go and delete the whole account after their anti-gun stance.

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