Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#61

Post by JasonFruit » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

throwaway90090 wrote: post #16

JasonFruit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author makes that point, but follows up with a more important one: this is what you can expect from "the algorithm", whether it's Tinder, Facebook, your email service, or your bank. A few false positives are acceptable collateral damage, and it can be a serious inconvenience or worse. Tinder, he's out 12 bucks, but we've all heard of people with thousands of dollars in Paypal limbo for years.

So don't have your livelihood or material comfort depend on greedy and uncaring megacorps? Evergreen xkcd: https://xkcd.com/743/

That's probably a good idea. If you want social media, go to the local mom and pop social medium in town here. Their artisanal activity feed is the best!

More seriously, at this point the options are:

    - ethically-challenged social media full of relatives and friends
    - unintuitive federated platform with no family but plenty of otherkin furfriends
    - being left out of conversation and events you care about

I can't say to most people that choice 1 is excluded without being written off as unrealistic.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#62

Post by jbverschoor » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #45

This is presented as a problem with "big tech", but I don't think most people would consider Tinder (Match Group) to be big tech? Instead, this kind of problem where you get flagged with no explanation or recourse seems to be common to consumer tech of all but the smallest scale. It's just very expensive to provide high quality individual support.

37B is quite big.

"big data" is just an excel file, so I think this would qualify

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#63

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #12

pavlov wrote: post #4

Getting banned from Tinder is like getting banned from a bar. Just go somewhere else.

The author makes that point, but follows up with a more important one: this is what you can expect from "the algorithm", whether it's Tinder, Facebook, your email service, or your bank. A few false positives are acceptable collateral damage, and it can be a serious inconvenience or worse. Tinder, he's out 12 bucks, but we've all heard of people with thousands of dollars in Paypal limbo for years.

I bet he could get back that $12 and more for his time and effort if he went to small claims court in the US. Or tell their card’s issuer to do a chargeback.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#64

Post by DrammBA » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

hvdijk wrote: post #30

From Tinder's ToS: > Tinder may terminate your account at any time without notice if it believes that you have violated this Agreement. Upon such termination, you will not be entitled to any refund for purchases. > For residents of the Republic of Korea, except in the case [...], we will without delay notify you of the reason for taking the relevant step. They openly say in advance that they'll ban users who they thi…

I would definitely try to file a charge back with my bank, they sometimes exercise their own discretion on egregious cases like this and might be worth a shot.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#65

Post by vladvasiliu » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

hetspookjee wrote: post #34

Given the constant commodization of data science, I wonder how long it will take till there is a dating app that really knows you well, while keeping privacy in tact. And matches people with the goal to actually match properly. Tinder, and every dating app I know out there, is directly incentivized to _not_ match properly, but rather to keep you on the app as long as possible. As long as the bottom line is directly i…

I think you've answered your own question: probably never. Because whatever company would apply said commoditized data science would have the same incentives as Tinder and the rest.

So except for some "open source" or otherwise "community-driven" effort, I don't think we'll ever see it.

The issue with setting this up in your garage is that for such an app to work, you need to have many users. And to have many users, you have to spend cash on marketing, etc. So you have to be able to get that cash back somehow, and then some, for your efforts.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#66

Post by savant_penguin » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

hvdijk wrote: post #30

From Tinder's ToS: > Tinder may terminate your account at any time without notice if it believes that you have violated this Agreement. Upon such termination, you will not be entitled to any refund for purchases. > For residents of the Republic of Korea, except in the case [...], we will without delay notify you of the reason for taking the relevant step. They openly say in advance that they'll ban users who they thi…

If you vpn to Korea would you get an answer?

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#67

Post by vmception » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

mazugrin2 wrote: post #52

Maybe don't refer to women as "girls"? Unless you are seeking romance with girls. Either way, I'm suspicious already and can see why a service intended to match adults with other adults (i.e., not girls) would be creeped out by you.

"my boys"

"out with the boys"

"guys"

the only time I heard people want 'girls' less infantilized was in professional contexts, this is not a professional context and is an equivalent colloquialism across genders. unit test passed.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#68

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

JamesLeonis wrote: post #48

My 2¢; OP should do a charge-back. If anything bots don't do chargebacks. While you have no recourse in free services, you do when you pay with a credit card. Likewise the CC will still charge Tinder the processing fee of 1%-3%, so every chargeback is not only revenue lost but also a cost. Unfortunately all that advice is void if OP used a debit card.

Card disputes are mediated by the card networks and will absolutely work on debit cards - in this case it’s a clear example of paying for a product and not receiving it so it should be an open & shut case.

Chargebacks on credit cards may have more protection granted by the banks or the law, but the basic level of disputing a transaction is available even to debit cards.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#69

Post by hnbad » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

How do we know they didn't violate the terms of service or community guidelines? It's entirely possible to do so simply by uploading photos and filling out your profile. Since they provide neither, it's impossible to tell whether the decision is justified or not. There are plenty of things I can think of that they could have done that would have required zero interactions but been in violation of the community guidelines[0].

Also I have no idea who this person is, their about page is empty and Google results are ambiguous at best, so I have no reason to trust their account of what happened.

The point about big tech seems tangential and isn't exactly a novel insight. As for this: "Of course, they cannot name you the reason as this could be later used against them and their proprietary algorithm. How could they?" This is not a problem with "big tech" but with lack of transparency and is a consumer protection issue. The GDPR for example requires automated rulings to offer the option to appeal and have the ruling be reviewed by a human. It would be trivial to change the law so consumers would have the right to be told which part of the ToS they allegedly violated if a contract is terminated over a ToS violation. But there is nothing about this problem that is unique to "big tech".

[0]: https://policies.tinder.com/community-guidelines/intl/en

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#70

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

dablweb wrote: post #54

Just head over to reveddit.com and look at a few controversial subreddits without the shadow-banning. It's truly terrifying to see the true scale of censorship and ghost-banning in big tech right now.

> terrifying to see the true scale

Not as terrifying as the number of people who defend it.