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FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

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Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#81

Post by Forgeties79 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #46
Forgeties79 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say “$50+/plate” are you saying the dinner itself or each dish? Either way, (in the US) that is not considered a particularly expensive meal for an adult taking someone on a date. In 2026 you should expect $100-$200 bill with drinks basically anywhere. Going out to dinner is not cheap. $100 is actually a great deal unless we’re talking chain restaurants. If you don’t want to spend that every first date, then…

Fair question. When I think "$50/plate", I'm thinking $50 for just the dinner main course, not including drinks, appetizer, or dessert. > Do something more casual first time around. Bar, coffee/walk, whatever. The problem with that is there are women that will scoff at a man trying to do something casual like coffee, tea, or ice cream for a first date. They want to be wined and dined and treated like a princess right…

If somebody gave me shade for a casual first date before we’ve even met in person that’s not someone I’d want to take on a date anyway. Not even saying they’re wrong or unreasonable, just think that if someone is vocally complaining about that maybe we aren’t a good fit.

You clearly think it’s poor behavior so why are you worried about striking out with them?

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#82

Post by alex43578 »

alistairSH wrote: post #51
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question. When I think "$50/plate", I'm thinking $50 for just the dinner main course, not including drinks, appetizer, or dessert. > Do something more casual first time around. Bar, coffee/walk, whatever. The problem with that is there are women that will scoff at a man trying to do something casual like coffee, tea, or ice cream for a first date. They want to be wined and dined and treated like a princess right…

The problem with that is there are women that will scoff at a man trying to do something casual like coffee, tea, or ice cream for a first date. 404 Problems Not Found If the idea of a causal first date appeals to you, but not to the other party, you probably aren't a good match. Swipe left and find somebody else.

[dead]

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#83

Post by hackable_sand »

array_key_first wrote: post #74
alistairSH wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you've saved yourself the time and expense of a shared walk and two cups of coffee. Isn't that a win? Unless you are just looking to get laid, in which case, suck it up and buy dinner, I guess.

Yes, but the point is that people are not successful on these apps because of those expectations. A lot of people have sort of let the whole online dating thing go straight to their head. And now, theyd rather die alone than be slightly uncomfortable for a few minutes.

Why are you guys so concerned with these people?

Let them live their lives. I guarantee you they are not dying alone or whatever mortal curse you wish to invoke.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#84

Post by leptons »

mlmonkey wrote: post #25

All of these sites do shady shit. I'm so glad I'm no longer single. I signed up for eHarmony with a unique email address dedicated to that site. After wasting 6 months, I chose to delete my account. Lo and behold, soon spam started to show up on this account, as if the floodgates had been opened. It was a unique account that I had not used anywhere else just for this specific reason, and my hunch was justified.

I do this for every site I sign up for. I have a 'catch all' email address, so I can put whateverIwant@mydomain.com and the emails will get to my inbox. So now I know who is selling or leaking my email address. So far it's been very few, but I also don't sign up for new sites very often.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#85

Post by alephnerd »

rose-knuckle17 wrote: post #47
ImJamal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just guessing, but the third party company did not break a law or go against their privacy policy. Reuters says it is "Clarifai" if you wanted to know. https://www.reuters.com/world/match-group-settles-us-ftc-cla...

no. but it seems possible, or even likely, that they used the pictures to train targeting for military drones (think Project Insight from Captain America:Winter Soldier). I'm not sure privacy violations are the biggest concern here.

> seems possible, or even likely, that they used the pictures to train targeting for military drones

Clarifai's usecase is around unstructured image data search which is fairly useful in cleansing and less so in targeting.

More fundamentally, almost the entire tech industry touched Project Maven - it was massive. And that was just 1 of multiple initiatives led by the DoD.

And most other great and regional powers like China, Russia, Japan, France, India, South Korea, Turkiye, etc have all been working on similar projects for a decade.

It doesn't matter what country you live in - no nation will leave capabilities on the table. Heck, a highschooler with knowledge of OpenCV and the Google Earth API can build targeting capabilities similar to what superpowers had a decade ago.

It's 2026 - the Ukraine War started in 2014; the Syrian, Libyan, and Yemeni Civil Wars in 2011; the Congo War reignited in 2015; the Afghan War continued until 2022; the Myanmar Civil War reignited in 2021; etc - there has now been over a decade of constant development of dual use technologies in both conflicts and civilian applications.

Technology has always had a military component - heck, much of the "civilian" technologies in the 1990s-2000s were refined and tested thanks to Gulf War 1 and the Yugoslav Wars.

Or, framed in another manner - the capabilities disclosed as part of the Snowden Leaks in 2013 were already in production 20 years ago. It is 2026.

There is a sense of starry-eyed idealism amongst a subset of techies who didn't seem to realize that technology has always been dual use.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#86

Post by crazygringo »

chaps wrote: post #9

I once went on a date with someone who did research at OKCupid who told me that they were doing NLP-style analysis of peoples' messages that they sent to each other. Still not really sure what to think of the date itself, but it was a fucked up admission.

They did tons of data analysis across all aspects of profiles, and had a popular blog where they published the results.

They were heavily involved in researching what factors more reliably led to not just better matches, but better relationships -- when you disabled your account, they'd ask if it was because you'd met someone through OkC and ask you to pick who, if you were willing to share.

I don't think there was anything fucked up about it, as long as it was all anonymized and at scale. Trying to understand what messaging strategies worked better or worse could be a major part of figuring out how to improve matches.

Like, one obvious factor could be to match people who send lots of long messages with lots of questions with each other, while a separate set matches people who's messaging style is one sentence at a time. I'm not saying that would necessarily work well, but it's not crazy to research if NLP analysis of messages can produce additional potential compatibility signals.

The whole point of OkC back then was to try to develop as many data-based signals as possible to improve matches.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#87

Post by jacquesm »

probably_wrong wrote: post #55
chaps wrote: post #9

I once went on a date with someone who did research at OKCupid who told me that they were doing NLP-style analysis of peoples' messages that they sent to each other. Still not really sure what to think of the date itself, but it was a fucked up admission.

If you remember the old OkCupid blog they used to post interesting articles about online dating. I know their article about whether you should smile on your profile picture was eventually debunked [1], but it was nonetheless nice to have objective, data-based, non-pua advice on how to be successful in online dating. [1] https://blog.photofeeler.com/okcupid-is-wrong-about-smiling-...

You mistook a marketing effort for science.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#88

Post by bluGill »

avgDev wrote: post #26
john_strinlai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OkCupid gave users different prices based on whether they selected male or female for their profile. never heard or thought about this before, but it kind of makes sense for a dating app. its one of the only levers available to them to attempt any sort of balance between user genders. it sucks for everyone (including the users) if the male:female ratio is like 20:1 or whatever. i would rather pay a couple of extra…

Reminds of being a young guy and feeling annoyed when girls are being let into clubs for free without waiting in line, and I had to wait in line and pay. Sometimes I could not get in because the club was "full", but the girls would be allowed in.

In the 80's a club near me got into some sort of trouble for that so they switched to skirt night - only a tiny number of men were willing to wear a skirt to get in free.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#89

Post by leptons »

stanford_labrat wrote: post #54
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met my current wife on OKC in 2010, before online dating became an utter cesspool. I've been out of the dating scene for 16 years now, but based on what I see on social media, I think online dating sucks today for three reasons. 1. Many men (Not all, but many) are there simply because they want to get laid. They're not looking for a relationship, they're looking for a hook-up, and they're not honest about their int…

> They're in a sticky spot where their most successful customer is one that they will never see another dime from, and there's not really a way around it. naive question: why has no one made an app with the reverse incentive structure? i understand that the current business model is much more lucrative...but i feel like with how fed up people are with the inability of modern online dating to provide quality, long-las…

I have no idea if they do this, but they should partially or fully sponsor weddings of couples that met on their service in exchange for a small ad at the venue. There's a captive audience of potentially lots of single people watching two people that met on their service get married. It's a great advertising opportunity. I'd have happily put a "This wedding brought to you by OK-Cupid" banner at the bar at my wedding for $500 or $1000 towards the open bar.

Re: FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

#90

Post by Tostino »

jarjoura wrote: post #68
nodesocket wrote: post #61

I’m almost certain these dating apps, including Hinge and Bumble are creating loads of good-looking fake women profiles to attract male users and keep their platforms “sticky”. There are suspicious telltale signs like location downtown when nobody says they live downtown in my area. The same responses and prompts across multiple profiles. It’s equivalent to them cooking their books, but with vanity metrics.

Or the more realistic, less tin-foil-hat reason, sophisticated chat bots are a real problem and dating platforms aren't immune to them.

Why are you giving these companies the benefit of the doubt when they've already shown that they do this in the past?
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