[HN Gopher] Azar, a Korean Chatroulette-style dating app quietly...
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Azar, a Korean Chatroulette-style dating app quietly taking over
the world
Author : imartin2k
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-05-14 09:33 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| simbas wrote:
| "Do you want to develop an app?"
| keville wrote:
| You son of a bitch. I'm in.
| chris123 wrote:
| Me too
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I could see this as very useful for digital nomads and others who
| live similar lifestyles.
|
| Want to move to Santiago, Chile next but know nobody?
|
| Assuming this has filters, you can do "show me anyone who is
| interested in snowboarding around my age in Santiago" and be able
| to connect with people before you even land there.
|
| Great for dating worldwide too for a variety of reasons.
|
| Sure, it's Chatroulette, but it seems like it has a lot more
| potential. It's interesting that it is a South Korean company but
| they have clearly focused on a global concept (most of the users
| are not in Korea).
| tmpz22 wrote:
| The more granularity and internationalization the higher
| likelihood it'll be used for grooming, sex trafficking, and
| fraud. Tinder, Snapchat, TikTok, and other mediums are already
| rife with it.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I agree with you, but at what point does this become "this is
| why we can't have nice things"?
|
| One of the reasons dating sites like Match don't work easily
| worldwide is because there are too many variables. Local
| customs, society judging online dating, personal information
| that may work in one area but not another ("do you attend
| church on Sunday?", etc).
|
| With the added fact it's essentially live FaceTime, you also
| get rid of people pretending to be a 17 year old girl when
| they are really a 40 year old man, or claiming they are are a
| US military veteran who needs some quick help when they are
| actually a Nigerian prince.
| azar1 wrote:
| huh...
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Funny trivia, "azar" means "bad luck" in Portuguese.
|
| Also, gambling is generally referred to as "jogos de azar"
| ("games of bad luck" - at least in Brazil), which fits neatly
| into the Chatroulette reference.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| "hazard" in English is also a cognate.
| trotFunky wrote:
| That's really interesting to me, because in Spanish we have the
| exact same word, "azar", but from how I understand it it's just
| randomness (apparently according to the dictionary some of the
| other meanings have a negative take). We have the same
| expression too : "juegos de azar" for games of chance/gambling.
|
| It's also quite close to the french equivalent : "hasard",
| which also means randomess and has similar usage, with "jeux de
| hasard".
|
| In all cases it's an interesting fit with the Chatroulette
| reference.
|
| Anyway, thanks for the insight !
| soneca wrote:
| Yes, I would guess that in Brazilian portuguese the
| expression "jogos de azar" comes from this original meaning
| of the word "azar", as randomness. But the isolated word
| "azar" took on the specific meaning of "bad luck", which kind
| of leaked to how one would interpret "jogos de azar" around
| here.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Spanish (ultimately Arabic) is where the name did come from.
| Source: I worked at Hyperconnect and heard it from the
| founder who picked this name.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Huh, in French, 'hasard' (pronounced azar) means randomness
| in general. The spelling change is weird
| asveikau wrote:
| In a Spanish accent (or most of them in Spain anyway) the
| z would be /th/.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The Spanish pronunciation of orthographic z as /th/ is
| rather late, post-16th-century. So, I would presume that
| French could have borrowed the word earlier than that.
| asveikau wrote:
| I believe it was /ts/ and /dz/ before that, depending on
| if Old Spanish had c or z. It's not like it went from [s]
| to [th], which I think is what some people assume.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Yes, there were affricates originally, but in the
| meantime there was first deaffrication to /z/ (and then
| devoicing, etc.).
| asveikau wrote:
| Wikipedia for Old Spanish says there were two distinct
| variants of z: The affricates /ts/ and
| /dz/ were simplified to laminodental fricatives /s/ and
| /z/, which remained distinct from the apicoalveolar
| sounds /s/ and /z/ (a distinction also present in
| Basque).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish#Sibilants
|
| That's pretty interesting. I don't have any experience
| distinguishing between sounds like that but reading
| around I start to wonder if I might produce such
| differences without being aware of it.
| lowercased wrote:
| which looks like 'hazard' in english, which is (from mw
| dictionary)
|
| * a source of danger * the effect of unpredictable and
| unanalyzable forces in determining events : chance, risk
| * a chance event : accident * a golf-course obstacle
| (such as a bunker or a pond) * a game of chance like
| craps played with two dice
|
| i'd guess there's a connection? i'm no word historian
| person though...
| andredz wrote:
| According to the Oxford Dictionary, the origin of hazard
| is as follows:
|
| Middle English (in hazard (sense 3 of the noun)): from
| Old French _hasard_ , from Spanish _azar_ , from Arabic
| _az-zahr_ 'chance, luck', from Persian _zar_ or Turkish
| _zar_ 'dice'
|
| It bears mentioning, as an interesting fact that I just
| found about, that _azzahr_ comes from Andalusi Arabic,
| and that _zahr_ (in Arabic) means 'flower', from which
| the Spanish word _azahar_ (the white flower on some trees
| such as orange trees) comes.
|
| Etymologies from the most official Spanish dictionary:
|
| azar: Del arabe hispanico _*azzahr_ , y este del arabe
| _zahr_ 'dado'; literalmente 'flores'.
|
| azahar: Del arabe hispanico _azzahar_ , y este del arabe
| clasico _zahr_ 'flores'.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| And in Polish 'hazard' just means gambling.
| emayljames wrote:
| I wonder if that became the word for gambling, on its
| own, due to the strong influence of Catholicism.
| gpderetta wrote:
| In Italian "gioco d'azzardo" has the exact same meaning
| as "juego de azar". But an "azzardo" is a dangerous or
| risky behavior or action (the implication being that
| doing it would be a gamble).
| nicoburns wrote:
| That is far from the only word that sounds almost the
| same in French and Spanish, but with a lot of silent
| letters in the French spelling.
| Hello71 wrote:
| according to wiktionary, they both originate from Arabic
| alzaWhr (az-zahr, "the dice"). presumably frenchmen were
| simply wont to add a bunch of silent letters.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hasard
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/azar
| Rexxar wrote:
| The "h" is necessary to indicate there is no liaison with
| the previous word and the "d" is an indication that that
| derivative words use a non-silent "d" (like "hasardeux").
| ivankolev wrote:
| As another linguistic point, in Bulgarian 'zar' means
| dice
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| _Zar_ in Balkan languages - it exists in e.g. Romanian
| and Albanian as well - is an Ottoman-era loanword from
| Turkish, which in turn borrowed it from Perso-Arabic
| (i.e. possibly directly from Arabic, but more likely
| through Persian mediation).
| jogjayr wrote:
| Huh, "azar" also means "illness" in Marathi (aajaar),
| although that's not on the Wiktionary page. Coincidence
| or is it a loanword in Marathi as well?
| narag wrote:
| _according to wiktionary, they both originate from Arabic
| alzaWhr (az-zahr, "the dice")._
|
| Just like Latin where Spanish "aleatorio" comes from:
| alea = dice.
|
| Caesar's famous words "alea jacta est" = "dice has been
| thrown".
| anonymfus wrote:
| In Russian the word azart means the feeling of being high on
| gambling or on risk in general.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| graeme wrote:
| What do you know, I looked it up and the English word hazard
| has the same root.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| oh yeah -- as in the idiom "hazard a guess"
| emayljames wrote:
| Dukes of hazard
| sikim wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the founder was just a huge fan of a
| footballer named Eden Hazard, hence the name
| devy wrote:
| Azar is also the last name of former Department of Health and
| Human Services Secretary (Alex. M. Azar II) under President
| Trump during the height of COVID-19 pandemic[1].
|
| That last name's origin is Lebanese[2].
|
| [1]: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/01/31/secretary-azar-
| dec...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Azar
| manquer wrote:
| It is fairly common Persian/Hebrew name.
| fastball wrote:
| Reminds me of this (mildly NSFW) Silicon Valley scene[1]
| (though in that case he was making things up).
|
| Also reminds me of this urban legend[2] about poor sales of the
| Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking countries because "no va" means
| "doesn't go".
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVoFzu-vH4o
|
| [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-
| spanis...
| imtringued wrote:
| It's interesting that you actually conduct the "date" through the
| app itself, which makes it a true dating app, rather than a match
| making app.
| istorical wrote:
| most of the popular swipe dating apps in the west added this
| feature during the quarantine, although to be fair it's still
| preferred to meet in person or do a facetime.
| draw_down wrote:
| You could agree to move to other forms of communication though,
| just like dating with any other app
| asiachick wrote:
| Should match.com get the anti-trust treatment? They seem to buy
| most new dating sites/apps. Match Group owns Tinder, Match.com,
| Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, Ship, OurTime, Azar, and
| another 35+ dating sites it bought.
| langitbiru wrote:
| I'm thinking of building a decentralized dating app (without
| crypto). It's something like WordPress but for dating. People
| can host it on-premise. You can say it's like white-labelling
| dating app. So each community (church, gym, yoga studio, etc)
| can have their own dating app and don't have to live on the
| mercy of Match.com. This way, we can keep Match.com in check.
| capableweb wrote:
| Same though popped up in my head, but rather than self-host,
| use P2P technology like SSB. Easier to use (see Manyverse),
| doesn't require installing servers yourself and you could
| easily build those communities as pub servers if needed.
| Otherwise just match people at random.
| chrisin2d wrote:
| That still sounds technically out of reach for most non-
| technical people, so you'll just end up with dating nodes
| filled with (mostly male) techies.
| lucaspolo wrote:
| In portuguese Azar can be translated to "bad luck", so here in
| Brazil I don't think it will be something catchy
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I wonder how these realtime content sharing services will be
| compatible with new EU terreg regulation. How such content is
| going to be moderated?
| bouncycastle wrote:
| I don't think terrorists use dating apps...
| e12e wrote:
| Why not? They use game chat, after all?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted (unless people
| think you are making a crass joke about toxic gamer
| communities), but the idea of terrorists using online game
| chat to communicate was at least taken seriously by the
| NSA:
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/172288-nsa-spied-on-
| xbox...
| eloff wrote:
| Although if we could get them laid and married off they
| probably wouldn't be terrorists anymore.
|
| Not really a family man career.
| rchaud wrote:
| Might work for US-based mass shooters and domestic
| terrorists. They tend to be broken, single/divorced men
| carrying out planned but unstructured acts of violence.
|
| For young men in countries where militias offer better
| paycheques and protection than the government can, I think
| you might have to come up with a more elaborate solution.
| upofadown wrote:
| Until someone bombs their family I suppose...
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Did you just implied that only men could be terrorists? I
| thought that terrorism was a gender include activity.
| eloff wrote:
| Yeah, who are we kidding. It's almost exclusively men
| doing that. Like 95% or more.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Like 95% or more
|
| Interesting accuracy, I'm curious about the source.
| Fascinating topic in general.
|
| Here's a good starting point for more as well: https://ww
| w.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08974454.2019.1...
|
| Outlines a bunch of interesting factoids.
|
| If you look at "terrorism" more as a whole than just the
| people going and doing the bombings and similar, like the
| ones raising children, taking care of the villages and
| such, I think you'll find that they pretty much end up
| like any other society.
| [deleted]
| NullPrefix wrote:
| It depends on how you define what a terrorist is.
| langitbiru wrote:
| From the article:
|
| In February, Match Group agreed to buy Azar's parent company for
| $1.7 billion.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Christ. There's nothing they can't get their hands on, is
| there?
| standardUser wrote:
| There's Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, Happn, Grinder and plenty
| of other smaller apps.
|
| But far and away the bulk of dating app traffic goes through
| a Match property.
| joe_guy wrote:
| Unfortunately dating apps are an area where popularity does
| matter. Few are going to stick around on a largely empty
| app.
|
| I was banned from Tinder about a year into the pandemic. I
| would sometimes idly swipe over that year to pass time but
| wasn't having conversations. I can only conclude that
| something in my profile was misunderstood.
|
| They will not explain why, but I am now banned from all
| Match owned properties. That more or less leaves Bumble. At
| least until Match owns them.
| scrollaway wrote:
| If you're in Europe, thanks to GDPR, you have the right
| to get the data that led to your ban, as well as the
| right to correct such data (and thus, potentially,
| appeal).
| guerrilla wrote:
| You have got to be kidding... When will someone stop Match
| Group, who own every dating app most people have heard of:
| Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, Ship,
| and OurTime.
| abledon wrote:
| is this why Bumble has a stock price on NASDAQ? they are the
| only ones holding out against facebook dating & match.
| chongli wrote:
| Perhaps the solution is to launch a denial-of-service attack
| in the form of founding so many dating sites that Match Group
| can't afford to buy them all!
| vidarh wrote:
| Alternatively there's a good business here in creating a
| cookie-cutter dating site concept with the intent of
| selling all of them to Match.
|
| Or take it one step further and sell turn-key dating-site
| startups. "Optimised for a quick Match Group acquisition".
| adventured wrote:
| It's the method that was employed successfully against
| Standard Oil as they were initially building their
| monopoly. Wildcatters would strike oil and look to dump
| their oil into the market, which would drop and or
| destabilize the price of oil. It was understood they
| could 'ransom' Standard Oil using this tactic and get
| sums far beyond what their operations would otherwise be
| worth. Rockefeller in his letters talks about buying up
| the worst possible operations, in rickety condition, for
| princely sums to prevent the wildcatters from tanking the
| price of oil by dumping supply. It apparently was quite
| the annoyance to the extremely frugal Rockefeller, the
| monopoly could more than afford it of course.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I've never heard of this. Anywhere I could read more on
| this?
| guerrilla wrote:
| That doesn't really benefit the customers though. It just
| makes the problem worse.
| vidarh wrote:
| Presumably it'd eventually make Match Group's strategy of
| buying up all the competitors un-viable after some time,
| as there'd be an ever-increasing stream of dating apps
| driving up the customer acquisition costs by competing
| with each other and Match, while making Match effectively
| pay for the same customers over and over again as
| customers get convinced to try yet another new dating app
| and Match has yet another acquisition target.
|
| This entire space is really hard to make work well for
| users, though, because users interests are so at odds
| with the service providers, in that anything that helps
| you meet someone quickly reduces the amount of chances
| they have to upsell you. It's in their interest that you
| remain frustrated.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > users interests are so at odds with the service
| providers
|
| So the real innovation that's needed is a new incentive
| structure.
|
| I'm sure some site has tried to implement a system where
| you pay only if you end up in a long term relationship,
| but that seems hard to enforce once two people have each
| other's contact details.
|
| Another approach that's been tried is for the government
| to run the site, on the basis that families are
| beneficial for society, while profit-seeking monopolies
| and incompatible silos of users are not efficient.
|
| What I don't think has been tried yet is some sort of
| federated system, perhaps based on ActivityPub, where
| different providers all share the same distributed pool
| of users, and therefore can't lock you into their
| unreasonable pricing scheme.
|
| The success of Mastodon shows that this service could be
| offered at scale for people to enjoy at zero cost.
| Possibly there would be an expectation that if you did
| find someone you really liked, you would make a donation
| to the one or two sites that you and your partner's
| profiles were hosted on, and perhaps give a testimonial
| at the same time.
|
| I assume the difficulty of implementing this is that
| people don't want bots spamming them with private
| messages, nor do they want their profiles to be part of
| some bulk download which a rogue node tries to get away
| with.
|
| People are understandably quite sensitive about what they
| write on dating sites, and who gets to see it, and
| although the safety of traditional dating sites is
| probably somewhat illusory, a system for moderating
| interactions is likely to be harder to implement well in
| a distributed system, and harder than moderating a
| microblogging service.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Another approach that's been tried is for the
| government to run the site, on the basis that families
| are beneficial for society, while profit-seeking
| monopolies and incompatible silos of users are not
| efficient.
|
| That sounds like a minefield. I have an additional idea:
| what about a dual-purpose site, one that has value for
| couples too? Saying this makes me realize Facebook,
| although their thing is new, might be able to cormer this
| actually...
| indigochill wrote:
| So we're still letting monopolies blatantly buy out all their
| competition, I see (also see: Facebook's purchases of Instagram
| + Whatsapp).
| 3rly wrote:
| How do you know that this outcome was not the desired endgame
| for the creators. It wasn't as if they were harassed to sell.
|
| Lastly, which "we" are you referring to?
| langitbiru wrote:
| > It wasn't as if they were harassed to sell.
|
| Bumble founder disagreed.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/17141308/bumble-match-group-
| ne...
|
| From the article above:
|
| "Match, which owns another popular dating app and Bumble
| competitor, Tinder, is suing Bumble for violating two
| patents and for allegedly stealing trade secrets.
|
| It was a lawsuit made all the more intriguing considering
| Match wants to acquire Bumble;"
| swiley wrote:
| Software patents should require the source of the
| implementation to be published. That's the whole idea
| behind patents in the first place.
| joycian wrote:
| Exactly, you give the government a way to replicate your
| insight, in return you get x years of monopoly. With the
| first part being non-existent (didn't inventors even have
| to supply physical prototypes etc.?) the patent system is
| easy to abuse.
| BasedInfra wrote:
| Monopolies aren't hostile takeovers.
|
| It's companies buying competitors for market dominance with
| no regulatory pushback that's the issue.
| adrianN wrote:
| What the founders want is not terribly relevant for
| monopoly laws. They're for the protection of the consumers,
| not of the company owners.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Doesn't the Match Group own the majority of dating sites/apps
| used in the west? Why are we still allowing these monopolies to
| gobble up any and all possible competitors?
| meowkit wrote:
| Anti trust is defanged unless the target steps on the
| legislatures toes.
|
| Accountability is kind of old fashioned in the modern world
| if I had to opine.
| rchaud wrote:
| So they can use AI to block video of users flashing or harrassing
| others, yet my OK Cupid profile (same parent company) continues
| to be full of women from the Phillippines that set their location
| to my city because "they're planning to move there next year" or
| are "just looking to make friends outside my country".
|
| As if it wasn't bad enough that online dating was already this
| dehumanizing "swipe to accept/reject" rigamarole.
| kowlo wrote:
| "Azar" means Fire in Persian... sounds fitting, and related to
| "Tinder"!
| v0x wrote:
| Isn't fire "aatesh"?
| kowlo wrote:
| Azar and Atash both mean fire[1], so yes :)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azar_(name)
| the_arun wrote:
| Do these sites run background checks? Because people could use
| these apps to brainwash others to get them do what they want. Am
| I missing something?
| desmosxxx wrote:
| can't they do that in any app? or do you mean face to face is
| more dangerous or something?
| the_arun wrote:
| Not really. May be this is applicable to any app that lets
| anonymous people communicate in private. Dating context is
| more sensitive.
|
| Eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26513413
| oblak wrote:
| Since my other comment got flagged, I am going to try
| again.
|
| Looks like you have some very strong, yet suspiciously
| unclear, opinions on the matter. Do you mind articulating
| the point that you're trying to make?
| [deleted]
| meesterdude wrote:
| Match is a plague and needs to be stopped. They homogenize all
| their assets and thus break dating in the same poorly thought
| out, woke signaling, profit driven kind of way. All dating apps
| are broken in the same ways because Match has broken them. It was
| not always this way.
| ibrahimsow1 wrote:
| Woke signalling? How?
| permo-w wrote:
| > Prince, who asked to be identified by only his first name for
| privacy reasons
|
| > A professional football player originally from Ghana, Prince
| immigrated to Turkey two years ago to join a local team
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin-Prince_Boateng
| phreeza wrote:
| So immediately obvious to anyone following German (and probably
| also Turkish) football, this has to be a joke or diversion?
| It's not exactly a common name.
| permo-w wrote:
| or at least anyone halfway paying attention. Maybe Prince is
| a common name in Ghana? Even then, the odds are really low
| that it's real and not him
|
| You're probably right. Maybe it's an reference or an in-joke
| of some kind that we're not getting
| rchaud wrote:
| KPB was born and raised in Germany. He has a Ghanaian passport
| and has represented Ghana in international competition. He's
| had a long career at some top clubs and definitely wouldn't
| need to be in Turkey for economic reasons.
| permo-w wrote:
| He's currently playing in the Italian second division, so who
| knows what his financial situation is. This is probably some
| kind of joke, or weird reference that we're not getting
| rchaud wrote:
| Or there could just be another footballer named Prince.
| It's not unheard of.
| permo-w wrote:
| Another Ghanaian professional footballer called Prince
| who recently moved to play for a Turkish team local to
| Istanbul?
|
| Does that seem likely to you?
| clydethefrog wrote:
| For anyone wondering why there is a random confetti effect
| opening the article -- the publication is 1 year old.
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(page generated 2021-05-14 23:01 UTC)