[HN Gopher] Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech
___________________________________________________________________
Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech
Author : svalee
Score : 347 points
Date : 2021-12-22 13:31 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulefou.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulefou.com)
| helen___keller wrote:
| Big tech would be if your ban from tinder causes you to lose
| access to your email, your productivity tools, and your income.
|
| If getting banned without good justification is the problem, the
| problem is with all tech services
| zionic wrote:
| >Big tech would be if your ban from tinder causes you to lose
| access to your email, your productivity tools, and your income.
|
| Who you meet can radically change the trajectory of your life
| though, and if 99% of your demographic meets new people via
| tinder being banned can absolutely have an outsized impact on
| your life.
|
| In my case I met someone normal, got married, had a child, and
| built a house in an area I never would have discovered had I
| not met them. I sometimes think how different my life would be
| if either of us hadn't checked our phones that night.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Tech is literally the infrastructure of the 21st century. Of
| course it matters and has a huge impact, I'm saying that this
| is true for much of the tech industry and doesn't require the
| "big tech" qualifier.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Tinder is cancer, who cares.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| As OP says - "It's fine if it's tinder, but what are you gonna
| do when the same will happen with your bank application or a
| messenger that you use on a daily basis"?
| maratc wrote:
| Big Tech has nothing to do with it, as the tech is spreading
| everywhere, and to the governments as well.
|
| I was filling out a government form for a relative of mine to get
| on a plane (Covid-19 regulations). After filling out all the
| relevant details, I got the negative answer "BOARDING DENIED"
| because "You are not in compliance with all the regulations".
|
| It never said _which_ regulation of these "all" we weren't in
| compliance with, exactly.
|
| It took me hours to get to an intelligent person in the ministry
| hotline, if we skip the "try again" and "try from another PC" and
| "you've tried too many times and so are banned" guys. After some
| convincing, they agreed to fill out the form for us. It turned
| out the system expects TWO vaccination dates, not one, to give
| its permission, although never says so clearly.
|
| With Tinder, you can move to another platform, but when the
| government tech decides whether or not you're allowed to board
| the plane, they usually monopolize that.
| ravenstine wrote:
| This is pretty disturbing considering how necessary dating apps
| are today.
|
| Let's say you get banned from Tinder and consequently Bumble.
| What do you do now? You can create fake accounts, but they'll
| eventually find you. Coffee Meets Bagel? Plenty of Fish?
| Match.com? _Don 't make me laugh._
|
| It's already bad enough that women find it strange that a guy
| doesn't have an Instagram account (this has been my experience
| 90% of the time), but at least as someone who is dating you can
| work your way around that. But if you get shut out of even 1 of
| the few main dating apps, you've lost a massive pool of dates and
| potential life partners. Unless something has changed since my
| foray into that scene, these days those apps are pretty much a
| requirement for getting any meaning amount of dates.
|
| I can't help but feel bad for the younger generations of today. I
| was fortunate to come of age during the tail end of where it was
| still largely acceptable to meet and approach women IRL while
| online dating was kind of a sideshow. Today, what were once the
| best places to meet other young single people, are not only where
| it's become unacceptable to meet new people at bars and clubs or
| meetups but they also are the places with the most COVID-masking
| (yes, this DOES affect attraction and being able to read the
| other person). For most young guys and girls, you're probably
| stuck with Tinder and Bumble unless you are a 9 or above.
|
| The other day I got permabanned from Nextdoor, not because I did
| anything wrong, but because I didn't use my real name. Of course
| the name that I used _is_ the name that I use in real life and as
| a professional. I logged in one day to find that I had absolutely
| no access to my account. There was no read-only access to my
| messages, my activity, settings, or anything. Just a page that
| said I 'd been banned for not using my real name but that I could
| contact their customer service or whatever. Imagine if that
| happens to you on Tinder right as you're about to ask someone on
| a date, or to your Wells Fargo account as you just got a paycheck
| and are ready to make that big purchase.
| standardUser wrote:
| Just a side note - Instagram accounts are nice because they
| offer social proof. A lot of people feel more comfortable
| meeting a stranger one-on-one if they have some idea that the
| person has a life, friends, etc.
|
| As for the rest, it sounds like speculative nonsense. I date
| and know a lot of people who actively date. There are more and
| better options today to meet more and better people - not less.
| Not by a longshot.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I think everyone knows that. Personally, I don't spend any
| time taking countless photographs of myself and my buddies
| eating and traveling. That's not me, and I think it's a
| little sad that people can't have any trust in strangers to
| the extent that they must look up a curated PR profile of
| them and believe that. Yes, the world has changed. That
| doesn't mean that everyone is better off that way just
| because 80+% will go in whatever direction the wind blows.
| Even if the inevtability of being strange for not being
| active on Instagram is something people should accept, it
| shouldn't be the deal breaker that it often seems to be.
|
| > As for the rest, it sounds like speculative nonsense.
|
| That's not particularly respectful.
|
| > I date and know a lot of people who actively date. There
| are more and better options today to meet more and better
| people - not less. Not by a longshot.
|
| Maybe you could name some of them?
| standardUser wrote:
| "I think it's a little sad that people can't have any trust
| in strangers"
|
| For women, dating is a process of meeting a larger,
| stronger person who is a member of a demographic
| responsible for nearly all sexual violence. If they want a
| little social proof before meeting a strange man alone, I
| fully understand. Obviously this goes both (all) ways, but
| is a bigger concern for women (at least the many women I
| have discussed this with over the years).
|
| Sorry to be disrespectful. I was specifically talking about
| the idea that it is no longer possible/acceptable to meet
| people in person. Do you truly believe this? As I said, I
| know a lot of people who date actively, and they do still
| meet people when out and about. Sometimes it's a friend of
| a friend, sometimes a random person at a bar. One of my
| last serious relationships started when we met at a
| wedding. A good friend of mine seems to find dates by just
| stepping out the door! She's cute, but it's not like men
| are constantly fawning over her - she just tends to chat
| with strangers and sometimes that leads to dates! So I see
| this so much in my everyday life I find it strange when
| people (especially people who admit they are not dating in
| the current era) make claims about how dating does and does
| not work these days.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Is this what dating is really like?? It sounds completely alien
| and scary to me; I met my now-wife when we were in college, by
| talking and having meals together and stuff like that. And
| we're not ancient, we're in our 30s. There _must_ still be ways
| to form meaningful relationships without being entirely at the
| mercy of the app gods,
| nrmitchi wrote:
| It's kind of important to remember that the world, especially
| the social world of meeting new people, has *drastically*
| changed in the last 2 years.
| srmarm wrote:
| Something to do with where he'd travelled I would guess.
|
| I lost an account a few years ago at the same time I was
| geospoofing on my phone for something totally unrelated. I guess
| it flagged on Tinder's side and that was that account gone.
| Fortunately I didn't think there was any soulmate lost as a
| result but I could see that being painful if I'd been talking to
| someone for a while.
|
| On the other hand Tinder is going to be a huge target for romance
| scammers and other dodgy types and people on it are vulnerable so
| they've got to have a robust defence mechanism.
|
| It's the lack of recourse to fair adjudication that is the
| problem - online dating is one of the most common ways of meeting
| a partner these days and the many platforms are owned by a couple
| of companies so getting blacklisted by Tinder could also see you
| barred from Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge and PlentyOfFish - quite
| serious stuff if you're looking for a partner especially in the
| current climate.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his
| subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my
| account that's fine but cancel the subscription and refund my
| money.
|
| If y'all haven't looked at it yet, read up on the FCC's filing
| against Match. They knowingly prompt up tons of fake profiles, to
| get you engaged. Horrifically this has lead to romance scams
| being the number one source of fraud in the US. I had one
| particularly scary experience and after that I don't use any
| dating apps.
|
| But it's worked out very well, I did have to move to a new city
| too, but I've been able to meet so many amazing girls in real
| life. I'm also in a much better place emotionally, if you're
| staring at your phone constantly waiting for box to message you,
| that's not good for your mind. Your mind. It makes everything 10
| times of stressful, for fraction of the benefit.
|
| When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in
| their mid-20s to 30s without a job. In real life, everyone I've
| gone out with has had a decent job, due to another scary
| experience I don't go out with people who aren't working.
| svalee wrote:
| Yeah, they specifically mention that at the bottom of the
| screen[1] when they ban you
|
| [1] https://paulefou.com/cancel.jpg
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Not if they shadow ban you which seems to happen quite often.
| They'll happily accept your money in this instance - it
| sounds like in the article above this is what happened.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Hmm, say they did shadow ban him but continued to charge
| him. Wouldn't they be open to fraud in this case? You could
| make the case that you paid for services that were not
| rendered.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it'd be reasonable to conclude that services
| weren't rendered - even if I'm totally certain they've
| got some BS in their TOS somewhere that specifically
| called out that it would be within the bounds of the
| service offering to take your money and give you only the
| fake experience of being a tinder user.
| samhw wrote:
| To be fair, shadow banning has a legit use besides just
| taking people's money. It prevents genuine malicious
| actors from simply creating new accounts whenever they
| get banned. However, it becomes way more ethically
| complex when the service in question is a paid service.
| munk-a wrote:
| Shadow banning is a legitimate tool when you assume that
| it is necessary for you to offer your services with the
| absolute lowest barrier to entry. There are plenty of
| other very reasonable approaches to prevent malicious
| actors from simply creating new accounts - the easiest of
| these is to attach a modest cost to account creation
| which is a solution that marketers absolutely loathe band
| thus has been casually discounted. However, it is an
| exceptionally good solution.
|
| Do you think twitter would be dealing with 10 million
| twitter bots if they had a five dollar account creation
| fee? Do you think smurf accounts for harassment would be
| nearly as widespread if every ban cost the troll $5 of
| their real money?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| We're literally on a site that uses shadow banning. @dang
| has mentioned quite a few times.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yup - I'm well aware - and the barrier to entry for HN is
| pretty much non-existent. Some features are locked behind
| karma accumulation but most of the moderation is done
| manually and the community is small(ish) enough and of a
| professional bent - meaning that a lot of people know who
| other folks are IRL. Removing the anonymous factor for a
| large portion of commenters makes them follow the rules a
| lot better.
|
| There still are lots of issues with smurf accounts
| though, again, there's a sort of barrier to entry in that
| extremely new and low karma accounts can get their
| comments [dead]'d very trivially.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's really pleasant that they use Dark UI patterns to try
| and make that text as ignorable as possible - fading, making
| it small, putting it in the margin and putting a hard divider
| between it and the primary announcement. It's sort of a
| master class in how to use Dark UI patterns - I'm just
| disappointed they didn't fade it even more, put an ad between
| the announcement and the context, include a webmaster@ link
| somewhere in there and italicize the text. If they did all
| that it'd look entirely like a TOS disclaimer - but they
| tried their best at least.
|
| We seriously need better consumer protection against Dark UI
| tactics.
| webdoodle wrote:
| To take it a step further, throw your phone away. I've been
| digital overseer/fear machine free for almost 2 years now, and
| can definitively say it's the best decision a person can make
| for their mental well being.
| Zachsa999 wrote:
| How do you deal with the dumb crap related to not being
| connected when everyone else is?
|
| Do you have any records or writings documenting your
| experience?
| indigochill wrote:
| This seems like a kind of overfitting. The phone itself isn't
| a problem, at least as concerns the fear machine. On the
| other hand, staying linked to Facebook is a problem. I make
| regular daily use of my phone, but the use is limited to:
|
| * Email
|
| * Select communication channels (Slack/Signal/etc)
|
| * Reading books offline (I download them in advance)
|
| * Bus pass
|
| * Flashcards
|
| * A couple of offline ad-free games
|
| I deny push notifications on all apps without exception. If
| someone needs to get hold of me, they have my number.
|
| With this approach, I feel like my phone is a value-adding
| tool rather than feeling like it's tethering me to anything I
| don't want to be part of.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Flashcards? That's doesn't seem to have much to do with
| ending a phone addiction?
| klipt wrote:
| Never used Anki?
| mlyle wrote:
| Flash cards, in the sense of-- things that show you
| questions you're trying to memorize/learn the answers to.
| Not like, cards with flash memory on them.
|
| The person uses their phone for contained things that are
| not likely to cause a faux-social-reward-cycle.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Thank you for the tip, even watching this thread. I'm tempted
| to argue with people. But I'm not, I left my phone at home
| and went for a walk. It's very peaceful to not have to argue
| with the entire world every single second of your existence.
|
| I'm hoping going forward to have phone free weekends where I
| just shut the thing off and listen to a simple FM radio on my
| walks.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's a hard thing to do but it is possible to view the box
| strictly as a consumption device and refuse to publish
| content (outside of whatever might be a necessary
| communication for you phone/text/email/etc...). You have no
| obligation to engage with and correct the world, you can
| just do you and you'll probably be happier for it.
| mi100hael wrote:
| Says the person in the comments of HN...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| So?
|
| There is a difference, between going online conscious, when
| you turn on the computer - or a stressful always being half
| online with the phone in hand or pocket.
|
| I have a smartphone, but I regulary have it off for longer
| periods. That helps.
| Karsteski wrote:
| I feel like I achieved this by using a degoogled Android OS +
| never listening to news. My life is certainly a lot more
| pleasant being more or less entirely detached from mainstream
| social media and media in general.
|
| But I'm glad your decision worked out for you :)
| ska wrote:
| > nd can definitively say it's the best decision a person can
| make for their mental well being.
|
| No, you can only definitively say it's was the best decision
| _you_ made for your mental well being. With the plausible
| suggestion that it might be good for some others, also.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| for what it is worth it was great being the last person
| around without a smart phone. I dont know how old you are
| but people use to be alone with their own thoughts. Amazing
| things happen if you ponder situations until satisfied with
| your own conclusions. the delay made for wonderful long
| form conversations. exchanging text like we are doing here
| doesnt build relationships either. if i would die in the
| next 20 min you wouldnt blink an eye.
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| Versions of this comment were common when radio first was
| introduced. And television. Etc. It's fine to feel
| nostalgia for some aspects of past interaction of course,
| but a mistake to read too much into it. Generally an area
| to be aware of recency bias.
| emacsen wrote:
| I don't know what happened in this situation, but generally
| refunding money for TOS violations is a bad idea. Let me
| explain why.
|
| Imagine that Alice runs a service where you can send people
| greeting cards.
|
| Bob decides he's going to use this service to cause trouble and
| instead of normal greeting cards, he sends people messages with
| hate speech, such as their race, their religion, says he hoped
| they get cancer, and so on.
|
| Alice sees Bob is doing this and it violates her TOS on the
| service, so she cancels his account.
|
| Should Bob get a refund?
|
| If he does, then Bob will have used Alice's system to do bad
| things in a way that actually costs him nothing. He's costing
| Alice administrative fees and regular costs.
|
| That's why ToS violations should generally not trigger a
| refund.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Generally refunding money for TOS violations should be
| mandatory, and failing to do so should have a default
| assumption of fraud on the part of the provider. Let me
| explain why.
|
| Imagine that Alice purports to run a service where you can
| send people greeting cards. Bob decides that he's going to
| use this service to send greeting cards. Alice takes Bob's
| money, and never sends any greeting cards. When Bob asks why
| the greeting cards weren't sent, Alice claims a TOS violation
| and cancels Bob's account. In some cases, Alice may not even
| provide sufficient information to dispute a claim, such as
| when Alice's own proprietary anti-fraud or anti-cheat
| algorithms have a false positive.
|
| Should Bob get a refund? If he doesn't, Alice has no
| incentive to provide the actual service or to avoid false-
| positives. She's costing Bob the subscription fees, but can
| unilaterally decide whether or not to provide the agreed-upon
| service.
|
| That's why TOS violations should always trigger a refund.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > I don't know what happened in this situation, but generally
| refunding money for TOS violations is a bad idea.
|
| You can learn the article and learn what happened. We are not
| talking about things in general, but about this particular
| situation. Basically, it's pure theft. But since the amount
| is so low, nobody will sue them. In this way they can scam
| thousands of people and go unpunished.
| emacsen wrote:
| There's nothing in the article indicating why he was
| banned. They say he violated the ToS. He says he didn't.
| Maybe it was a false positive, but we don't have enough
| information to know what happened.
| MereInterest wrote:
| The right to remain silent is a vital right in criminal
| court cases, but certainly doesn't apply to our own
| conclusions. Consider that only Tinder has records
| indicating whether there was a ToS violation, and what
| that violation was. Tinder is not releasing those
| records. Tinder has a financial incentive to claim that
| there is a ToS violation. Putting those three items
| together isn't proof that Tinder is lying, but is
| evidence in that direction.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How do you know the blog author doesn't have evidence of
| a ToS violation (that they're not sharing)? Similar
| incentives to shade the story exist on both sides, I
| think.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The blog author isn't the one who stated a tos occured.
| The company would need to provide proof. The author could
| refute that with their own data afterwards.
|
| If someone says you stole something should we ask you for
| proof that you did and if you fail to provide proof
| should we say you are being shady by not answering?
| cwkoss wrote:
| I trust that tinder has an incentive to steal money to a
| greater extent than blog author has an incentive to get
| internet points.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think you underestimate what people will do for
| internet points.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Chargebacks are a thing, and they do punish bad actors.
| munk-a wrote:
| There is a chance that Bob might be on the hook for hate
| crimes or harassment - but that isn't Alice's call. Alice
| should prorate the cost of service usage to the terms of
| use[1]. If Alice believes Bob might have violated a law
| during his usage of her service she is absolutely free to
| report that violation to relevant authorities. Alice has the
| right to refuse service to Bob for a wide variety of reasons
| - but it isn't Alice's place to serve punishment to Bob based
| on a moral judgement of his usage once he ceases to be a
| client.
|
| 1. If Alice expected users to send 2 cards a day and charges
| a per day rate appropriate to that usage and Bob floods her
| with 1000 requests a day for a week then that mistake is
| wholly on her. If you have a per use cost and you charge per
| day you need to add some kind of rate limiting.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Then at least cancel his subscription.
|
| I can imagine a scenario where you need to login to cancel
| your subscription, but can't login because your banned. A
| while back Tinder was trying to bypass the Google Play
| subscription system so this is very possible.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| They did if he signed up from Tinder.com. Not cancelling is
| if he subscribed via Play/App Store which presumably they
| have no control of on their side?
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| You can cancel user subscriptions through Play Store, but
| not through App Store. Yet another way that Apple is
| truly terrible to developers.
| excitom wrote:
| And file a chargeback request with the credit card company
| - service paid for but not received. The "customer is
| always right" in this scenario (speaking as someone who has
| an Internet based business that accepts credit card
| payments). As long as you don't make a habit of doing it,
| you'll get your money back.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Bob should certainly get a refund, prorated with reasonable
| costs for the actual services. In case service costs are
| spread over time and many users (i.e. you sell subscriptions
| to a service that costs $TONS_OF_MONEY to set up but almost
| nothing to maintain) some reasonable part can be charged -
| e.g. a monthly subscription cost - but charging beyond that,
| or maintaining subscription indefinitely, certainly would not
| be reasonable. Bob being an asshole and doing bad things is
| not relevant here - you can't legally rob assholes. You can
| refuse to do business with them, but that's it, otherwise the
| assholes have the same rights as everybody else.
| Zak wrote:
| You're not wrong, but you'd better not have false positives.
|
| In particular, it seems likely the author in this case got
| caught by an algorithmic badness detector or may have
| violated the TOS in some minor technical way rather than
| being abusive. I'm counting the latter as a false positive in
| this case; that's no way to treat a paying customer. People
| who know what they did don't usually blog about getting
| banned and post it to HN.
|
| Chargebacks are an effective way to punish companies for this
| behavior.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > Should Bob get a refund?
|
| Yes - Bob should be returned a pro-rated amount based on the
| amount time he originally paid to use the service for and the
| day his account was terminated.
|
| EX: If Bob paid for a month, and Alice cancels him on day 5,
| Bob should be refunded approx: (30 - 5)/30 * (Cost of
| subscription).
|
| You do not get to charge people for a service you are no
| longer providing them.
|
| You're _NOT_ refunding him, you 're terminating the contract
| that allowed you to charge him in the first place. So you
| bill for time used and return the rest.
| onion2k wrote:
| That's not how cancellations for subscriptions or refunds for
| services work though. If Bob has paid Alice to send cards,
| and she has sent them, then obviously no refund is necessary.
| Alice just needs to ban Bob from using the service again.
|
| In the case of Tinder banning someone, they should
| automatically cancel the subscription because the customer no
| longer have access to what they're paying for, and if there's
| a part of a month left they should refund the value of that.
| Companies should not be allowed to issue 'punishment' to
| customers. That's what the criminal justice system is for.
|
| This is not a hard problem. Companies should only charge for
| the service they provide, and if they choose to withdraw that
| service they shouldn't take any money for what the user can't
| use.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Companies should not be allowed to issue 'punishment' to
| customers.
|
| Why not? Contracts with penalties are very common.
|
| Subscriptions should be cancelled when an account is banned
| but it's not obvious to me why there should be a refund.
| Subscription services usually don't allow for partial
| refunds when you cancel. If you force companies to refund
| in case of a ban, you need to force them to allow
| cancellation at any time with the same refund.
| [deleted]
| jcadam wrote:
| I met my wife when she tapped me on the shoulder in a public
| place and introduced herself. I just smiled and nodded and
| ended up with a date - I think I might have gotten my name out
| at some point -- not sure. She calls me by the correct name
| now, 20+ years later in any case.
|
| Online dating sites/apps seem like they'd be a nightmare.
| 202112222132 wrote:
| 1024core wrote:
| > When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in
| their mid-20s to 30s without a job.
|
| I read this article (a long time ago) about a NYC girl who was
| saying that investing $30/mo on a Match.com account was the
| best investment she had made, as it meant she'd get treated to
| top restaurants, etc. by the guys for free.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| To be fair, men do it too!
|
| https://la.eater.com/2019/1/17/18186932/dine-dash-dater-
| arre...
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >if you're staring at your phone constantly waiting for box to
| message you
|
| I may be unfamiliar with the terminology, but can you please
| explain what this means? What is "box" in this context?
| newsbinator wrote:
| A Tinder message box as opposed to a conversation with a real
| life person?
| shirleyquirk wrote:
| I think they meant 'bots'?
| knubie wrote:
| > By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his
| subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my
| account that's fine but cancel the subscription and refund my
| money.
|
| Could this have something to do with subscribing through the
| App Store? Maybe there is something in Apple's ToS, or some
| limitation in their billing API that prevents them from doing
| this.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I stopped paying for dating apps as soon as I realized
| tinder, Bumble, and Match constantly try to "lure" me into
| paying for subscriptions. It happened many times that I would
| get notifications about new matches/likes just moments after
| midnight when my subscription plan ended. I found it
| statistically unlikely that people only liked my profile
| right after my plan is finished.
| binarysolo wrote:
| Assuming it's not outright foul play, it's prob more likely
| that the matching services intentionally boost your profile
| gets better reach/impressions as that's a +EV play, and
| reduce your profile reach when you're subscribed long-term.
|
| To carry this thought exercise more, someone structuring
| this system could also treat hot/responsive/engaged
| profiles as an asset of retention and intentionally
| matchmake the results to optimize for a system to be
| engaged (vs to matchmake two people who find love and
| unsubscribe after).
| saurik wrote:
| Given that the App Store doesn't let developers give users
| refunds, it does sound likely to me that they can't cancel
| user subscriptions either.
| newprint wrote:
| I met my current girlfriend on Match.com(US) in 2019. She was
| unemployed back then and we lived 2h+ hours apart. First 6
| months of the relationship, she was unemployed. We are still
| together and now she has a job. I don't think unemployment
| should immediately be a no go for the relationship.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah same. Nothing wrong with being unemployed.
| vmception wrote:
| > When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in
| their mid-20s to 30s without a job. In real life, everyone I've
| gone out with has had a decent job, due to another scary
| experience I don't go out with people who aren't working.
|
| Overfitting is a modeling error in statistics that occurs when
| a function is too closely aligned to a limited set of data
| points. ... Thus, attempting to make the model conform too
| closely to slightly inaccurate data can infect the model with
| substantial errors and reduce its predictive power.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| And yet forming priors based on experience gained in a
| classic multi arm bandit thompson sampling approach with
| appropriate exploitation exploration tradeoff is generally
| the dominant strategy in any static unfamiliar space.
|
| Alternatively, contextualizing things into niche stats
| frameworks doesn't make you correct, or sound intelligent.
| vmception wrote:
| The point was to say it without saying it, to provoke
| introspection in their arbitrary associations.
|
| The "it" being that the issue wasn't that they - and the
| future potential partners - didn't have a day job. And yet,
| this person chose that specific aspect of the relationship
| and elevated that to relevance for other relationships.
| Even further, they are applying this to people in other
| cities and geographies, amplifying the absurdity.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > The "it" being that the issue wasn't that they - and
| the future potential partners - didn't have a day job.
|
| Maybe not. However,
|
| - If they haven't been able to identify what the real
| issue _is_, AND
|
| - Avoiding dating people that don't have a day job limits
| (or completely prevents) dating people that do have the
| real issue, AND
|
| - Avoiding said people doesn't limit the number of
| available people to date below a reasonable threshold,
| THEN
|
| - Using "doesn't have a day job" as a filter seems to be
| a reasonable compromise for them.
|
| Sure, it may prevent them from finding the "best" match,
| since there could be a person without a job that doesn't
| exhibit the real problem. But it's possible that removing
| that filter would cause so much wasted time (on dates
| with bad matches) that the odds of meeting a good match,
| nonetheless the best match, as significantly diminished
| (as is QoL).
| 999900000999 wrote:
| There are a few excellent reasons to never get involved
| with someone who doesn't have a job.
|
| The first one is the vast majority of divorces are due to
| financial issues, my last partner left both of her
| husbands because they weren't making enough money. Her
| first husband didn't really want to work and they ended
| up moving in with her parents. A close family member had
| to break up with her husband since he wasn't working and
| kept overdrafting the joint account
|
| The second reason, is this person who doesn't work is
| probably being supported by someone else.
|
| Their sugar daddy's going to want to hurt you. I made the
| mistake once when I was younger of going out with a girl
| who didn't have a job, and this is basically what
| happened.
|
| Finally, people with jobs tend to be much more
| straightforward.
|
| You have a right to whatever dating criteria you choose.
| Some people won't date someone whose below a certain
| height. It's easier to fill out a job application than to
| become taller.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Someone is salty that they can't get a date, and
| apparently, a job.
| vmception wrote:
| Structure of a dating discussion: vilify anyone that
| doesn't pretend its awesome
| [deleted]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Says the person vilifying someone for stating their
| requirement for romantic consideration is that the other
| person has the basic requisite for a stable lifestyle.
|
| *No I don't want to hear edge cases about what
| constitutes a job; the context here was clear enough.
| vmception wrote:
| I think they didn't say unemployed for a reason, which is
| why I didn't say unemployed for a reason. Not having a
| job is different than needing a job for food and shelter
| and any flexibility, the former is "not having a job" the
| latter is "unemployed". I don't consider that an edge
| case.
|
| What I got out of it is that they had a bad experience
| with someone not occupying their time with something.
|
| I "vilify", or more-so call out, their overfitting.
| You're assuming they didnt have a basic stable lifestyle
| AND that they became a burden to OP. I'm assuming they
| could have had any level of stability and became a burden
| to OP for any reason, that at least removes the
| predictive capability for determining if the other
| potential partners would become a burden to OP.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| They didn't "overfit" though. They shared their
| experience - they didn't say that their experience is
| normative (although I expect it is). People are allowed
| to share anecdotes.
| mavsman wrote:
| Eventually wet bandits turn into sticky bandits
| mdoms wrote:
| Let people have personal experiences.
| vmception wrote:
| *at the expense of screening against everyone else who
| happen to slightly overlap in the venn diagram at that
| point in time
|
| thats the absurdity
| authed wrote:
| All major companies are like this. I.E.: Google Accounts, Reddit,
| etc...
|
| I am in the process of finding alternate non-reddit sources to
| match my reddit subs... and moving out of Google.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Once had a bank that decided that I had met a annual limit of
| foreign exchange swift orders and because of that I couldn't
| receive my salary from the foreign company I worked for. Sent
| then my contract, links to my face and name on the company's
| about page and they simply decided I was probably some kind of
| terrorist or drug trafficker or whatever. Thankfully was able to
| transfer the order to another bank and later sue the first bank
| and win
| BingoAhoy wrote:
| "Big tech permabanned me and doesn't mind false positives"
|
| Isn't this often the case with humans minus the algorithm making
| the decision? Many times of the few times I've been in trouble,
| with HR, the law, or whatever authority you realize doing things
| that seem bad but aren't actually bad is almost as dangerous as
| doing something actually harmful because turns out humans aren't
| very good judges of ambiguous cases in low information
| environments.
|
| Even when not ambiguous humans by and large don't have a good
| grasp of what is or isn't moral. And they typically show a large
| lack of empathic ability for how their actions will effect
| others.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Yeah, I'd say "whether humans are involved" isn't actually a
| good metric for whether abuse detection is fair / avoids
| screwing you over.
|
| A better proxy would be "how much the company spends per user
| to detect false positives". Whether it's human oversight for
| each case, or engineering time spent fine-tuning algorithms to
| exclude known false positives, the more the company spends, the
| less it's going to screw you over.
|
| (In practice, companies want to spend very little, which is why
| you get underpaid Mechanical-Turk workers and slapped-together
| detection systems.)
| amima wrote:
| False positives are indeed a major problem with bigtech. Just got
| into the situation myself when I was traveling to France and
| wanted to order some food with Deliveroo. Their antifraud systems
| banned me without any option to prove my legitimacy. Needless to
| say I just normally wanted to order something to eat, and I later
| used Uber Eats without any problems. Permanent ban without
| procedure to correct antifraud false positive (most likely due to
| my bank card issued outside of France).
| amima wrote:
| Also, worth mentioning that I was banned after I have contacted
| the support because my orders were being rejected (this was my
| initial problem and the reason I contacted the support). It was
| the support team who banned me. This is a problem of its own:
| legitimate users should not be discouraged to contact the
| support.
| staticelf wrote:
| A couple of years ago Tinder only hid the profile pics with CSS
| in their web client so I installed a custom css to get the
| functionality you had to pay for free.
|
| Unfortunately, as I recently got single again I discovered that
| this wasn't possible anymore.
|
| To be more on topic, Tinder is a very american company. I haven't
| had personal issues with the company but I think their new
| features of weird matching from some shitty interactive videos is
| a sign of classic over-engineering. It seems like the app is
| "done". Maybe they should focus on creating something else than
| add useless features that no one seems to use ( at least where I
| am from ).
| stevemadere wrote:
| This is approximately half the plot of Terry Gilliam's movie
| "Brazil"
| najqh wrote:
| You were already shadowbanned permanently, that's why you had 0
| likes. There is no difference between that and having no account
| at all since you cannot interact with any broads. By removing
| your account, they did you a favour in a sense.
|
| Get a burner SIM card with a new number and create another
| profile. Easy as that.
| 3np wrote:
| > Get a burner SIM card with a new number and create another
| profile. Easy as that.
|
| People keep saying this without realizing a lot of people
| practically can't these days. In an increasing number of
| countries, getting an SMS/phone-capable SIM can not be done
| without KYC/ID verification. Where I live, for example, you
| even need to be a resident; all prepaids are data-only.
|
| And before you tell me to find a homeless drug-addict and make
| them get one for me, it's not that easy and no one should have
| to do that in the first place.
|
| Same restrictions apply for SkypeIn and similar VoIP services
| (which BtW come in a separate prefix that most of these
| services blacklist anyway).
|
| There's a reason why those dodgy "receive anyonymous SMS" sites
| all only provide the same handful of countries.
| najqh wrote:
| Okay? So do ID verification. Tinder won't see your ID. They
| don't know you are the same person.
| vidarh wrote:
| Exactly. Some places, like the UK you can just order a
| bunch of SIMs from Amazon. Though who knows if they'll ban
| you again if you keep signing up from the same wifi and/or
| if their app fingerprints the same phone. But worst case is
| throaway cheap phones and pay as you go.
| vmception wrote:
| This is the correct answer. Rotate idents. Use a phone emulator
| if there is a hardware ban. Occasionally a VOIP phone number
| might work for account authentication, occasionally not though.
|
| But people really forget that is an option to just walk to the
| nearest phone store and come out with a $20 sim for the month.
| Useful for way more than just trying to hook up on a dating app
| you got banned on.
| cnlal wrote:
| Why do people use a service that has a written history of all
| your embarrassing hookups in the first place?
|
| In the past, intelligence agencies used to devote time and money
| to get such compromising information. Now people give it out for
| free.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| It also used to be a social stigma which is why it had
| blackmail value. That's no longer the case in a lot of western
| countries.
| hansel_der wrote:
| still, the dataset of "who screwed whom, when, for how long"
| seems valuable for enriching other social graphs.
|
| it's not that of a stigma nowadays, but i could be again, and
| certainly is if you are becoming a person of interest.
| bradlys wrote:
| Maybe a slight interest for now but in the future? No one
| will care. Todays generation is far more sex positive than
| previous - even if they're getting laid way less than
| previous ones due to dating apps.
| vmception wrote:
| for an additional avenue of more hookups, you answered your own
| question
| dqpb wrote:
| Well, well, well. Let's recap some popular HN opinions that have
| surfaced lately:
|
| _What Problem Blockchains Solve_
|
| mrjin: centralized organizations are there for reasons, and block
| chain resolved none of them
|
| _The Web3 Fraud_
|
| endisneigh: In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find
| a single example of any technology working better in a
| decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
|
| _The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger_
|
| Stephen Diehl: Any application that could be done on a blockchain
| could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Making a blind guess for the 1st day ban, did author use someone
| else's photos?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Why did this person set up a new tinder account?
|
| "That is something that never happened to me before"
|
| How if you're a first time user? Sounds like they already had a
| tinder account at some point. This is clickbait at best...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yup, I wonder if tinder noticed multiple accounts associated
| with the facebook/phone # he provided. I'd suspect they would
| proactively prevent you from creating a new account, but I've
| never used the service so perhaps you put in your facebook
| after the account is created or something, and that is when
| they got the multiple account signal? Or if he has a completely
| different name associated with his facebook account.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Bumble banned Sharon Stone and then backtracked when they
| realized who she was.
|
| https://www.nme.com/news/film/sharon-stones-bumble-dating-pr...
| nodesocket wrote:
| I am almost certain that Bumble shadow banned me as well (mostly
| over my past political and public spotlight). Switched to hinge,
| much better platform. I am very very bearish on Bumble, lots of
| fake profiles and shenanigans going on at Bumble.
| Mandatum wrote:
| I was just banned by EA/DICE for cheating, hacking or exploiting
| in Battlefield 2042. I'm not sure which, as I did none of those
| things (or if I did, I wasn't aware of it - but I expect it's
| unlikely that you can accidentally break those rules). After
| asking support for more information, they listed the same reasons
| that were originally emailed to me - cheating, hacking or
| exploiting the game. No further information given.
|
| Luckily I bought it on Amazon so I'll be refunding through them,
| and I expect my Origin account to be banned as a result - however
| it sucks to deal with these hardline policies with zero
| transparency when you're on the wrong side of the algorithm.
|
| EDIT: After reading more about false-positive bans, it seems
| these days having the wrong driver installed (as some hacks
| pretend to be software that communicates through that "bad"
| driver) or running peripheral scripts (like mouse macros) can
| cause a ban. I wasn't using macros and I don't have peripherals
| capable of running them (eg Logitech G series).
| hnbad wrote:
| 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
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It doesn't matter, because we know they weren't given a reason.
|
| They might have broken a rule without realizing it, but no one
| is even willing to say what one.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| This is actually wonderful (for him). Tinder is terrible. There's
| not enough space for a real profile (that nobody reads anyway) so
| everyone just goes based on pictures and humorous quips, leading
| to everyone becoming a stereotype. There's definitely no more
| than 6 different kinds of profiles on Tinder.
|
| Go make friends in person and meet dates through normal social
| interactions. Sounds crazy but it has an impressive track record.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is basically the paradigm of any monopolistic or near
| monopolistic system. You can screw over a small minority without
| provoking a real response so long as you are appeasing or
| distracting the majority. Big tech, traditional companies, and
| even government.
| newyankee wrote:
| Moreover Tinder has an incentive to keep the paid users paid my
| making sure it is difficult for them to find a match. The most
| lucrative customers for matchmaking sites are the most
| desperate. Even with a lot of competition due to network
| effects most of the people would always be driven to the most
| popular sites.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Banning a paying user seems counterproductive though?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Tinder didn't stop charging him when they banned him.
| NumberCruncher wrote:
| > Tinder has an incentive to keep the paid users paid my
| making sure it is difficult for them to find a match
|
| An evil data scientist would put almost exclusively users on
| your screen who you are interested in but they are not
| interested in you to boost your spendings and would mix a
| small portion of good bidirectional matches just to make his
| purpose less obvious. Fortunately evil data scientists does
| not exist... I mean I definitely wasn't paid to do anything
| like that. Never.
| jliptzin wrote:
| They don't even have to be doing that on purpose, if one
| just optimizes the revenue per user metric he's effectively
| doing the same thing even if not on purpose.
| [deleted]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It's ever better if you use some type of AI for this,
| then no one "knows" that are actually doing that.
| NumberCruncher wrote:
| "I didn't do it on purpose" and "no one knew what we are
| actually doing". I gonna call it the "data scientist's
| switchblade...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Or it's a lack of enforcement/regulation. You really think
| Tinder is a monopoly? lol
| kylebyproxy wrote:
| It has competitors, sure. But what the competitors don't have
| is user base and mind share. Maybe _de facto_ or _effective_
| monopoly is more accurate?
| mrep wrote:
| I think you are off base here. I use hinge primarily and
| occasionally bumble. I haven't opened up tinder in months.
| skykooler wrote:
| They are all owned by Match though, they're not actually
| competitors.
| mrep wrote:
| Bumble is a public company (BMBL). Where are you seeing
| they are owned by match?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Tinder is owned by Match which is a monopoly, yes. They own
| every dating site you've heard of.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| God damnit you're right. They own Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid,
| the list goes on.
|
| That sure is a monopoly.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I know it's popular to rail against tech companies, but I don't
| think there's a world in which we are _entitled_ to access to
| Tinder or any other company 's services.
|
| Tinder does not hold anything even remotely resembling a
| monopoly (no, Match does not own every dating app, just many of
| them) on the dating app space, we need to stop throwing that
| word around so casually. You're diluting the concept by trying
| to apply it here, which will lessen its impact when a _real_
| monopoly comes along and actually tries to control a market
| (e.g. Microsoft and how it 's handling Edge right now).
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > I don't think there's a world in which we are entitled to
| access to Tinder or any other company's services.
|
| The world you're looking for is China, where without WeChat
| you may as well not exist.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| "or any other company's services" is a bit to wide, the
| obvious biggest counter example to this would be utilities,
| everyone is somewhat entitled to access to their power
| company's services. But going outside utilities, what if I
| live on an island that is serviced by a single ferry company,
| shouldn't I be entitled to paying service?
|
| And on the meaning of monopoly, I believe it is fair to
| describe the "network affect" as a monopoly. The historical
| example of the US rail comes to mind, the market had several
| rail companies at the time, but each had monopoly over
| certain routes, if you wanted to go from place A to place B
| you maybe only had one choice. The fact that other rail lines
| existed to places you didn't want to go doesn't mean that it
| wasn't a monopoly. The same way, those tech companies may
| have monopoly over the route from person A to person B.
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| > "or any other company's services" is a bit to wide, the
| obvious biggest counter example to this would be utilities,
| everyone is somewhat entitled to access to their power
| company's services. But going outside utilities, what if I
| live on an island that is serviced by a single ferry
| company, shouldn't I be entitled to paying service?
|
| True, your 'island ferry example' is a monopoly. It is also
| not at all analogous to this situation and Tinder in
| general.
|
| I'm no expert, but I don't think you understand what the
| 'network affect (sip)' is, as it does not apply to US
| Railways at all, and is a relatively new term that only
| arose in the 1970s. That aside, your example doesn't
| survive further scrutiny because railways were often the
| only practical way of moving between two generally public
| places -- cities or towns. With Tinder though, they are
| providing you access to their own private network of users.
| Your example is like saying the monorail in disney is a
| monopoly, but that doesn't make any sense, since it's for
| transporting you within their own park.
|
| Lastly, Tinder is not the one and only way to meet people.
| Yes, they have are of the most widely-used companies in the
| space. But there _are_ others. And, you know, people can
| still meet in real life -- through friends, at work, at
| activities or interest-based groups. On other social media
| like Twitter, et al.
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| How is this an example of monopoly? Are you positing that
| Tinder is the only way to meet other people? That seems insane.
| Not only are there are other dating services (yes, I know the
| parent company of Tinder also owns bumble, but there are still
| plenty of others), you can also meet people on other social
| media apps. This is all in addition to something called "real
| life" -- through friends, your workplace, or getting involved
| in groups and activities.
| toolz wrote:
| This is the paradigm of any system, period. If you work
| correctly for the most part, the minority which you create
| negative value for can be offset and establish that system as
| viable.
|
| This is true for brick and morter/mom and pop businesses. It's
| true for computer programs. Basically any system. It is not an
| indicator for a monopoly.
| toolz wrote:
| To me this seems to be readily apparent, but I'm getting
| downvotes without reply. I'm sincerely curious how what I've
| said can be disagreed with, do you not all use software that
| gives you a negative value but maybe gives positive value to
| your managers? Is that tool a monopoly or does my statement
| just hold true?
|
| Every system that survives, survives because it generates
| positive value for most people, no? Are you telling me that
| every business that isn't a monopoly only generates positive
| value and there's no negative value generated for a minority
| of customers?
| akimball wrote:
| I think you might be suffering from a common and general
| objection to normalizing tortious practices
| newyankee wrote:
| FWIW I seldom got any likes on Tinder in USA. I would consider
| myself in the top 10% of my own country in height and looks but
| not the same in USA. I realized that US women do not consider me
| attractive at least based on limited data that a Tinder card
| shows.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Because Tinder is a woman's menu of fuck buddies and for that
| they aim at the top fraction of 1%. It's unreal but is where
| their fantasy is taking them.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| FWIW if you're not paying then you're not being shown to anyone
| outside of maybe the first 24 hours.
| mrep wrote:
| I cannot say for tinder, but I just opened bumble for the
| first time in weeks and apparently I have 50+ likes.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Tindr is known to be particularly bad. idk about Bumble.
| standardUser wrote:
| Tweak your profile, try other apps, and accept that the funnel
| is going to be massive.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| IMO, if your market share is bigger than ${some number}, you
| shouldn't be able to deny service without a documented reason, it
| should have some sort of time-to-live (i.e 1 year), and there
| should be an appeals process. In a functioning marketplace,
| companies would be naturally incentivized to care about customers
| but that stops working in uncompetitive industries (which
| currently describes most of the economy).
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Inverted totalitarianism symptoms may include shutting an
| individual out of a large portion of their life for no real
| reason, for a misunderstanding, or for daring to challenge
| corporate power. Often this occurs with minimal or no human
| intervention, and lack of due process becomes normalized.
| Welcome to Dystopian Hell, population: everyone not digitally
| cancelled.
| samhw wrote:
| Other symptoms include: a remarkable tendency of people to
| say "oh, that's OK, they're just coming for the
| conservatives".
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| There's something to that, and I skew towards democratic
| socialist. Doing nothing because it appears to target a
| perceived "foe" attribute or other demonstrates a lack of
| integrity in the bystander. Fair is fair, while selective
| impact games build resentment. One love and so on.
|
| We have to get past putting people in boxes for arbitrary
| disagreement/animosity. Formalized politics must be made
| obsolete.
| samhw wrote:
| I'm agreeing with you, to be clear, and I'm not a
| conservative. It's disappointing that that seems to be
| the inference people have made, if I understand correctly
| the message that was intended to be sent by the
| smattering of downvotes. It's disturbing that these
| things are being done to anyone, and that we don't
| understand the ramifications or the subtleties just
| because our tribe forbids us to empathise with the people
| involved.
|
| If it were left-wingers being banned, or centrist Biden
| supporters, I have absolutely no doubt in the world that
| there would be a _slew_ of New York Times thinkpieces
| about 'the complexity of our political liberties in a
| world where the public square is digital', or whatever
| nauseating way they would invariably phrase it.
|
| (You can see this from the other reply saying
| "conservatives hate morals and that's why we can ignore
| morals in dealing with them", the exact same thing
| conservatives say about liberals, and eventually they're
| both justified. But apparently none of us has the
| necessary higher-order thinking skills to avoid a moral
| slide into bedlam. This case is perfectly illustrative:
| no amount of political-tribalist tosh should be able to
| persuade you that the other side doesn't deserve to be
| treated morally.)
| bloaf wrote:
| The fundamental rule of conservatism is this:
|
| >There must be an in-group that the law protects but does
| not bind, alongside an out-group that the law binds but
| does not protect.
|
| That is why conservatives are so prickly about being
| regulated: to be bound by the rules is "proof" that they
| are no longer the in-group.
|
| Your very assertion that the law _can_ be applied fairly
| (to the point group membership is irrelevant) is a denial
| of the fundamental thesis of conservatism.
|
| I agree that we should aspire to fairness and equality-
| before-the-rules, but there are too many people who do
| deeply believe that fundamental theorem to just deny and
| ignore.
| goldfeld wrote:
| Phew! And here I was thinking the problem would lie in using
| it! mercifully big tech is saved.
| fourseventy wrote:
| I disagree, I think the free market will take care of this on
| its own.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| "Free market" is why our planet is dying, so no, I don't
| think so. Some regulation is needed.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Just like it took care of adding plastics and PFAS to the
| ocean, yea?
|
| Sometimes regulation is needed
| sircastor wrote:
| In theory, if this was considered a big enough problem, yes
| - the market would resolve this. And by "big enough
| problem" we have to remember that market-driven economies
| respond to market demand forces.
|
| Plastic in the ocean is definitely a huge problem, but it's
| not a market problem - not yet. When consumers are willing
| to pay to get plastics out of the ocean, hundreds of
| companies will appear eager to solve the problem.
|
| There's a comment above (@pdpi: "At what timescale?") that
| identifies the issue at hand. In this case (and in a lot of
| cases) we need regulation because market demand to solve
| this isn't fast enough (or may never exist)
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| So when does it become a market problem? Before or after
| we lose biodiversity on the planet?
| pdpi wrote:
| At what timescale?
|
| How many more years of recurring "got randomly blocked from
| the App Store/Play Store/Facebook Ads/whatever other mission-
| critical service" posts on Hacker News do we need before the
| market corrects itself?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I think the free market will take care of this on its own.
|
| How, if there is no competition?
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Who decides which "markets" a company is in and measures their
| market share in those markets? How is market share measured?
|
| Is Tinder a dating service or social media company? If Facebook
| starts offering a dating feature in app and becomes the biggest
| player in the dating space, which market is facebook in? Both?
| If both, does all of facebook's market cap/DAU/whatever metric
| we settle on to measure market share get fully applied to both
| markets or split in some way?
|
| Basically, I think implementing "if $market_share > n" is not a
| trivial problem that will be litigated to death. The companies
| with the best lawyers will win.
| gleenn wrote:
| Facebook has dating functionality
| foepys wrote:
| Let's not pretend like this is an impossible task. Some EU
| countries already have laws that base regulations on company
| size and number of customers.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Sure, but market share and company size are two
| fundamentally different problems.
|
| Measuring the size of a company is a lot easier: you pick
| some metric (employees, revenue, profit, customers, etc...)
| and apply it to all companies.
|
| Measuring market share requires that you categorize all
| companies into "markets," which think is pretty subjective.
| Is Jet Brains an IDE company? A software company? How about
| Apple? If multiple, are metrics split?
|
| Whatever rules you pick, they're going to be biased towards
| some companies (including some big ones not popular on HN)
| and against other companies (including some companies HN
| loves).
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Humans
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Well yes, lawyers are humans, but that doesn't help us.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It might, it might not. Pessimism isn't the only
| conclusion.
| rytill wrote:
| This comment is downvoted, but he raises a valid point aside
| from the scare quotes.
|
| How exactly will it work?
| [deleted]
| dbingham wrote:
| A democratically elected government.
|
| Look, there is no such thing as a "natural market" that can
| keep the power of the actors in it in check. The internet was
| the closest thing to a perfect market that has ever existed
| and all it has produced is overpowered monopoly after
| overpowered monopoly.
|
| If we want a free society, we don't get that by handing power
| over to the markets. We get that by building the most
| responsive democracy we can, and then using that to keep
| power (in all its forms, including business) in check.
|
| So who decides which businesses are too powerful? People,
| elected and held accountable by citizenry at large.
| SllX wrote:
| So what you want is a command economy?
|
| Nah, I'll pass. Markets are made up of people, they're not
| just some abstraction. Governments have good uses, but
| determining who is participating in what market and how
| much market share they have or are allowed to have isn't
| one of them.
| karpierz wrote:
| "Command economy" and "unregulated free market" is a
| false dichotomy.
| SllX wrote:
| True. But note two things:
|
| 1. The parent is advocating for a powerful form of
| command over the economy.
|
| 2. I am not advocating for lawless markets.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How do governments prevent monopolies? That's been
| generally done and supported for over a century.
| SllX wrote:
| Well not granting monopolies is a start, but governments
| grant monopolies all the time in the form of patents,
| copyright and trademarks.
|
| Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another
| way to do so, but so far they have recently made
| lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
|
| If you then prove a monopoly, can you also then prove
| that it's activities are harmful to the people in the
| marketplace by denying them choices they would otherwise
| have? Maybe, but probably not very often and certainly
| not easily.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > not granting monopolies is a start
|
| Monopolies are generally not granted, except in
| exceptional circumstances. The US government didn't grant
| Microsoft a monopoly in PC operating systems.
|
| > Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be
| another way to do so, but so far they have recently made
| lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
|
| What are you referring to?
| SllX wrote:
| Yes, yes they do. I listed three examples of what a
| government granted monopoly looks like. Copyright,
| trademark and patents don't exist naturally, and they're
| unenforceable without the Rule of Law.
|
| > What are you referring to?
|
| Most recently (that I can think of): the suit the Feds
| filed against Facebook that was tossed out of court.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Those are temporary monopolies of a technology or
| creative work, not monopolies of a market.
| SllX wrote:
| That's not a useful distinction. Market monopolies, if
| they exist, where they exist, are usually tied into those
| same government granted monopolies. Facebook the bare
| bones public domain Technology stack is a lot less
| valuable to investors than Facebook the service on the
| Facebook servers presented to Facebook account holders on
| Facebook's private servers at Facebook.com paid for with
| Ad revenue generated by Facebook's copyrighted (and maybe
| partially patented?) adtech and backed by Sales Reps on
| Facebook's payroll.
|
| And despite all of that, they're probably still not a
| monopoly for anything (haven't heard a convincing
| argument on this one yet!), at least anywhere the DoJ and
| FTC have jurisdiction.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Facebook's extraordinary market power seems due to the
| network effect, not patents.
| SllX wrote:
| Not just patents: trademark too.
|
| There's only one Facebook. Without that, you also don't
| have Facebook's network effect tying it all together.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| In a technology driven economy (which we are), a 25 year
| monopoly on a new technology is a monopoly of a market
| for a generation.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| There are many ways to accomplish the same things. Tech
| companies have large patent portfolios, yet there is
| plenty of competition. Perhaps the biggest obstacles to
| competition are the network effect for social media, and
| brand power - people use Amazon and Google despite many
| equally good alternatives.
| cassac wrote:
| Doesn't the government already do that all the time?
| Copyright, trademarks, spectrum auctions, right of ways,
| public run utilities, private government projects bid out
| to single entities, eminent domain, licensing etc etc are
| all tools the government uses to mess with the market. It
| is not free and hasn't been for awhile and I'm not sure
| any of it has to do with what's best for the people.
| SllX wrote:
| The government does a lot of things that fall into a few
| categories: tax authority, police powers, market
| participation for its own activities, and even granting
| (or reserving) monopoly powers. Also missing from your
| list: USPS has a monopoly on First-class mail in the
| United States.
|
| Some of these are just, useful, bad, abhorrent,
| unnecessary, necessary, or outmoded.
|
| None of that falls into commanding the economy. We're not
| even strangers to command economies: the wartime powers
| of the Federal government are vast, and were most
| powerfully executed in World War II.
|
| I would argue that exactly what the parent suggested, in
| respond to the GP falls exactly into that bucket of ideas
| for commanding the economy. It's not a just nor good use
| of Government, no matter how Democratic.
| adolph wrote:
| In the US, "People, elected and held accountable by
| citizenry at large" found that banks were "too big to
| fail." They did not restrain "the power of the actors in
| [the market] in check." What makes you think it'll be
| different this time?
| sbarre wrote:
| Plenty of people will argue that the US is not a great
| example of a functioning democracy where government is
| held accountable by the citizenry at large.
|
| So your example is valid but maybe not for the point
| you're trying to make?
| dbingham wrote:
| The US is not a good example of a functioning democracy.
| Our federal representatives have to represent 700,000
| people. The state legislatures get to shape the federal
| districts, which means the representatives effictively
| get to pick their voters instead of the other way around.
| Our senate is grossly undemocratic, giving each state two
| representatives regardless of population, leading to
| minority rule. And our presidential election system is
| expressly anti-democratic.
|
| There are lots of good examples of better functioning
| democracies and a fair amount of theory on reforms that
| could improve even those (things like ranked choice
| voting).
|
| That's why I said "Build the most responsive democracy we
| can".
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Sure, I am not a libertarian or anything like that.
|
| I'm all for good regulation and strong government. However,
| making good laws and regulations is not easy! The details
| of these things is incredibly important and can't be solved
| by some sort of generic market vs government debate.
|
| And while I do think government has a role to play, most of
| our regulations are poorly designed and have been captured
| by corporate interests.
|
| I don't see how the proposed rule could be implemented in a
| way that would have the desired outcome.
| dbingham wrote:
| Regulations are like code - buggy and iterative. That's
| why you need a responsive democracy (which the US
| decidedly does _not_ have). So when a regulation has
| bugs, the people can get their representatives to update
| it.
|
| We don't avoid writing code just because it's inevitably
| buggy and has unintended side effects. Indeed, there's a
| whole mentality of "move fast and break things" -
| essentially damn the side effects and full speed ahead -
| because we, as a sector, recognize that you have to take
| risks to make the world a better place. Yet, we forget
| that when it comes to using government power (our
| collective power) to make laws that shape our world.
|
| Now, I'm not a proponent of "move fast and break things"
| - more, move steadily and make the best decision you can
| in a reasonable time frame. But "move steadily" is still
| moving. We can take our time writing legislation and
| regulations and do our best to get it right, and still
| also work to build responsive systems so that when it's
| inevitably buggy we can fix the bugs.
|
| As I said in the second sentence, the problem with the US
| right now is that it was intentionally constructed to be
| the opposite of a responsive democracy.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Sure, but the first step to evaluating if an idea is "the
| best decision [we] can [make] in a reasonable time" is to
| understand what the idea is.
|
| So, per all of my questions, how does this idea work? How
| is market share defined and measured?
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The details of these things is incredibly important and
| can't be solved by some sort of generic market vs
| government debate.
|
| > most of our regulations are poorly designed and have
| been captured by corporate interests
|
| Isn't the second comment a generic statement? Do you have
| specific data? I agree that the details are incredibly
| important.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm generalizing that US regulations are
| poorly designed, based mostly on my experience with
| municipal building codes and few niches of finance
| regulation.
|
| But about the issue at hand, I've been specific in my
| critique: market share is an amorphous concept and thus
| ill-suited to legislation and a prime opportunity for
| regulatory capture.
| gok wrote:
| How is internet dating an uncompetitive industry? There are
| dozens of competitors. The biggest (Tinder) has barely 30%
| marketshare.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Match Group (owner of tinder) basically has a monopoly in
| combination with their other apps. Even Facebook tried to
| challenge them and failed.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| You're almost there. Companies that aren't competitive should
| be broken up.
| lolinder wrote:
| What would it mean to break up Tinder? How do you partition a
| company that only has one product?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Partition it geographically. If they want to compete in
| certain cities/regions/countries where the user base
| exceeds a certain number, they must spin off subsidiaries
| for that area. I can't imagine people looking for a date on
| the other end of the country outside of very specific
| circumstances.
| samhw wrote:
| > they must spin off subsidiaries
|
| Eh? Subsidiaries aren't usually what people mean when
| they speak of breaking up companies. Subsidiaries are
| aligned with the parent company in terms of incentives,
| so it doesn't really change the landscape at all, besides
| worsening the user experience if you require the
| subsidiary to maintain its own isolated silo of users and
| data.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| It's pretty common to use Tinder for hook ups during
| holidays
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| This is a specialised use case, just as I mentioned. Most
| people aren't on holiday at any given time.
| lolinder wrote:
| Geographic partition is what we did to Bell, and that
| really doesn't seem to have helped much. If the only way
| to choose a competitor is to move, there's still really
| no competition. No one spent thousands of dollars moving
| across the country because the telephone company there
| was better.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Isn't this how we just end up in the same situation we
| have with ISPs? It doesn't matter that we have Comcast,
| Cox, and Charter if any given area only has one of them.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Building an ISP requires investing in infrastructure. A
| dating app needs a UX designer and a few cloud instances.
| There's a world of difference in the required outlay when
| building a competitor.
| butokai wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by this, but Tinder's parent company
| controls several well known dating services (OkCupid,
| Meetic, Twoo and many more)
| lolinder wrote:
| Ah, fair enough. I was thinking OP meant Tinder
| specifically, but at the very least OkCupid could be
| split out.
| aeternum wrote:
| They don't even need to be broken up. Anti-competitive
| mergers just need to be prevented.
| a-dub wrote:
| broken up how and to what end? if you review definitions of
| antitrust and monopoly, you'll find they really do not apply
| to the dynamics at play with consumer internet services that
| displace existing decentralized norms and enjoy majority
| market share due to network effects.
|
| not saying there isn't a problem, but maybe trying to
| shoehorn 19th century solutions onto 21st century problems
| isn't the answer.
| unabridged wrote:
| Instead of regulation, I'd like to see the government offer a
| free service. A digital commons. In this case the public
| library version of Tinder, with strict rules of who can be
| banned and where everyone is treated equally.
| klyrs wrote:
| You _want_ the government to be that involved in pair-
| selection in the population??? I am disturbed. Eugenics
| aside: you know that a direct result of this is that border
| services, local police, etc will have access to a database of
| dick pics, don 't you?
| unabridged wrote:
| If they used and published a fair algorithm for matching,
| they wouldn't really be involved in the matching they would
| just be providing a venue. Similar to a city providing
| public space for people to meet, like a fair.
|
| Do you think the FBI, NSA, etc doesn't already have access
| to photos posted on dating sites in the US?
| google234123 wrote:
| No, that's conspiracy theorists stuff. Of course, they
| can maybe get access with a court order.
| samhw wrote:
| Even if true, "have access to" is doing a lot of work
| here. If I had a Borges-style Library of Babel with all
| the possible books in the world, all configurations of
| the letters of the alphabet, I would technically "have
| access to" all human knowledge. But that's very different
| from having a curated collection which includes
| specifically only those things, filtered perfectly for
| you.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the government has them anyway, it's just that in addition
| to having them, the tax payer also has to pay clearview AI
| or whoever else for providing that service privately.
| That's actually exactly how the US government acquires
| license plate and vehicle data in states where collecting
| that information directly is prohibited, they just use your
| money to buy that from the private surveillance industry.
| [1]
|
| By believing in some sort of mythical distinction between
| private and public business you've created the worst world
| of all, in which a government can superficially claim its
| hands are clean, buy unlimited surveillance data from
| unregulated private firms, without any democratic
| accountability. You now have the privilege of filling up
| Peter Thiel's bank account, while Palantir runs a precrime
| division that your city council has never even heard of[2]
|
| [1]https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/22/22244848/us-
| intelligence-...
|
| [2]https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-
| predict...
| antiterra wrote:
| Unfortunately there are scenarios where providing a documented
| reason or appeal is a vulnerability, illegal or both.
|
| A too-clear disclosure gives bad actors information on how to
| circumvent controls around safety, abuse, and fraud.
|
| If the reason an account is deleted includes some sort of
| KYC/Money Laundering issue, OFAC style sanction or child porn,
| then there can be legal obligation, with severe penalty, to
| both report and not tip off the user.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| Although that might be applicable to businesses that let
| people deal with money, why would any of those be an issue
| for Tinder?
| coryrc wrote:
| It would be legal if there was a law making it so, just as GP
| suggested.
|
| This is trivially solvable if creating an account required an
| in-person verification, like when you go into a bank to open
| an account. Since it's not mandatory, anybody who does so is
| beaten by anyone who doesn't (worse is better). So we should
| make it mandatory.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Any and all of these possibilities (vulnerability, illegal,
| or both) must be legalized or otherwise reframed as a cost of
| doing business. Every human deserves to be informed, whoever
| they are, regardless of status, wherever they are in the
| world. That we've allowed blackbox proceedings to take over
| these small quadrants of human society is a societal failure.
| The burden to secure such systems shall always fall upon the
| makers of those systems.
|
| Let me be very clear that any excuse made under the veil of
| security including the enshrining of such in our books of law
| is incompatible with a society that respects the dignity to
| live free. It is a vicious abuse of power by those with
| knowledge over those robbed of it.
| sterlind wrote:
| A good compromise might be to require explanations or
| shadow bans to be revealed say, 30 days after the action,
| in the case of bans because of suspected crimes. In the
| case of CP or terrorism this gives reasonable time for the
| Feds to find and arrest you and your conspirators. This is
| how the Patriot Act worked with publishing warrants, for
| better or worse.
| anamax wrote:
| Disclosure also gives people information on how to stay
| within the rules.
|
| Account deletion tips off the user so we're not talking about
| cases where there's a legal obligation to not tip off the
| user.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This rule would functionally kill small Internet service
| provision and build the biggest moat around the incumbent
| providers that has ever been handed to them.
|
| ... which may, indeed, be the right solution.
| samhw wrote:
| Do you mean because those 'small Internet service providers'
| would be included in his 'larger than $MARKET_SHARE' group,
| or because it would mean no one was kicked out of the
| incumbent services and therefore there would be fewer new
| customers available?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I mean because a company tends to explode from "smaller
| than $MARKET_SHARE" to "larger than $MARKET_SHARE" in a
| discontinuous fashion. So since a company can't really
| predict when it will happen, _every_ company providing
| service would need to prep from the ground up to provide
| the described level of relatively non-automated high-touch
| support this proposal describes. It 'd raise the cost to
| build a startup.
|
| ... not to imply it's a bad idea; there's no golden rule
| that says an ecosystem of millions of competing companies
| is always a superior alternative to a few well-regulated
| players. It's just important to note the hidden costs.
| matsemann wrote:
| Same argument used against gdpr all the time, and proven
| false all the time. It's easy to be small and compliant.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think this limitation is an artifact of the fact that
| the proposal is an idea being tossed out on social media.
| A real law would have some sort of grace period. That
| grace period could be chosen arbitrarily, it should be
| set such that any well-run company would have time to
| respond.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If you have automated rule enforcement, then you already
| have a formal specification of your rules, and informing
| the user of what rule they have broken should be trivial.
|
| If you have humans doing the bans manually, then you
| already have a human in the loop.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Okay, how about instead of coming into effect immediately
| after reaching some market share level, it comes into
| effect 1 year after you first reach that level?
| samhw wrote:
| Actually I think you're right, yeah. I don't know why
| your original comment is being downvoted. I suppose it
| testifies to the fact that comments are downvoted either
| because they're too stupid or too smart for the audience.
| mysecretaccount wrote:
| As long as ${some number} is large enough it will not impact
| "small ISP" at all.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's the thing about being an Internet startup... You
| never know when you're going to explode and suddenly jump
| from a ten-thousand-user service to a milliion-user
| service.
|
| So supporting this would require a company to take all
| manner of new precautions that companies currently don't
| (circuit-breaker on the new account creation system? But
| then your growth stalls and your potential customers go to
| a competitor instead, and you don't blow up into a YouTube
| or a Twitter like YouTube and Twitter did).
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Grace period - _A grace period is a period immediately
| after the deadline for an obligation during which a late
| fee, or other action that would have been taken as a
| result of failing to meet the deadline, is waived
| provided that the obligation is satisfied during the
| grace period. In other words, it is a length of time
| during which rules or penalties are waived or deferred.
| Grace periods can range from a number of minutes to a
| number of days or longer, and can apply in situations
| including arrival at a job, paying a bill, or meeting a
| government or legal requirement.
|
| In law, a grace period is a time period during which a
| particular rule exceptionally does not apply, or only
| partially applies._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_period
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| If you're suddenly a million-user service, you should
| easily have enough revenue to implement the regulations
| during a grace period.
| pdpi wrote:
| Or the simpler solution: Once your revenue goes over the
| threshold, you have a period of 6/12 months to go into
| compliance, or something similar.
| klyrs wrote:
| What if spammers outnumber honest users 10:1? I don't think
| there's a simple solution to any of this.
| coryrc wrote:
| They could validate their users first.
|
| Oh no! Then they can't fake growth.
| ouid wrote:
| "reason: user was spam"
| samhw wrote:
| Soon to become a very popular reason ;)
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Not unless you provide evidence that you are in fact a
| real person.
| samhw wrote:
| It won't be popular [/be used against you] unless you
| provide evidence you're a real person? I think that's a
| slightly Freudian slip right there.
| DaveSchmindel wrote:
| Where's your Tinder bio in this article? I can't imagine creating
| a new account and publishing something obscene on any social
| platform today without being flagged or worse.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > but a few days ago I came to a new country
|
| That one is the key. Likely some analytics service (Facebook?)
| has his phone associated with country A (his country of
| origin), and Tinder sees the registration coming in from
| country B (new country). That mismatch then triggered some
| anti-fraud signalling.
| 3np wrote:
| That would be my guess as well.
|
| People who frequently travel/change residences or have bases
| in more than one place seem to get banned or blocked by all
| kinds of services.
|
| Regardless of the intentions of the people designing these
| systems, I'd argue this is textbook systemic discrimination;
| you face issues only due to being different enough in the
| "wrong" way.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I very much doubt a dating service would have this problem,
| as many people use dating services while traveling even if
| they wouldn't at home (either because of cheating or just
| knowing the scene better at home).
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| While this is true, romance scammers also often try to
| obscure/spoof their true location - so I can see why it'd
| be something the Tinder algos would be sensitive to
| 3np wrote:
| Just speaking from experience and anecdotes from others.
| I'm not arguing it makes business-sense. As the OP is
| arguing, the false positives are probably a small enough
| percentage of users that companies haven't found it
| worthwhile to prioritize. And even if it is, it can be
| hard to tell from readily available data who's a false
| positive in the first place when you don't have a proper
| customer support organization.
| hnbad wrote:
| Or some of the photos he uploaded contained nudity. Or some
| parts of his profile or some of his photos were considered
| hate speech under the community guidelines. Or his profile
| was considered "self-promotional" (e.g. advertising his work
| or services) or contained addresses or other means of
| contacting him. We know nothing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Usually banned users get feedback about being banned. The
| ones _usually not_ getting feedback are spammers - they are
| being shadowbanned to avoid spammers being able to deduce
| their ban cause and circumvent the anti-spam measure.
| notch656a wrote:
| His home country is Ukraine. Financial transactions and those
| representing Ukraine are considered to be scammers or money
| launderers by default by many banks and tech.
| propogandist wrote:
| the tinder app, like pretty much all apps, is constantly
| calling graph.facebook.com while in use. Because the app
| doesn't work without Location access, FB gets a lot of rich
| location data every time the app is in use, but I don't
| believe the data being sent back can be utilized for fraud
| detection.
|
| There's also calls out to crash-analytics, firebase,
| appsflyer and Google Analytics constantly. The app will
| function if all these services are blocked.
| raverbashing wrote:
| This sounds super weird, unless this person had photos with
| forbidden content on it.
|
| But anyway, creating a new profile is not so hard (given the
| number of catfish still on the platform)
| DantesKite wrote:
| There's a service called DoNotPay that helps file legal requests
| to unban you. They're obviously not miracle workers, but I'm
| curious whether litigation would slow them down.
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| I have a story to share too: I talked a considerable time with a
| girl from another country and was about to travel to visit her.
| Then, I started having mixed feelings, wasn't sure about
| everything, decided to stop, told her and she got angry (well,
| until that moment I understood her quite well).
|
| A while later I tried to use Tinder again, and my account was
| banned. I don't really remember how I discovered it, if she told
| me, or a representative told me, but the thing was: She report me
| as I had verbally abused her, mistreated her and shada shada,
| because she was angry I dumped her.
|
| So they closed my account without even checking our conversations
| at least (there was no insults or nothing at all)
| HumanReadable wrote:
| I got permabanned when I tried logging in from my phone with oss
| android installed. In Tinder's defense I imagine my phone's
| system might have looked similar to that of spammers leading to a
| false-positive, so I don't mind the ban itself.
|
| What I do mind was that their official stance is that they don't
| reverse bans for any reason. Creating a new account is against
| their terms of service, so in theory I am locked out of one of
| the primary ways my generation finds partners.
|
| In the country I live, the competitors don't have user bases
| nearly large enough to compete so Tinder is effectively a
| monopoly. With Tinder's enormous market-power comes great
| responsibility, and they have in my eyes failed to live up to it.
| vidarh wrote:
| Buying a throwaway phone is the standard workaround to a Tinder
| ban.
| HumanReadable wrote:
| It was not difficult to get around the ban, but I wanted to
| point out that doing so is not allowed. Having broken no
| terms-of-service, I can be banned with no means of recourse.
| That is extremely problematic even if it is possible to cheat
| the system.
| vidarh wrote:
| Absolutely agree it's a problem. If anything that it's so
| easily worked around by those causing genuine problems also
| makes it less justified.
| hvdijk wrote:
| 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
| _think_ violated their terms, regardless of whether they actually
| did, keep their money, and never tell them why, except in South
| Korea where they already know that crap doesn 't fly. It's only a
| matter of time till that gets thrown out by more courts in more
| countries. Until then, it seems foolish to give them any money.
| hinkley wrote:
| if [Tinder] *believes* that you have violated this Agreement
|
| Belief and 'thinking' are funny things. They imply human
| judgement was involved in the process. Instead what most people
| seem to be complaining about are the egregious use of
| heuristics to do large scale account maintenance without
| retaining staff (humans) to make judgements on the particulars
| of each case.
|
| Until AIs win person-hood, there is no 'thinking' involved in
| this process. But I wonder if there is any case history on
| challenging the terminology used to describe these situations.
|
| I feel that these systems should be using something more akin
| to applitools, which flags discrepancies between real and
| expected, and then a human rejects or accepts the report on a
| line item basis. You can still screw up and click yes when you
| meant no, but at least you have a chance at getting a human
| involved before doing anything dire.
| john_moscow wrote:
| "believes" is just legalese for "we won't show any proof and
| won't accept any appeal".
| cwkoss wrote:
| ToS's are usually wishful thinking and only legally binding
| against users in the weakest sense.
|
| Illegal business practices are not made legitimate because they
| were proscribed by the ToS.
| DrammBA wrote:
| 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.
| bjustin wrote:
| Contacting Apple would likely lead to a refund. No need to go
| to the trouble of doing a chargeback. This is one of the
| reasons developers don't like Apple's IAP policies:
| developers have no control over whether Apple decides to give
| a refund (or not).
| jordemort wrote:
| In this case it's probably billed through the relevant app
| store, so you'd be starting a fight with either Google or
| Apple there, which could end up going even more badly than
| the interaction with Tinder did.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| With Paypal and Herz it was quite easy for me: i filed a
| request, Herz didn't answer, I elevated to paypal to make
| the decision, Herz didn't care to answer and I got back my
| money. I guess it's the dame for Tinder, they don't care
| enough to manually review the chargebacks.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| If you vpn to Korea would you get an answer?
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Considering Tinder rather explicitly checks your location to
| find people around you? I'd assume it wouldn't work, and
| might even lead to getting banned faster.
| juancn wrote:
| Root the phone and fake the location.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| Is that technically possible?
| kingcharles wrote:
| Yes.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| What's the point? They're not looking for people in
| Korea.
| 015a wrote:
| "Take their money and run" is one of those standard operating
| practices in big tech that I think _obviously_ needs
| legislation to curb. Once you start looking, you see it
| everywhere; whether its movies on iTunes, books on Kindle, or
| costumes in Fortnite. If you break their ToS, they 're allowed
| to cancel your account, without recourse, and take away all the
| content you purchased. Its especially egregious in gaming,
| where a false accusation of cheating can cause your account to
| disappear; and because there's a "guilty until proven guilty"
| stigma against cheating, by-and-large gaming company support
| teams will not help. They'll auto-ban accounts, hardware
| signatures, even IP addresses.
|
| Content providers should have the right to cease service to
| customers who don't abide by their terms. I don't feel that's
| unreasonable. But, consumers need recourse for the monetary
| investment. I'd strongly support a law worded something like:
| Digital service providers who sell transactional content &
| goods must either (1) offer the goods in an exportable,
| unencumbered, similarly accessible & functional format, or (2)
| at the time of service-provider initiated account termination,
| for any reason, reimburse the user for the full cost of goods
| purchased.
|
| Many companies would argue: "we don't have the money anymore,
| we had to pay rights holders." I'd respond, that sounds like a
| You problem, and maybe you should consider clause (1). "The
| rights holders won't go for it"; again, that's a You problem.
| Work it out, or lose money; that's what consumer protection
| laws are for. They're not to protect your revenue streams.
|
| Some gaming companies would be especially hurt by this, because
| of the prevalence of blank-check anticheat enforcement and
| their general inability to meet clause (1) due to the latest
| Fortnite cosmetic not really being "equally functional" outside
| the context of Fortnite. Well, I'd first respond: Your reliance
| on unjust business operating practices is a You problem. But
| more critically: maybe this will be the kick in the butt these
| companies need to invest more heavily into more accurate &
| functional anti-cheat, better customer support, and even new
| innovative revenue models. I've long felt that gaming has
| underutilized subscription services, and preyed too heavily on
| "free to play, pay $100 for the cool stuff later". Battle
| passes are kind of like a subscription service, and if the
| terms & expectations of the purchase are rephrased to be more
| service-like, rather than transactional-like, its reasonable to
| me that those should escape the law.
|
| The best argument against a law like this is: consumers can, of
| course, break a company's terms at any time they wish. Most
| choose not to. But if they wanted to, the purchases with a
| content provider become something like a bank account, which
| they can utilize as they wish for as long as they wish, then
| get a full refund. Response: First, I think this should drive
| companies to clause (1). There's an out; you just need to work
| with the rights holders and accept that piracy will happen
| whether or not you try to control it. Second, again I think it
| comes back to mixing metaphors; Fortnite sells Goods, but
| they're only functional within the context of the Fortnite
| Service. Maybe they should sell the Service, and include the
| Goods. Third, this is a gap that insurance feels well-suited to
| help cover. Fourth, I think this would drive more companies to
| better KYC, so if anyone pulls this, at least they can only
| pull it once. That's not a bad thing.
|
| The point should be to align what customers expect with what
| providers sell. If Netflix cancels your account, it sucks; but
| you don't feel slighted. It was a service; you understood that
| if you stopped paying, the service goes away. In comparison,
| the goods Apple sells (Apps, Movies, Books, etc) feel a lot
| more like going to the DVD isle in Best Buy; and its not ok
| that companies are allowed to slight customers like they do.
| smsm42 wrote:
| What you don't seem to realize here is that various app
| stores, etc almost never sell you any content. They sell you
| a temporary revokable right to access content. It's like a
| movie theater ticket, with an added bonus of ushers being
| paranoid assholes that could kick you out any moment without
| a reason. You don't own the movie, you can just watch it, if
| you're lucky. If you think that service isn't worth the price
| - tell them that, loudly, and use other options. But as long
| as millions of people are ok with it, they're not going to
| change - they have no reason to. If people treat temporary
| right to peek at the goods as goods being sold to them - why
| not enjoy it?
| cwkoss wrote:
| That's bullshit, but it's what the IP marketplaces want you
| to believe.
| wpietri wrote:
| What part do you see as bullshit? Theater tickets and
| premium video channels like HBO are long-standing
| examples of the model. There are some services that act
| more like purchases, with Amazon video being a big
| example. But it seems to me that the vast majority of
| video and music content today is being sold on the access
| model, not the purchase model.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If the counterparty refuses to prodive a service you've
| already paid for, they should be liable to reimburse you.
| smsm42 wrote:
| You paid for the right to access content for undefined
| term, determined by sole discretion of the service
| provider. You've got what you paid for.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you receive a license and not
| ownership of a physical good or copyright, it still comes
| down to contract law. If the company you are buying the
| license from revokes it, and doesn't uphold their side of
| the contract you can sue them for breach of contract. A
| contract term that says they can revoke the license at any
| time for no reason, without refund is unconscionable and
| unenforceable. Basically they need to show a judge that you
| acted maliciously or otherwise violated the contract, or
| they need to provide a refund.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Contract law allows very wide variety of contracts, and
| Apple/Google/whatevs have enough expensive lawyers to
| write the contract that means "you have rights to
| whatever we allow you and we can revoke it any time we
| want without any recourse to you". As for the judge - the
| economics of going to the judge - which would cost you
| four figures just to start, five to six if you want any
| real results - is not exactly in your favor. They have
| lawyers on retainer, you have a day job which pays way
| less than any single one of those lawyers costs.
| jquery wrote:
| Really? When I buy a steam game, the big green button says
| "purchase", not "receive a temporarily revocable right to
| access".
|
| It's the digital age. My digital items _are_ my
| possessions. This dichotomy in your head between the "real"
| and the "digital" doesn't exist for the younger generation.
| There are few alternatives to these large tech companies.
| As I've gotten older I've wisened up and I buy DRM-free
| digital goods _where possible_ (because of people who think
| like you, that big corporations need to be protected from
| the little people and not the other way around)... but
| before I got wise, I built up quite a large steam, Apple
| Books, and Kindle library (all of which call what we are
| doing "purchasing"... heads they win tails we lose).
| smsm42 wrote:
| The big green button lies. They are trying to bend the
| language to mean things that it legally doesn't mean.
| Just as they call unauthorized distribution of content
| "piracy" or "theft" (it's neither), they call a temporary
| revokable permission to access their content "purchase".
| And if you click that button, you agree with it
| knowingly. When it bites you in the nether regions,
| they'll remind you that was exactly what you paid the
| money for. Nobody forced you to pay money for that, you
| did it voluntarily. You are the one that gave them all
| the money to build this system.
|
| I understand that you may value digital goods. I have
| some I value too. You just need to understand that just
| as with physical goods, even more with digital ones - if
| you don't control it, you haven't bought it. If somebody
| could just come and take your car, any time for any
| reason, you haven't bought a car. If somebody can just
| come and take your game anytime for any reason - you
| haven't bought a game. You bought a ticket to play it,
| maybe, but that's wholly other business.
| grog454 wrote:
| "It's the digital age. My digital items are my
| possessions. This dichotomy in your head between the
| "real" and the "digital" doesn't exist for the younger
| generation."
|
| That's a weird way to put it. It may not exist "for"
| someone, but as you seem to acknowledge, it exists "for"
| numerous corporations and legal systems which even those
| someones are subject to. I thought this was the primary
| purpose of NFTs. An NFT physically cannot be revoked
| without the permission (coerced or otherwise) of the
| holder, or a fundamental problem in encryption.
|
| And just so other people don't get confused by this
| pretty misleading hyperbole:
|
| " The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your
| license confers no title or ownership in the Content and
| Services. "
|
| source:
| https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
|
| No judge is going to weigh what the "buy" button omits
| over what the EULA actually states. If anyone has an
| example of a digital content service with an EULA that
| DOESN'T contain this kind of verbiage I would be
| fascinated to see it.
| 015a wrote:
| > No judge is going to weigh what the "buy" button omits
| over what the EULA actually states.
|
| Right, but that's my point (as the original poster).
| 100%, a judge should say "terms are terms, company is in
| the right"; we need _new laws_ to protect consumers. By
| and large, consumers don 't understand how digital is
| different; that it isn't ownership (in fact, arguably,
| consumers don't even understand that when they buy a
| bluray, that also isn't ownership in a legal sense; but
| it _is_ ownership in common parlance). Whether these
| service providers would still see such success, if they
| did, is an unknown quantity; they probably would, but it
| can 't be known. What _is_ known is that consumers are
| (rarely) being shafted, with no recourse, because they
| agreed to something they didn 't understand; it doesn't
| occur to most people that Apple even has the power to ban
| accounts, and take all their content with it.
|
| Counter-argument: "Well, people should read the EULAs and
| understand it". Oof. First: the EULA may say "we have the
| right to revoke access" but that means _nothing_ without
| the context of how, why, and how often it happens. These
| companies have not demonstrated even the BASIC DECENCY to
| EXPLAIN THEMSELVES when they ban users, let alone publish
| reasonable information about how often it happens. The
| statements in the EULA are useless without this context,
| because it enables savvy consumers to compare their
| statements with their own risk profile to make informed
| decisions. But, second: arguing this point is basically
| saying "dumb people deserve to be preyed on by
| international gigacorporations". Most people don't
| understand what this language means; in many cases, it
| seems to be written specifically so it can't be
| understood without a law degree.
|
| Counter-argument: "Account termination & content
| revocation is rare, so whatever." Well, this point
| defeats itself, but think about it this way: If its so
| rare, then why not protect consumers? Companies will
| oppose it, of course, but they're arguing from the ground
| that its so rare that enforcement of this law wouldn't
| hurt them. If they hurt consumers, it'll hurt them. If
| they don't, it won't.
|
| The narrative is getting twisted here; its not that
| consumers should have "irrevocable ownership" over a
| digital good you buy on, for example, Steam. Well, the
| NFT crowd would say you should, but let's ignore them.
| The assertion is: there should be fair and equitable
| recourse for when a service provider decides to revoke
| your access to the service which distributes the content
| you purchased. That recourse would ideally be met by
| simply unshackling the content from the service provider;
| the ability to play Steam games without being connected
| to Steam, for example. However, short of that,
| reimbursement is fair. It would absolutely hurt companies
| in this day and age of "terminate accounts for any
| reason, sometimes no reason, whatever the system decides"
| but THAT'S THE POINT. Companies only speak money. The
| point is to make termination hurt them, so they're forced
| to think more critically about how & why they terminate.
| jquery wrote:
| As someone with an enormous personal paid content library, I
| absolutely agree legislation is needed here.
|
| Also randomized lootboxes should be subject to gambling laws,
| or at least regulated such that you can't get duplicates or
| something reasonable like that.
| stevespang wrote:
| rq1 wrote:
| These ToS are illegal. No service = no money.
| tarboreus wrote:
| I'm not single and haven't been fora long time, but my
| understanding is that if you're single you can't really opt out
| of these apps, practically speaking. Even the norms around
| dating, picking people up in bars, etc. are changing because of
| these apps, so it's harder to find people in the real world.
| Not impossible, obviously, but getting banned from Tinder is
| kind of a big deal. (Also all these apps are owned by the same
| company, I think it's the Match Group.)
| Mezzie wrote:
| If you're gay, this is true. Especially if you don't live in
| a large city.
|
| I've just given up on finding a wife/partner. My options are
| just... bad.
| kuschku wrote:
| From my experience (being a lesbian myself), I found my
| fiance on a discord server, and most of our friends also
| found their partners either through LGBT bars, LGBT online
| communities, or through art communities, tumblr,
| deviantart, etc ^^
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yeah, there are some unique wrinkles for me. I do like
| Discord a lot, actually. (I used to spend a lot of time
| on IRC so...) Most of the things I like, the Discords
| tend to skew pretty young for my dating comfort, since
| one issue I have is women who want therapists/mothers
| instead of a partner.
|
| The other is that I work in politics plus have a
| politically-diverse family and so I would need a partner
| who is comfortable being around and loving people who
| disagree with them politically. Many LGBT people in queer
| nerd spaces like Tumblr, fandom spaces, art spaces, etc.
| prefer to live in a political filter bubble (I'm not
| judging if it's for mental health reasons; I think people
| have the right to associate with whomever they want), and
| that's not compatible with my life direction or values.
|
| Being a statistical minority within a statistical
| minority is exhausting sometimes. I'm super happy you and
| your fiancee found each other, though! I hope you have a
| wonderful wedding and many happy years together.
|
| And no LGBT bars in my area. I am NOT a big city person.
| I gave it the good old college try. I tried multiple
| countries and coasts, even, but nope. I'm a small city
| person. I like my hometown. It's dope and the cost of
| living is low.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| if you're in north America, take heart that its not your
| fault! The American dating market is absolute garbage.
|
| I've been traveling around the world the last few years and
| have had no problems finding casual hookups and longer term
| relationships. I'm currently dating a beautiful Colombiana.
| I would have thought she was out of my league if I was
| still living in the US.
| pratik661 wrote:
| > if you're in north America, take heart that its not
| your fault! The American dating market is absolute
| garbage.
|
| What do you mean?
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| People can't handle truth and I'd rather not be downvoted
| to oblivion. Suffice to say, the american dating market
| is heavily geared towards attractive white men over 6 ft
| tall. They better also be a millionaire if you're in the
| bay area.
|
| I'd suggest traveling like I have to southeast Asia,
| Europe and latin America for extended periods of time and
| see for yourself.
| pratik661 wrote:
| That's interesting. I wonder how much that applies to
| South Asians though. I think most of the dating advice in
| these threads is tailored towards white people who have
| different experiences from other POC.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I am south asian (srilankan american) so my advice is
| comming from the perspective of a person of color.
|
| The best places for dating for a south asian male would
| be southeast asia, turkey and latin america. White guys
| definitely have an advantage when going after women that
| specifically want a foreigner. We're able to get the ones
| that would otherwise prefer to date within their own
| country.
|
| I had some success in europe but it was hit or miss. I'd
| say it was a pretty neutral experience, I felt like the
| deck wasn't stacked for or against me on average. latin
| america on the other hand was where I had my best
| prospects.
|
| In my experience, latinas in colombia love the way we
| look. If I asked 10 women on a date, I'd easily get at
| least 8 to say yes and show up while white foreigners I
| met in medellin would frequently complain that colombians
| were flakey and prone to cancel at the last minuite. The
| exact kind of behavior I'd get from white women in
| america. These days I have one that I absolutely adore so
| I'm off the dating market but every day I'm shocked that
| I have her because living in america drove into my head
| that someone as smart and beautiful as her was completely
| out of my league..
| pratik661 wrote:
| That's really interesting to know. Happy to see another
| desi doing really well.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > Suffice to say, the american dating market is heavily
| geared towards attractive white men over 6 ft tall. They
| better also be a millionaire if you're in the bay area.
|
| The lesbian dating market is a bit different. ;)
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| haha thats probably very true. I'd say don't give up!.
| travel as well, it'll enrich your life and make your more
| interesting to that special someone when you finally meet
| her. I wouldn't be surprised if you meet her in your
| travels.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| What you're actually saying is that you are unable to
| compete in the American dating market, and so you're
| moving to other less competitive dating markets where you
| might be more highly valued. Obviously since this is HN
| we can't consider the female perspective, but if we
| consider the female perspective, the American dating
| market is probably pretty good because it offers a great
| number of attractive white men over 6 ft tall.
| renox wrote:
| It's not specific to the USA, in France the situation is
| the same, most of the young women want the 'alpha male'
| so if you're not one, you have to wait until you're
| older..
|
| It made being young much less pleasant than it ought to
| be, plus it means that we were a bit old when we had
| children..
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I completely agree, if you're a straight woman
| (especially white), I'd def recommend staying in the
| united states.
|
| My advice is specifically for men because thats my lived
| experience.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| No offense, but bullshit. I've personally never once in my
| life used a single dating app and have met plenty of dates
| and love interests the old fashioned way, by interacting with
| them in the real world after random encounters (bars, events
| etc) or through circles of friends. Most of the people I know
| met their own love interests in the same way. I don't live in
| some backward country with little app use either. What a sad
| existence it would be to have something as fundamental as
| one's romantic life depend on a shitty, arbitrary and
| parasitic data collecting app that feels it has the right to
| treat its users like cash cattle with no recourse for any
| unfair ToS decision it makes. Grotesque.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| While I'm not a big fan of Tinder, monetizing
| romantic/sexual interest is nothing new. In fact, it's
| historically been the norm rather than the exception. The
| "Monetization & Defenestration" approach may not have been
| done through a shitty app, but a shitty date can you get
| kicked out of a bar, a concert, a restaurant, a nightclub,
| etc. for no reason and with no recourse for your money back
| even if you've done nothing wrong. I don't say this to
| justify these acts, but to acknowledge that they exist.
| While I hope OP fights the charges, $20 is a small sum to
| lose in comparison to a $200 concert ticket.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Who is spending $200 on a concert ticket? Let alone two
| of them for a first date?
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| You'd be surprised with what's perceived as unaffordable
| for many "poor" college students and early-career
| professionals, many of whom are helped by student loan
| money and the Bank of Mom & Dad. In my experience, bad
| financial decisions in the pursuit of lust isn't one of
| them.
| Zachsa999 wrote:
| I have heard that as well, may it be some underhanded
| programming?
| caminante wrote:
| Parent didn't say it's not possible, and your situation is
| anecdotal.
|
| If over 50% of people (and growing) say their relationship
| started on OLD, it's easy to say you're limiting your
| options by not participating [0]
|
| [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2020/02/06/10-facts-ab...
| danbruc wrote:
| _If over 50% of people (and growing) say their
| relationship started on OLD [...]_
|
| I just skimmed the article, but it seems to say that even
| among the youngest age group only 48% have used dating
| apps and only 17% were in resulting relationship.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > If over 50% of people (and growing) say their
| relationship started on OLD, it's easy to say you're
| limiting your options by not participating
|
| A does not in any way imply B. I strongly doubt that a
| non-negligible number of OLD users restrict themselves to
| using _only_ OLD and automatically reject in-person
| advances. OP 's "options" are still the same as before:
| all the singles in his physical meatspace.
| caminante wrote:
| _> A does not in any way imply B._
|
| Huh? What are [A] and [B] in this situation?
|
| _> I strongly doubt that a non-negligible number of OLD
| users restrict themselves to using only OLD and
| automatically reject in-person advances. OP 's "options"
| are still the same as before: all the singles in his
| physical meatspace._
|
| You're assuming that a non-trivial number of people who
| use OLD aren't exclusive to OLD. Who's taking issue with
| that?
|
| OTOH, saying that one's set of available dates is
| unchanged by foregoing OLD is deeply flawed. You even
| mention "physical meatspace" which OLD directly
| overcomes.
| csa wrote:
| > my understanding is that if you're single you can't really
| opt out of these apps, practically speaking.
|
| This is definitely not true.
|
| > Even the norms around dating, picking people up in bars,
| etc. are changing because of these apps
|
| This is true.
|
| > so it's harder to find people in the real world.
|
| This is sort of true.
|
| By not using a dating app, a single person is relegating
| themselves to how things were pre-app. Some of those pre-app
| options are less common now, other new ways are more common.
|
| The apps widened the dating door _for certain people_ ,
| specifically for people who are not particularly keen on
| getting out and meeting people (probably quite a few folks
| like that on HN) as well as people who are looking to get
| married asap[1]. That said, for people who get out and do
| things, meeting people to date is not difficult at all.
| Getting banned from Tinder for those folks is, at worst, a
| loss of a time filler activity (swiping).
|
| I will also add that, of the apps, tinder might be one of the
| worst in terms of quality match ups.
|
| [1] Apps are also good for highly desirable dates since their
| pool goes from big to biggest, but those folks aren't really
| the topic here since they aren't short on access to dates
| with or without an app.
| LandR wrote:
| Dating exclusively by apps might be reality for the younger
| US populations.
|
| There was a thread on Reddit a few months ago where people
| were asking bad places for men to approach women. It was
| basically
|
| Work
|
| School
|
| Gym
|
| Church
|
| Any place you go for hobby
|
| Public transport
|
| Shops
|
| Bars
|
| Anywhere outside at night
|
| Parks
|
| The consensus was basically the women on this Reddit thread
| don't want men approaching them in any way whatsoever that
| isnt a dating app. All alternative s were creepy. Now
| Reddit is mostly young and American, so who knows.
|
| Dating in the US seems crazy.
| caminante wrote:
| After checking reality, online dating's the #1 way people
| meet, and its market share (>50%) is growing. [0] [1]
|
| [0] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-
| popular-w...
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2020/02/06/10-facts-ab...
| csa wrote:
| Sure. It widened the options for most people. Excellent!
|
| That said, as the post I originally responded to
| suggested, I don't think that getting banned from Tinder
| or any dating app in particular is a "big deal". Maybe a
| minor inconvenience for most people, but it's not like
| someone who gets banned from Tinder is doomed to a life
| without dates.
| goblin89 wrote:
| To save someone a click, so there is a study indicating
| 40% of couples "met online" (so via Twitter, IG, HN,
| Reddit, gaming, WhatsApp groups, etc., not necessarily
| dating apps); and then a study specifically about online
| dating apps where most participants were recruited online
| (in addition to the usual selection bias) so I didn't
| bother checking results. Both are US-centric.
| caminante wrote:
| _> To save someone a click,_
|
| And yet you admit
|
| _> I didn't bother checking results. Both are US-
| centric._
|
| ...
|
| You need to let the Stanford Professor and Pew Research
| know they're unqualified to perform research. :S
| goblin89 wrote:
| To reiterate, the first paper does not specifically
| pertain to dating apps, and the methodology of the second
| article is flawed (you want to know whether people meet
| online, so you ask people of whom >50% you found online,
| great technique)--so it might save someone who cares
| about that kind of stuff a click (a few clicks actually,
| since the methodology is buried in a separate article).
| If you don't fall into that category, feel free to move
| along.
|
| And I don't know the author of the second article
| personally, but if I did of course I would point out an
| issue with their data.
| caminante wrote:
| You're being difficult on purpose.
|
| _> methodology is buried in a separate article_
|
| It's an EXPLICIT footnote! See "Note; Here [is the
| report's] metholodgy."
|
| _> Methodology of the second article is flawed (you want
| to know whether people meet online, so you ask people
| online, great technique)_
|
| The methodology goes into statistical techniques to
| control for biases (e.g. language, gender identity,
| sampling method, etc.) See Methodology > Weighting about
| what they did with their ~5k responses.
| goblin89 wrote:
| 1st click to go to the article, ctrl+f to find
| methodology, 2nd click to go to methodology. See 6000+
| people recruited via web. The rest seem to amount to
| fewer than that. Am I the one being difficult?
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| I don't think that is correct. I'm in London and have an
| American girlfriend. We met and got together the good old
| fashioned way. Getting pissed at a pub together.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yeah. I'm off the "market" for 15+ years, but I really worry
| when I read about normal-seeming 20 year olds (or even
| younger) who met their partners on Tinder. It's something
| that's going to affect young people whether they take part in
| it themselves or not. Ruthless markets in relationships
| probably aren't going to make them happy.
| [deleted]
| joelbondurant0 wrote:
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Certainly it's Big Tech that knows who should you mate with.
| Never questions our overlords please.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| 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 influenced by the amount of unmatched users, the dating
| app will not work with you, but rather against you.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| 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.
| mongol wrote:
| Imagine if a company had this business idea: If you get
| married to someone we introduce to you, you pay us 10000 USD.
| Else you pay us nothing. Would not that raise the bar?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It would really encourage people _not_ looking for marriage
| to use the app for dating, since their use would be free.
| It would, of course, also result in the site taking steps
| to eliminate them, maybe even tolerating false positives.
| In the end would it produce good results? Dunno.
|
| (Also would add legal complications most dating sites,
| regardless of model, don't deal with because of the Statute
| of Frauds in relation to contracts in consideration of
| marriage.)
| twomoonsbysurf wrote:
| Yep. And Tinder seemed so useful just a few years ago. More
| recently, perhaps some management there has got together and
| changed to exactly the sort of strategy you speak of. I barely
| use it anymore.
|
| But back in the golden days of Tinder... (say 7-8 years ago or
| so-- 2014ish) Tinder worked really well to deliver many
| matches. These days... very few matches compared to Bumble or
| Hinge for example.
| hansel_der wrote:
| yea, the incentive structure makes most current dating services
| very antisocial.
|
| i have heard that traditional matchmakers get paid years after
| the first date, maybe even after a marriage.
| drpgq wrote:
| Maybe you need a non-profit for this.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| I believe that is the only way indeed. Though another
| commenter noted that these kinds of apps are heavily
| dependent on a network to work. Perhaps it can be an
| extension on Mastodon somewhere in the future.
|
| Matchmaking is such a generic problem anyway. Friends,
| Business relations, Vacancies, Partners, Sex buddies. We'll
| get there, I believe.
| propogandist wrote:
| what about web3? that seems to be thrown around as the
| solution for everything as of late. Couldn't decentralization
| actually help in this case?
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is the kind of thing you need an ombudsman for. Screwing
| over a small proportion of people, but still a lot of people, in
| a way that they can't reasonably pursue by themselves.
| LeicaLatte wrote:
| This was unique to PayPal in the previous decade since we were
| one of the few(only) tech platforms dealing with money then.
| Kinda fun to see other monetized tech platforms failing in
| spectacular ways. :)
| Invictus0 wrote:
| A typical complaint about getting banned with a thin veneer of
| "big tech bad" to make it seem worthwhile to the reader.
| Veen wrote:
| The "big tech bad" complaints seem valid to me. Big tech
| companies _are_ willing to accept a certain number of false
| positives, and that sucks for the people who are caught up in
| them. Algorithm-influenced decision-making _is_ likely to lead
| people to change their behaviour to please the algorithm--one
| obvious example is the oceans of shitty content that we all
| have to wade through to find useful information because Google
| 's algorithm has led to changes in publisher and writer
| behaviour.
|
| Both of these are, at best, a cause for concern.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Sure, and yet your comment alone contains more substance on
| the topic than the entire article.
| jrumbut wrote:
| The thing for me is keeping his money. If he signed up, and
| for whatever reason they decided they didn't want his
| business so they gave him a refund, I wouldn't love it but it
| wouldn't upset me much either.
|
| But they can't decide they want the money but don't want to
| provide a service. I'm surprised to see comments defending
| this.
| Wronnay wrote:
| A typical complaint would be if he had done something wrong,
| but he send 0 messages, got no likes - so what could he have
| done wrong?
|
| I had similar experiences with Tinder - I think their support
| team just bans people when they don't want to deal with them -
| without checking the account at all.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| He says he did nothing wrong anyway. They all do. Maybe he is
| telling the truth but it's hard to know.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The problem is not whether he did something bad or not --
| there's no way to know, and he may not admit it if he did.
|
| What the problem is is that he got banned without being
| told why.
| pelasaco wrote:
| "Everyone in here is innocent" says Morgan Freeman's
| character Red, a convicted murderer, in The Shawshank
| Redemption.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Off the top of my head, there are at least two plausible
| explanations:
|
| * Some user reported his account as "fake" or otherwise
| "inappropriate"
|
| * The algorithm thought he faked his position
|
| Neither one requires any intentional wrongdoing. It is what
| it is.
| pelasaco wrote:
| the third explanation is: he was already banned before
| signing to all those services.
| pc86 wrote:
| He didn't post screenshots of his profile so we have no idea
| what's on there, it's completely possible (likely, even) that
| his profile text did violate the TOS. Instant perma-ban might
| be a bit harsh but we have no reason to believe one side over
| the other and no evidence pointing either way.
| nomdep wrote:
| A naive customer support intern must have thought his last
| name "le fou" was fake because in English might sound like
| "le fuck"
| djrockstar1 wrote:
| Yeah all the insight in this article comes down to the sentence
| "The big tech does not mind having a few false positives." the
| next paragraph about people trying to please the algorithm is
| such drivel since companies rarely mention what their
| algorithms look for and people rarely go out of their way to
| please an algorithm (unless they have some level of insight
| into the algorithm and it affects their income, generally).
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Anecdotally, I find myself thinking about what might make my
| accounts look like I'm up to something, and avoid it. Also
| anecdotally, I've seen others on HN talk about doing the
| same. People may not know what the algorithm is, but they can
| make some reasonable guesses at what it might take into
| account.
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| Curious what OP may have done "wrong", I read a bit of the Tinder
| TOS and found this juicy nugget:
|
| > YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TINDER DOES NOT CONDUCT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND
| CHECKS ON ITS MEMBERS OR OTHERWISE INQUIRE INTO THE BACKGROUND OF
| ITS MEMBERS. TINDER MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES AS TO
| THE CONDUCT OR COMPATIBILITY OF MEMBERS. TINDER RESERVES THE
| RIGHT TO CONDUCT - AND YOU AUTHORIZE TINDER TO CONDUCT - ANY
| CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK OR OTHER SCREENINGS (SUCH AS SEX
| OFFENDER REGISTER SEARCHES) AT ANY TIME USING AVAILABLE PUBLIC
| RECORDS OBTAINED BY IT OR WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF A CONSUMER
| REPORTING AGENCY, AND YOU AGREE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE
| MAY BE USED FOR THAT PURPOSE.
|
| 1. You understand that Tinder does not perform background checks.
|
| 2. Everything you provide to Tinder and everything Tinder can
| find out about you may be used to perform a background check at
| Tinder's whim.
|
| Classic.
|
| But, my guess is that he was ruled to be "spamming" because he
| sent evidence of liking a (probably fake) user more than once in
| an attempt to test if the app was working.
| fencepost wrote:
| That combination seems not unreasonable - basically saying that
| you should have no _expectation_ that they 've performed a
| background check [and incurred costs] but that they _reserve
| the right_ to perform them on any user at their own discretion
| should they decide to incur those costs.
| hammock wrote:
| Note to readers: OP says "permabanned" but he really means
| "shadowbanned"/"hellbanned."
|
| Cc @dang
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Just call credit card center for a refund and get a burner
| number...not a big deal.
|
| Regarding banks: get some Bitcoin just in case, as it can be much
| worse when banks ban you.
| hnbad wrote:
| If you have to worry about banks banning you, you maybe
| shouldn't be in a position where you need to take financial
| advice from HN comments and you're likely better off with cash
| than an unstable asset that you can't easily eliminate without
| involving a bank.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| All you need is an anonymous call to the police in the US to
| SWAT your house and get all money from your bank account
| taken away temporarily. There are multiple people who said
| that the only reason they didn't need to ask money from
| friends for lawyers is that they had some Bitcoin. It's all
| about preparing for worst case scenarios in your life, just
| like wearing a seatbelt.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If you have to worry about banks banning you
|
| Banks ban you for joke comments in bank transfers or anything
| that alludes to drugs, sex work or gambling. Or for
| transferring remittances to your parents in a way some
| algorithm deemed to be "structuring" or "money laundering for
| terrorists".
|
| PayPal bans you for whatever the fuck their AI decided on a
| whim.
|
| I've been on HN for over eight and a half years now and help
| requests or complaint blog posts are _routine_ here. One
| thing that 's common is support staff that is either
| unreachable (Google) or doesn't have any freedom to reverse
| AI-caused bans / only is allowed to post canned responses
| (everyone else). The only way to get issues with big tech
| resolved these days is to raise a stink here on HN, even
| Twitter shitstorms seem to fly under the radar more and more.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Banks ban you for joke comments in bank transfers or
| anything that alludes to drugs, sex work or gambling
|
| Surely it must be possible to exercise a wee bit of self
| control and not be an edgelord in every aspect of one's
| life?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Banks should not be allowed to automatically ban people
| without a human in the loop ffs.
| tommcshwa wrote:
| Sure, I would love to buy grocery with bitcoin.... What a joke.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Not grocery, but lawyer in the cas you want to get access to
| your money. Have you read about the process that happens when
| your house is SWAT-ted using an anonymous phone call?
| bena wrote:
| This feels very "yadda yadda yadda" to me.
|
| I suspect there's a reason. I suspect someone knows. And I
| suspect there's bits of this story that's being left off.
| polote wrote:
| It has always been like that on Tinder. My phone number can't
| create a new account for example (never receive the confirmation
| code). That's called shadowban in the case of OP. Bumble started
| doing the same practices a year ago (which makes sense as they
| have the same founder)
|
| But they are not 100% wrong, Tinder is not here to make people
| meet each other. They are here to make money and people don't pay
| because they get more matches, they pay because they are
| frustrated. Tinder needs a way to keep girls active on the
| platform, and for that to works they have to prevent boys to have
| a negative behavior. That's why they shadowban guys easily, as
| soon as they detect non standard behavior they shadowban, people
| keep seeing profile and keep paying. Girls don't see those
| profiles and have a better experience overall and stays longer,
| which makes guys stays longer because FOMO of matching the one.
|
| This has nothing to do with Big tech. If you want to meet people
| don't use Tinder, that used to work well in the past, it very
| rarely works now.
|
| EDIT: And FYI if you want to exit shadowban on Tinder, it is
| pretty well documented on r/SwipeHelper, you need to change:
| phone, phone number, Facebook account, Credit card, pictures and
| don't login from the same IP
| sbst32 wrote:
| >> That's called shadowban in the case of OP. Bumble started
| doing the same practices a year ago (which makes sense as they
| have the same founder)
|
| Not arguing with the point you're making, but Bumble and Tinder
| founders are definitely not the same.
| polote wrote:
| The founder of Bumble is one of the founders of Tinder. But
| others founders of Tinder are not founders of Bumble, this is
| true. Also we could argue that Bumble has two founders, but
| this is insignificant anyway
| Narretz wrote:
| Maybe they confused Bumble with all the other apps /
| services that are under the Match branch: Tinder,
| Match.com, plentyoffish, OkCupid ...
| zionic wrote:
| >This has nothing to do with Big tech. If you want to meet
| people don't use Tinder,
|
| As I said in my comment up-post, Tinder has a near-absolute
| monopoly in my area. If you're not on Tinder you basically
| don't exist on the local dating market.
|
| Yes, the future sucks.
| VRay wrote:
| OK, I've been married for a long time and never had any luck
| with any dating service before that, but I don't think that's
| necessarily as true as you think
|
| You're within 2-3 degrees of separation of dozens or hundreds
| of single people you can date, so if you just start putting
| the word out among your friends, family, etc I think they'll
| start introducing you to people
| aenis wrote:
| Ugh. This sucks. I cant imagine deciding to date or even meet
| someone whom I only know by their app profile.
|
| Glad my dating days are over.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| As a woman, Tinder is fine if you wanna find a fuck buddy and
| don't take it seriously. I see a lot of people (men and women)
| get wrapped up in the swipe game and that's really not how it
| works. You can't take anything that happens on that platform
| personally.
|
| Unfortunately, rule #1 on tinder is "be physically attractive".
| If you want tinder to work for you consistently as a man, get
| your personal hygiene in order and hit the gym. That's the main
| reason I swipe left; well, that and conservative politics.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| Why is that rule unfortunate? Why would someone date or
| hookup with someone they're not physically attracted to?
| watwut wrote:
| I guess because in real life, even if you dont look super
| attractive, you can still charm partners by the way you
| talk and act. You can be funny, come across as trustworthy
| etc.
|
| You can not do that on tinder.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Yes, this. If you're trying to find a partner on a
| platform where matches are determined solely by physical
| attraction, you're gonna have a hard time if you're not
| physically attractive. Know what Tinder is, and be self-
| aware enough to know if it's not for you.
| aenis wrote:
| The attractive types will also have it difficult. The
| matches will likely be attractive physically, but that
| hardly guarantees a true match. I know lots of attractive
| people that struggle to find a partner (and instead move
| from one one night stand to another). I think at some
| point it must get pretty depressing and toxic.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| That's it's whole own thing; people who are incredibly
| attractive can move on really quick because they know
| they can get something else. Then they hit their 30s and
| that all dries up, and they don't know how to have a real
| relationship that lasts longer than a few months.
|
| Obviously not everyone who is hot is this way, but it's
| one of the "types" you'll find if you date around a lot.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not the OP, but attraction is a complicated, multi-
| dimensional beast and the unfortunate thing about Tinder
| and similar apps is that they reduce all of this to a 2D,
| possibly doctored, photo of the user.
|
| In real life, people who do not look gorgeous can still
| sweep you off your feet by their smile, laughter, gestures,
| tone of voice, scent, the way they move, talk, react, fall
| into daydream...
|
| Of all my previous lovers, ending with my wife of 16 years,
| I wouldn't choose a single one based just on a picture. But
| I was strongly attracted to all of them in real life.
|
| Human magic cannot really be distilled into an algorithmic
| system. Not yet, anyway.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This kind of thing is what they're talking about.
|
| > It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of
| attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women
| and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of
| men
|
| [1]. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-
| experiments-ii-g...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| So, this guy set up a fake profile and interviewed women
| who matched with him, without disclosing he was doing
| research? Ethics aside, he doesn't discuss his
| methodology at all. How did these interviews turn into a
| Gini curve? How _could_ they, without some heroic
| statistical assumptions?
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's been studied a lot, I just threw that up as example
| since it was posted here a couple of days ago. Here's one
| of OKCupid's own studies [1]. You can search for others
| that confirm the same thing over and over again.
|
| 1. https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlook
| sandyo...
| [deleted]
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| You shouldn't be taking pareto claims on a sample size of
| n=27 seriously
|
| There are apple flavored flat earth medicine studies with
| stronger statistics
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's been shown plenty of other places, including by
| OKCupid, which why I qualified with "kind of thing." It's
| common knowledge at this point.
| vajrabum wrote:
| There's lots of common 'knowledge' in social psychology
| including studies done by serious reputable researchers
| that turns out to not be so. This is a big enough issue
| that it's termed the "replication crisis". So, yes,
| maybe. Maybe not.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Being shown by a lot of studies means its been replicated
| a lot.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| only the ones with valid statistics count
|
| some guy dug up a bunch of studies done on abductions by
| satanists in the 1990s. remember that, from 60 minutes?
|
| the punchline was there had never actually been such an
| abduction, but there were 30+ studies.
|
| and that's replicated a lot.
|
| the quality of the replication matters.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Alright, keep that goal post moving then. In the
| meantime, I'll go with the best we got.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| There's no goalpost moving. It's the same thing I said
| originally.
|
| You shouldn't be swayed by inappropriately small sample
| sizes. Your response was "well what if I had a lot of
| them?" My answer was "still no."
|
| .
|
| > In the meantime, I'll go with the best we got.
|
| This isn't even close to the best we've got.
| guerrilla wrote:
| My original claim is that something like that was true
| and what someone else was referring to and I gave you a
| lazy link, and you complained about the guys terrible
| methodology and replication. I told you that there are
| dozens of studies and data analyses (some are on huge
| data sets [1]) out there and your response is that oh no
| they have to be quality. That's a goalpost move from
| "this is bad" to "all those (that I haven't even seen)
| are bad."
|
| > This isn't even close to the best we've got.
|
| If you've got that then show me and I'll have a look.
| Until then I'm going with that studies I've seen that all
| seem to say roughly the same thing (despite widely
| varying sample sizes and quality of methodology)
|
| 1. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-
| experiments-ii-g...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Rule #1 *for a man.
|
| That's just how the dating market is :)
| polote wrote:
| > rule #1 on tinder is "be physically attractive"
|
| For guys it used to be right, now rule #1 is more "be super
| attractive" or "be attractive and don't have standard"
|
| For girls rule #1 is "be a girl"
| whitepaint wrote:
| Sorry, but you really gotta lose this attitude man.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| It's funny how raw red pill truths get downvoted here.
| Some seem to prefer to send technical brutal honesty
| about the current state of sexual market under the rug.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| It could be the app, or it could be that women can easily
| smell the scent of desperation, entitlement, and
| resentment wafting off of you.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I don't know where did you take that from but Tinder's
| data show is actually women.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Or maybe people just don't want to fuck you. And maybe
| you aren't entitled to anyone fucking you.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I find your interest in my sexual life as inappropriate
| as distracting while I'm learning this new shibari
| binding as my main sub girl is asking me to use it on her
| this weekend. Oh god, how she loves when I use rope on
| her. What were you saying?
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Maybe thinking about sexuality as a market is your first
| problem. If you're not physically attractive, just don't
| use Tinder; it's not the only way to find someone to
| date.
|
| Shouldn't be a surprise that someone who blames "women"
| as a whole for his problems would have a hard time
| meeting women.
|
| And as a corollary, I've dated super hot guys before and
| frankly a lot of them have a hard time with relationships
| because it was so easy for them to hook up when they were
| younger they don't know how to put the effort in to make
| someone feel desired.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I'm not asking anyone about my case not seeking advice as
| I do great already in both online and offline. You seem
| in a hurry to assume other people's position and problems
| and providing unrequested advice that only validate your
| assumptions. Have you ever observed that in yourself?
|
| Regarding to that corollary, you're assuming top guys
| even want to invest in relationships in the first place.
| Not the case of many I know. The strategy is more like:
| enjoy the party until one of the girls is so mindblowing
| feminine and submissive and good person that is worth
| giving a chance to some investing.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| This is only really true in north america (especially if
| you're of Indian descent). Women have much more realistic
| expectations once you get out of that cesspit
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Enjoy while it lasts because social media will spread
| their ambitions. In any case, woman desire for fit men is
| culturally universal so all should hit the gym and diet
| for its own good. Hard. Good luck making your game to the
| next level!
| jonnybgood wrote:
| What does "super attractive" look like?
|
| > For girls rule #1 is "be a girl"
|
| Not at all. Women can have just as much of a hard time as
| men, especially for certain ethnicities.
| polote wrote:
| > What does "super attractive" look like?
|
| Basically be a model
|
| > Women can have just as much of a hard time as men,
| especially for certain ethnicities.
|
| Can't find the study, but black women are actually having
| a tougher time than all others women to get matches on
| dating apps. But this is still nothing compared to the
| attention guys get
| vhanda wrote:
| It was from OkCupid, though it has since been deleted.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170217052152/https://th
| eblog.o...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-
| desirable-how...
| [deleted]
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| too true, I once had a conversation with a friend of mine.
| She was saying to just use tinder. As we were about to get
| in the car, I told her: I'll do nothing but swipe till we
| get there. if I get a match, I'll pay for lunch when we
| arrive, otherwise you pay.
|
| She said yes.
|
| easiest free meal I ever got
| jhgb wrote:
| polote: "I got banned!"
|
| wayoutthere: "If you want tinder to work for you consistently
| as a man, get your personal hygiene in order and hit the
| gym."
|
| Did you just blame GP's getting banned on him not having
| personal hygiene or not being fit?
| whitepaint wrote:
| I would disagree with this. You don't have to be that
| attractive. Average will do fine. Just make them laugh. I am
| from Europe and Tinder works pretty good (at least for me)
| and I am just an ordinary dude.
|
| Also, don't stop just with Tinder. Use Bumble, happn,
| OkCupid, Badoo. I've got dates from all of these.
| jokoon wrote:
| I know a woman who got banned on two apps, including tinder.
| akimball wrote:
| That's hot
| jhgb wrote:
| > as soon as they detect non standard behavior they shadowban,
| people keep seeing profile and keep paying
|
| That's called "fraud" in most countries. If you believe that
| fraud is "not 100% wrong" then I don't know what to say to
| that.
| polote wrote:
| I was saying it is not 100% wrong to ban people. The fact
| that the banned people are still paying and dont get their
| money back clearly look like fraud (even if this is more
| complex, as Tinder is very smart about how they communicate,
| they never make you pay to get matches, they make you pay to
| be able to like more).
|
| But yeah Match group is a fraud company, I've wrote some
| posts on the topic in the past
| croes wrote:
| Will be interesting when they all switch to biometric login.
|
| "Hey Doc, I need a new face."
|
| "Mafia? Witness protection?"
|
| "Tinder."
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| > That's called shadowban in the case of OP.
|
| I'd call that fraud. If you pay for a service you get to use
| the service.
| pas wrote:
| Does their ToS say they can terminate it without notice?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Terminating without notice is one thing. Shadowbanning and
| continuing to take your money is a completely different
| thing.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| No, banning someone from a paid service is not fraud.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It is if you keep taking their money and pretend that they
| are not banned.
| ska wrote:
| Colloquially and technically "ban" and "shadowban" are
| different things; I have no idea what happened in OP case
| but "shadowban" means that you leave someone in a system
| but silently block all of their interactions.
|
| e.g. ban: you try to log into HN and it gives you a
| message: "You can't log in, you are banned"
|
| shadowban: you log in to HN with your account, you post
| comments and vote on stories but unknown to you nobody else
| on HN can see this. Eventually you start to wonder why you
| never get replies anymore.
|
| It's definitely an ethical issue if you are doing the
| latter without telling someone, and additionally charging
| them for the service you aren't providing.
|
| With a dating app it might be hard to tell for a while; how
| are you to know that you aren't getting any
| replies/engagement because of the way such sites work, or
| because the people you contacted never saw the
| likes/messages/whatever.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Banning + refund for the remainder credit, sure. Scummy,
| but sure. Shadow banning, taking peoples money while they
| still think they get a service, not even banning at the end
| of the billing cycle, without giving notice, nah, that's
| definitely fraud.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It is if they silo you off without notifying you and make
| sure no one else can see you and keep taking your money.
| Now I don't know if tender is doing that provably, but that
| was the thesis.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| > This has nothing to do with Big tech. If you want to meet
| people don't use Tinder, that used to work well in the past, it
| very rarely works now.
|
| EDIT: It seems I misunderstood this statement. I read it as "If
| you want to meet people don't use Tinder, [not using twitter]
| used to work well in the past, it very rarely works now"
|
| I don't understand your reasoning here. You're suggesting that
| tinder is a vital service for some aspect of life now(I agree,
| unfortunately), but also saying it's not a problem with big
| tech? This kind of thing is exactly why big tech needs to be
| regulated.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > You're suggesting that tinder is a vital service for some
| aspect of life now(I agree, unfortunately)
|
| Tinder being a "vital service" sounds absurd.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| They stated " If you want to meet people don't use Tinder,
| that used to work well in the past, it very rarely works
| now.", which if I understand them correctly means that it's
| hard to meet people without it. Perhaps you don't need to
| meet anyone, but for someone who does I don't think it's
| that absurd.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > which if I understand them correctly means that it's
| hard to meet people without it
|
| It means it (Tinder) no longer works. I says nothing
| about difficulty of meeting people outside of Tinder.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| So a missunderstanding then I read it as:
|
| If you want to meet people don't use Tinder, [not using
| twitter] used to work well in the past, it very rarely
| works now.
| VRay wrote:
| ah, if you wanted to say it that way in English, you'd
| say
|
| "If you >don't< want to meet people don't use Tinder"
|
| the way it's phrased means (unambiguously) that Tinder
| sucks, and Tinder doesn't work
| sepnax wrote:
| Do you not think that reproduction is a basic need?
| akimball wrote:
| That's a deep question about the semantics of "basic
| need", and highly subjective. I do not think that
| reproduction is a basic need of the individual in
| ordinary language, but it may be deemed a basic, I.e.
| survival, need of the species or tribe
| polote wrote:
| Is Bumble big tech ? No, still they have the same tactics
| than Tinder.
|
| I'm not saying there is no problem (I have wrote several
| article criticizing Match group and the app dating market),
| I'm just saying this has nothing to do with big Tech. Any
| dating app (and some do) can do the same as Tinder
| Sosh101 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Bumble (I've never used Tinder
| either). My point is if you are controlling access to "the
| market" then a user being excluded could be a real
| disadvantage, and should be treated with care.
| overcast wrote:
| This exact thing happened to me, one day my long (years) standing
| account was just banned, and I had recently created a
| subscription. No repeal, nothing. What I ended up doing, was
| changing my subscription to a HIGHER tier, which refunds you the
| difference of the lower tier. Then CANCELLING the now new higher
| tier, which refunds you the new subscription amount. All through
| iOS subscription management. Seriously fuck Tinder.
| jefftk wrote:
| 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.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| 37B is quite big.
|
| "big data" is just an excel file, so I think this would qualify
| jefftk wrote:
| _> "big data" is just an excel file_
|
| You know that's a joke, right?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > 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?
|
| I think you don't recognize the scale of Match Group. They make
| two billion per year, they have 2000 staff, and they own
| basically every dating site.
| hansel_der wrote:
| maybe making money with a product that you cannot support ought
| to be regulated.
|
| i too grew up with oss-licences that tell me i'm on my own and
| thats kind ok, but i don't want to live in a world were
| commercial products are labeled "not fit for any purpose. use
| at your own risk"
| fault1 wrote:
| Match is a small part of IAC, no?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAC_(company)
| native_samples wrote:
| Scale/expense is a reasonable excuse when the services are
| free. Not when you're paying.
|
| It's a "Big Tech" problem. Lots of people have experienced
| getting randomly banned from services with no obvious cause,
| and no way to get any resolution. I'm banned from AirBNB for
| example. No clue why and there was nothing that could have
| triggered it, because I hadn't used the service for like over
| six months when the ban happened, there were no disputes or
| other problems with hosts and my last host review had been
| glowing. They didn't even tell me it'd occurred, but they had
| been sending emails thanking me for being a part of the
| "community" just weeks before. Then I tried to log in, got a
| verification screen, entered the code and was told the account
| was terminated. Filed an appeal, got no useful response and
| that was the end of it.
|
| If it was a free service I'd understand, but I've paid good
| money to AirBNB over the years. If you pay you expect to be
| treated like a customer, not an enemy, but SV tech firms have
| all copied the culture of Facebook/Twitter/Google. They seem to
| forget that when people give money they expect some sort of
| customer relationship as a consequence.
| toastal wrote:
| This reminds me of my ban from Gumtree. I had issues making a
| post because I was using uMatrix which blocks (the malicious)
| reCAPTCHA that they use to block spam posts. With no errors about
| the missing reCAPTCHA script on the screen and just redirecting
| me to the submission after what seemed like a sever error, I just
| tried to resubmit my listing 3 times in a row. I got banned. I
| emailed them along the lines of "hey, I'm not a bot and I looked
| into it and it seems there's an issue with reCAPTCHA and error
| reporting". I got a response that for asking about ban and asking
| about reCAPTCHA, I was going to have my account, email address,
| and IP banned. What a joke.
| cnst wrote:
| So, basically, a reverse discrimination against people who know
| what's going on?
|
| The same thing happens with corporate VPNs. I guess it only
| makes sense that Apartment.com doesn't want your business if
| you're making a bank at one of the larger companies who are big
| enough to require a VPN service!
| pavlov wrote:
| Getting banned from Tinder is like getting banned from a bar.
| Just go somewhere else.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway90090 wrote:
| So don't have your livelihood or material comfort depend on
| greedy and uncaring megacorps?
|
| Evergreen xkcd: https://xkcd.com/743/
| JasonFruit wrote:
| 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.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It'd be like that if most of the bars where you lived were
| owned by the same company and all shared a ban list.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Years ago there were a lot of active dating sites but there
| aren't nearly as many any more. Where exactly are you supposed
| to go?
| zionic wrote:
| No, it's more like getting banned from _all_ the bars.
| sabellito wrote:
| Not quite that simple depending on the country and city. Even
| more with the pandemic, Tinder might be one's only way of
| meeting potential partners.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| How many Tinders is there? In my country they's pretty much
| only it, none of the other apps have any users (especially in
| my age range).
|
| I'm also "kinda" banned on Tinder btw - or rather, my account
| got in an unusable state due to some bug, or an interaction
| between multiple bugs. The app literally _barely works_. How
| pathetic for a company this size. I feel sorry for anyone who
| has to work on their code base.
| emteycz wrote:
| Why not delete and recreate your account?
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| And get _actually_ banned? The app is so bad that I 'd
| rather not use it at all. Anyway, I'm in a relationship
| now, so thankfully I don't need it.
| colmvp wrote:
| Really?
|
| In my area, single people also use Hinge, Bumble,
| CoffeeMeetsBagel, OKCupid, POF, Match... I'm fugly as hell
| but even I was able to find someone on a non-Tinder platform.
| vidarh wrote:
| Other than Coffee Meets Bagel which I've not heard about
| before, those are all - like Tinder - owned by Match.
|
| So while they may be options in some market, I'd be curious
| how long before they share bans between services.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't think the author is claiming to be banned from
| every dating app, and I don't think Match Group connects
| the profiles of users across its owned platforms, so it's
| not really relevant that Tinder is owned by Match Group
| for the purposes of what happened to the author.
| vidarh wrote:
| Did you read my last line? I did not suggest they do so
| now, but I do genuinely wonder how long until they do.
| It's a big issue that they have been allowed to control
| this market the way they do. It's somewhat tolerable
| today because they've avoided taking steps to call
| nsolidate them . But also only for that reason.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > It's a big issue that they have been allowed to control
| this market the way they do.
|
| I don't think that's true. Tinder doesn't control the
| dating app market, nor would it be a problem, per se, if
| they did.
| zionic wrote:
| -Hinge: Seemingly the only viable competitor in the college
| scene
|
| -Bumble, OKCupid, POF, Match: 40+ only.
|
| -CoffeeMeetsBagel: ?
| mrep wrote:
| Bumble is definitely not 40+ only at least here in
| Chicago.
| vmception wrote:
| Other bars don't have Swipe Night
|
| I jest but has anyone used Tinder recently? They have
| interactive choose your own adventure movies now, and then
| match you with people that made similar choices, instant ice
| breaker! But actually a decently fun episodic game with
| moderately high production value.
|
| I'm surprised because Tinder was like _the worst_ of all the
| mobile-first dating apps from my recollection.
| kongolongo wrote:
| This is the better world though. Would you rather have a dating
| app with no users or so many that they can't possibly fully
| investigate every false-positive?
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > It's fine if it's tinder, but what are you gonna do when the
| same will happen with your bank application
|
| That's literally how loan applications work now: banks compute
| all the information they can glean on you to determine a risk
| index.
|
| Do something the algorithm has considered risky and you get
| charged more for the same amount of money another person can get.
| And the algorithm considers it "risky" to not use banks; if you
| have no history of having owned a credit card, for instance, the
| bank trusts you less than a person who has carried all manner of
| debt for years (but paid it down consistently).
| [deleted]
| JamesLeonis wrote:
| My 2C/; 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.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| 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.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Pretty sure you can still do a chargeback with a debit card if
| the purchase was made "on credit" as all online purchases are.
|
| But wanted to add another thing, chargebacks are for cases of
| fraud, so the cc network actually charges the retailer a not
| insignificant fee for each chargeback, it's why BigTech will
| shutdown your account if you do a chargeback, bec 9/10 times if
| it's on your account you did mean to spend that money you just
| forgot about it. If you didn't you better be ready to prove it
| and still burn the account that you chargeback on (i.e. lose
| your gmail account bec someone compromised your account and
| bought stuff on android)
| generalEvie wrote:
| While attempting a chargeback can be good advice, be very wary
| if you paid for the service via Google / Apple.
| t-writescode wrote:
| if paid via Apple, ask Apple directly. I've gotten
| subscriptions refunded for Match.com's dark patterns, for
| example.
| specialist wrote:
| The problem is lack of fair and impartial judicial review.
|
| Every one has a fundamental right to appeal, to have their day in
| court.
| Proven wrote:
| cwkoss wrote:
| Do a chargeback with your credit card provider, at least you can
| twist the knife back a bit.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Any time someone else has control of your content or you need
| them, they can get rid of you. It's not limited to Big Tech; I
| was 12 when COPPA went into effect and I lost everything online
| because I hadn't lied when I signed up (because it was perfectly
| legal for an elementary school kid to have things like an email
| address and web hosting). All my contacts/friends, all my work
| that wasn't stored locally (which was a fair amount), etc.
| Similarly to things like Tinder bans, there WAS an option in law
| for me to keep my accounts, but it would have required effort on
| behalf of the companies, so they just deleted everything.
|
| Any centralization, policy, or algorithms that work based on an
| assumption of default/normal behavior will punish outliers
| (unless this is accounted for). This guy obviously was one such
| outlier for Tinder.
|
| > In the future, people will be trying to please the algorithm.
| They will double-check if what they are doing right now could be
| considered by algorithms as something strange, something that
| most people wouldn't do.
|
| Assuming people understand the algorithms; there's an incentive
| on the part of companies to keep them opaque. It will be more
| akin to a religion where people GUESS which actions anger the
| algorithm and companies and get very mad when others don't agree.
| Which is worse.
| yosito wrote:
| This happened to me because I uploaded a picture holding a pepper
| from my garden that Tinder's AI flagged as phallic. To a human
| being, it was no more phallic than any other pepper and
| definitely not sexualized. Tinder refused to manually review the
| photo so I was banned with no recourse.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Once a tech company has greater than, say, 60% market share, it
| probably makes sense for society to give the company an 'I won'
| sticker and start treating them some what like a utility.
| taurusnoises wrote:
| > "In the future, people will be trying to please the algorithm.
| They will double-check if what they are doing right now could be
| considered by algorithms as something strange, something that
| most people wouldn't do."
|
| This is literally the day-to-day of anyone trying to leverage
| their profile on any social media account. Endlessly chasing
| after the algorithm, trying to" hack it" by keeping up to date on
| its moods and preferences. As someone who used to roll that way,
| I can attest. The future has been around for years now.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's also the day to day of living in society, except social
| norms are more democratically established.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| What this is:
|
| - no due process
|
| - no way to reverse their decision
|
| - no way to appeal their decision
|
| they are judge, jury, and executioner
|
| And this is fine, unless you are a company providing a what would
| now be considered a critical service to the public (even if for
| pay).
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| My biggest frustration with tinder is that paying to get rid of
| arbitrary limitations like limited swipes doesn't really help
| you.
|
| The only way unlimited swipes fixes the numbers game of dating is
| if everyone gets them.
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| 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.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| vmception wrote:
| "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.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Have you heard of "cultural differences"? Author is from Kiev.
| Now, I'm not Ukrainian, but in Polish refering to "women" as
| "dziewczyna" not "kobieta" in romantic setting would not be any
| weird.
| ravenstine wrote:
| That's not particularly unique to Ukrainian culture by any
| stretch of the imagination. Popular global culture,
| particularly western culture, typically shares that canard.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's common colloquial language. You wouldn't call your
| coworkers "girls" in a meeting. But you could reasonably say
| you're dating "this girl I met while hiking the Appalachian
| Trail" and it's normative.
| nearmuse wrote:
| This sounds very behooving of a dating app: it preemptively gives
| 0 chances to the "iffy guy" and rejects them so the dating person
| doesn't have to. I am still not sure to what extent the problem
| is with this social norm vs. with how it is being "reflected" by
| Tinder.
| stathibus wrote:
| It definitely does seem possible to me to violate terms of
| service without any likes or matches. We don't know what was on
| their profile.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
| Kiro wrote:
| That has never been the case and shouldn't be the case. It's
| not a court and I don't need any reason or justification to
| ban someone from my app.
| Lucent wrote:
| It's against ToS for your profile to include other means to
| contact you, like other online profiles. That's my guess.
| danillonunes wrote:
| If that's the case they should ban half of their users who
| add their instagram handles in their profiles, and more than
| half of their very attractive users who do the same but make
| their app more desirable.
| dablweb wrote:
| 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.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > terrifying to see the true scale
|
| Not as terrifying as the number of people who defend it.
| vmception wrote:
| hm that extensions shows a high percentage of my of my comments
| are shadowbanned or less visible due to the parent being
| moderated out
|
| but this is supposed to match the incognito browser experience
| and I can still see all my comments in incognito which means
| everyone else can
|
| questionable.
| kodah wrote:
| Tinder and Bumble are the same form of awful and from the same
| founder. These apps are designed to exploit men. There are a
| fewer number of women on them and plenty of men, as a result they
| design features like boost, super likes, and premium
| subscriptions that you _must_ pay for every month. There are
| studies and data that show that even normally attractive men with
| good profiles will go unswiped while women will get
| hundreds[1][2]. You then have to deal with a dating scene where
| you are knowingly competing with other men for a woman 's
| attention while having very little in the form of options. The
| irony behind a TOS like this is it's designed to prevent bad
| behavior, but the entire underlying system generates _more_ bad
| behavior. This is not to even mention the number of OnlyFans,
| prostitution, and people lying about their sexual orientation
| that users will need to sift through.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Bumble/comments/riwo34/finally_got_...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Bumble/comments/p3aeqq/dont_assume_...
| arbitrage wrote:
| I'll let you in on a secret ... women's experiences on Tinder
| aren't that great, either.
| kodah wrote:
| What I said doesn't invalidate women's experiences. I was
| highlighting that men have to pay for said shitty experience,
| and the system is designed that way intentionally. The heavy
| TOS is because men and women act out because of that shitty
| system. It's a cycle.
| arbitrage wrote:
| kodah wrote:
| I didn't take it as fighting, so I'm not sure what the
| hostility is about. I was making clear that by
| highlighting men's experiences I am in no way
| invalidating women's experiences. That and putting some
| emphasis on the fact that shitty systems result in shitty
| TOS.
|
| > Maybe it's not all Tinder's fault you're not having
| much luck.
|
| This is an unnecessary and unfortunate remark.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Years ago, when I ran PUA site, I set up a fake female
| profile on Match to see what the female experience was like.
| It was truly horrifying. In three days I got ~1000 messages
| from men, 99% of which were barely intelligible and usually
| one line, like "dam gurl u nicce" etc.
| t-writescode wrote:
| This.
|
| Men see a ghost town of responses and think no one of value
| is here.
|
| Women see a town full of roaches and think no one of value is
| here.
|
| Same result: no one of value found (some exceptions apply)
| jablongo wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that there is an explanation for this set
| of responses from tinder that makes complete sense and is
| relatively non-dystopian: Someone submitted a complaint about the
| author from his past usage of tinder, maybe even one specifically
| designed to get him banned. Tinder would never disclose the cause
| in that case in order to protect the identity of the complainant,
| nor should they be expected to. But in either case they should
| not have continued to charge him...
| k__ wrote:
| I'm banned from Tinder for years now, because I once uploaded a
| meme.
|
| They said images that don't show me are against the terms of
| service.
| bigwheeler wrote:
| I just lost my IG account after having it for literally a decade.
| Short story: I thought my engagement was low, so I manually went
| through my not-very-large follower list (2400 or so) in the IG
| app, identified about 100 accounts that I thought were bots
| (accounts that were following 6000+ people), and then went to
| each one and removed them as a follower. I made it about 40 in
| when suddenly I got meaningless errors, logged out, and that was
| it. My account no longer exists.
|
| All of the avenues to contact Instagram are meaningless and don't
| lead anywhere. There are no actual humans anywhere that review
| these things. No one cares when their crap algorithm screws up
| and deletes your 1000 photos and memories and all the
| interactions you had with your friends.
|
| The irony is I got kicked out for doing something that should be
| their job.
| [deleted]
| zionic wrote:
| >All of the avenues to contact Instagram are meaningless and
| don't lead anywhere.
|
| I feel you. I got permabanned from tinder when I _emailed their
| support_ asking how the verification process worked with
| couples. They replied with a ban notice and I was confused,
| turns out couples profiles are against Tinders T &C. I hadn't
| actually done ANYTHING to violate their T&C in-app yet, just
| asking their support about it was enough to ban for life.
|
| To top it off, they embedded a secret key in my iOS keychain
| that synced across all devices. Even wiping the phone would get
| new numbers banned on sign in. I ended up having to use a fresh
| device on a fresh iCloud account on a new number to bypass
| their ban (I'm a dev with 100+ devices at my disposal and
| multiple VPS VPNs, good luck Tinder).
|
| Tinder can go fuck itself, but they have an absolute monopoly
| in my area/demographic so I have to put up with them.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Perhaps if Congress ever actually considers regulating these
| companies, whether or not you can get some legit customer
| service should be part of determining who is big enough to
| regulate.
| lixtra wrote:
| > To top it off, they embedded a secret key in my iOS
| keychain that synced across all devices.
|
| If you're in the EU or from the EU it might be possible to
| nag them with data protection request.
|
| Of course only if you enjoy nagging.
| endofreach wrote:
| The monopoly on dating is definitely not tinder... it is:
| real life.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder. Standards might have changed for the younger
| population, necessary flirting skills in person are no
| longer maintained as widely as they used to. Generally,
| things that are challenging tend to be taken over by
| technology.
|
| It is not that different from how people forgot to orient
| themselves in a city without navigational apps. Or how they
| no longer know how to, say, make butter (unlike in 1900).
| maxk42 wrote:
| People don't know how to make butter? You just shake up
| milk.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=couD2IawoGw
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| It's not just that, those flirting skills are not safe to
| use anymore. You can get an harassment charge for
| touching someone in the arm these days (happened to some
| lonely autistic kid). Having confirmation of mutual
| attraction first makes things both easier and safer.
| dvt wrote:
| This simply not true, or way blown out of proportion. I'm
| single, so I go out almost every weekend (West LA):
| plenty of people flirting, making out, touching, dancing,
| etc. Dating apps are a complete waste of time when
| compared to meeting people in real life.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Ah yes, West LA is a representation of the rest of the
| world, and to people with incredibly busy, corporate
| lives.
|
| I've heard stories of lesbian women, especially, FLYING
| ACROSS THE COUNTRY to meet another person they have
| interest in because it's that hard to find matching
| personalities.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Touch-consent is as easy to do as asking a question. Not
| really sure what the big deal is.
| soperj wrote:
| First you'd need consent to actually ask the question,
| and prior to that, you'd need consent to speak with the
| person (you'd have to get that in writing).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting that from. I would like to
| assume positive intent and the best interpretation of
| your position, but it's really difficult to not read this
| as "If we have to get consent for touching someone, then
| we have to get consent for all interactions. Therefore
| touch-consent is non-viable." Please help me understand
| how you aren't saying that.
| soperj wrote:
| As someone who's been on the receiving end of unwanted
| touches, just keeping your hands to yourself and not
| asking at all would be perfectly fine.
| bragh wrote:
| I think that say what you will about the social media and
| the ills of it, Tinder is definitely a net positive for
| society. This is because matching on Tinder removes the
| ambiguity of attraction from the whole confusing dance of
| social interaction. So in the long run, when Tinder and
| its clones take over, there should be much less stories
| about unwanted sexual attention: either you make it on
| Tinder or you do not make it at all.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| gretch wrote:
| This is why the anti-trust movements against FAANG have
| such a hard time gaining mainstream traction. People start
| hijacking the word "monopoly" and it becomes incredibly
| diluted and undermines the credibility of the narrative.
| kingcharles wrote:
| > The monopoly on dating is definitely not tinder... it is:
| real life.
|
| For how much longer?
| sizzle wrote:
| Yup same thing happened to me but it was just because I
| accessed it with random vpn. No recourse whatsoever, can't even
| get a list of all my friend's accounts I lost access to
| canadaduane wrote:
| I was banned for trying to create a 2nd account for my
| business.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| That is great. Why would you have a "business" account on
| tinder?
| jwong_ wrote:
| Grandparent mentions IG, so assuming they created a
| business IG account.
| vidarh wrote:
| The irony is last time I used Tinder it was clear they're
| totally unable or unwilling to deal with all the women
| using Tinder for "business".
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That makes sense if in the USA since prostitution is
| illegal in 49 states.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think you missed my point, which is that Tinder does
| seemingly very little to stop it. Even in markets where
| it is legal, like in the UK where I am, it is actively
| detrimental to the user experience for most users.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is the parent saying there is a lot of it on Tinder, and
| that Tinder isn't following the law?
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes, I was saying Tinder is full of straight up
| prostitution and people seeking sugar daddies who ge
| offended if you call it out as prostitution. I have
| nothing against prostitution (and I'm in the UK where it
| is legal), but I do find it really annoying when dating
| apps don't do more to keep it off their apps.
|
| Often patterns of fake profiles that were immediately
| obvious to me as a user took months for them to block.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Prostitution?
| Rudism wrote:
| The comment you're replying to was responding to another
| comment relaying an experience with an Instagram ban, not
| Tinder.
|
| Though the idea of a business making an account on Tinder
| did give me a chuckle.
| 202112222132 wrote:
| Not bad! Perhaps people on Instagram don't want to see
| "businesses"?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It is time these services were treated like a utility. If my
| energy supplier screws me around I can contact the regulator.
| threatofrain wrote:
| And if your town's Walmart bans you... drive to the next
| town? We should have clear principles over what is a utility
| and what is not. What principle unites both Tinder and your
| power company in regulatory conversation?
| qq4 wrote:
| Why should Instagram, a _FREE_ social networking site where
| you share pictures and videos be a utility?! There are
| countless ways to accomplish the same thing, including email
| and text, both of which are also (thankfully) not utilities.
| throwaway90090 wrote:
| I know "don't use social networks made by evil megacorps that
| make money by trampling all over your privacy and making you
| addicted" is the kind of advice everyone sagely nods at but no
| one heeds. But it _especially_ applies to dating apps. Like the
| proverbial sausages, once you know what goes on under the hood
| you won 't ever feel like touching one of them with a ten foot
| pole.
| vmception wrote:
| > once you know what goes on under the hood you won't ever feel
| like touching one of them with a ten foot pole.
|
| I _love_ gaming the algorithm to meet hotter* people than I
| would meet using the apps the most intuitive way.
|
| *It's not subjective, there are profiles that attract way more
| attention and would either: never be shown to you, or you never
| shown to them.
| bradlys wrote:
| How does one even game it unless you're putting up fake
| photos? And at that point - what's the point...? That person
| won't date the actual you.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've never done online dating, met my wife the old-fashioned
| way, but, it sounds like you're saying the network is making
| the choice of who should be matched/together, before they get
| the chance to decide for themselves?
|
| If that's true, how anyone thinks that isn't totally fucked
| is beyond me. I mean, I'm seriously, deeply concerned by this
| notion more than the usual privacy, data etc that big tech
| concerns me with, they're literally shaping future
| generations according to their "algorithm", by deciding that
| one person shouldn't even be allowed to know another even
| exists, let alone have an opportunity to interact with them.
| throwaway90090 wrote:
| You have an Elo rating, like in chess (or something like
| that - it depends on the app and they sometimes tweak it,
| but the gist is that rating is defined recursively: your
| rating increases if you get liked by high rated people),
| and you get matched with people within a given range around
| your rating. When you lose interest they punctually entice
| you with out-of-range profiles.
|
| Like in chess, they show you very high rated people at
| first, to ascertain your initial rating and above all to
| hook you with all the attractive profiles. As your rating
| becomes more and more accurate as people in your pool swipe
| you, your range of matchable profiles narrows down.
|
| (Edit: As another user said, you may sometimes lose rating
| by matching low-rated or too many people, but the exact
| details may change a lot.)
|
| The main target demographics are the really high rated
| people (who entice everyone else) and the really low rated
| people, who pay up for every premium feature in order to
| get noticed, i.e. artificially boost their rating. (But
| just because you have a GM's rating doesn't mean you have a
| GM's skill, so the gains are hollow and you have to keep
| paying to stay above your original rating range). The
| equivalent would be chess beginners paying up for an Open
| Tournament in order to help subsidize the GMs appearance
| fee and prizes.
|
| And as in chess, an elite of very high rated people has all
| the fun while everyone else sorts of sucks and flounders.
| That's not because of evolutionary psychology or some
| fundamental truth of human nature, that's just how rating
| (and by extension any kind of skill following a power-law
| distribution) works.
|
| I agree, it comically sucks that people are letting
| themselves being paired by a shitty implementation of
| League of Legends.
| vmception wrote:
| yes, exactly, but do notice that these apps all deny
| _still_ having an ELO rating, but just know that this is
| just corporate speak no different than an ISP saying
| "well _unlimited_ isn 't a legal term and the experience
| is still the same", so just assume something similar is
| happening and act accordingly. act like an attractive
| person to get exposure to attractive people as long as
| possible, how do attractive people act? choosy and
| discerning. don't swipe on everyone, actually play the
| superficial game because you _know_ who is attractive by
| consensus, even if it isn 't your personal taste.
| vmception wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. But its even worse, its a crowdsourced
| eugenics program that the crowd doesn't know they are
| contributing to and I believe they would not consent to if
| they knew or had the choice (aside from not using the app
| at all).
|
| Basically your selection (match, don't match) isn't just a
| personal choice. It alters the other person's desirability
| based on your current desirability. Its a weighted choice
| that affects how they are bracketed to everyone else,
| people in the same brackets match each other.
|
| Now of course, this is similar to _the outcome_ in real
| life. But there is a level of consent to these personal
| choices, and there are way more inputs before this outcome
| occurs.
|
| Knowing that some derivative of this is employed allows you
| to game it, which makes it much less objectionable to me,
| but I greatly disagree with the idea that other people
| aren't aware. At this point my biggest issue with dating
| apps is that nobody moderately attractive has their
| notifications on, so it's easy to forget to check the app
| for a conversation (after you matched) but at the same time
| its still uncouth to ask for a phone number or other way of
| messaging right away, so a simple conversation could take
| weeks or months or more likely never occur. (Many people
| have their instagrams or snapchats written on their
| profile, but its an additional greater gamble to get a
| response through those as they are inferior forms of
| inboxes too).
|
| I know its common for married people to think "omg dating
| is so nightmarish now, this justifies staying with my
| spouse through anything because I wouldn't know what to
| do", its not really that different, think of a dating app
| like a someone at the pier with 5 fishing rods out in the
| water. 2 of them are dating apps, 3 of them are other
| things. Its just an additional option to meet people
| outside of your network.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Knowing that some derivative of this is employed allows
| you to game it
|
| How?
| vmception wrote:
| be discerning like a hot person. even if it slows down
| how often you get matched at all. make it only possibly
| for consensus attractive people to match with you.
|
| the opposite than how I hear other guys use these apps.
| tata71 wrote:
| Yes, Tinder swiping is bracketed by implied desirable ness
| of the profile.
|
| They even tell you when you're "doing well".
| decafninja wrote:
| Curious what the algorithm would be to measure
| "desireableness". Computer vision on the photos (i.e.
| measure facial symmetry?) plus the number of other people
| who have expressed interest in you?
| vmception wrote:
| They aren't doing anything that complicated. A popular
| profile is attractive and chooses a very small percentage
| of others. The profile that person chooses gets a much
| greater weighting of desirability by being chosen by the
| popular profile.
|
| The popular profile that chooses a high percentage of
| others is not a real human being and/or is selling sex. A
| pretty irrelevant signal for desirability. It's quite
| simple. Just like in the real world in that regard,
| people want higher signals of why they were chosen and it
| is accurate to be skeptical of an undiscerning attractive
| person because it usually _is_ a low signal since they
| don 't actually want you, they want to sell something.
|
| Game the system by being more discerning. This is
| counterintuitive for people wanting matches by
| statistical probability as it seems like matching faster
| and arbitrarily will help, but that behavior ensures
| being downranked to the doldrums with other actually
| unattractive people.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not think there is any need for trying to figure out
| how to calculate objective attractiveness. Just use
| someone's likes and the value of those likes based on the
| likes of the person doing the like-ing to infer their
| relative popularities. Can use frequency and rapidity of
| messaging as an additional data point also.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It works the same way in old fashioned setups. Barring
| exceptional knowledge of two peoples' compatibility,
| someone looking to introduce two people to each other would
| propose a setup between two similarly attractive, educated,
| income/wealth level people.
|
| Otherwise, the matchmaker ends up losing reputation and
| participants trust them less due to higher chances of
| failure. It works the same way in business relationships
| too.
|
| A broker's value is in increasing the probability of
| transactions closing by restricting the pool of candidates
| to those likelier to close. Otherwise, they have no value.
| alias_neo wrote:
| While I agree to an extent, the issue I see is that
| business partners, friends, etc likely know you far
| better than a site you enter curated information into in
| order to reach an end goal ever will.
|
| The desirability of your profile aside, it's entirely
| credibly that any profile you create is a poor
| representation, many people may not know what it is about
| themselves that others like.
| vmception wrote:
| It is a poor representation, you then meet in person and
| start from square one, no different than how online
| always has been. You just have to get your foot in the
| door with people you would have never otherwise met at
| all. Its just an additional venue amongst other venues
| also available.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Is there a single dating app that doesn't do that?
| throwaway90090 wrote:
| No, there isn't. Maybe at the very beginning when people were
| genuinely entranced by this Internet thing and hadn't figured
| out the best way to milk loneliness for profit, but now it's
| all rotten and beyond repair.
|
| If you want to meet new people, find yourself new real-life
| hobbies.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Only a small proportion of people are available. On a
| dating site it's basically 100%.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Pre-pandemic, my social life made dating platforms
| unnecessary. Now? No house or dinner parties full of
| acquaintances, no clubs or festivals, everyone's clustered
| into inner-circle friend groups, my employer moved out of
| the enormous shared office we were in, and on like that.
| The dating platforms are more necessary than ever.
|
| So, naturally, there's never been a better time than this
| for some bad-faith behavior and profiteering.
| dudyehcyc wrote:
| dablweb wrote:
| It's not just privacy we need to be worried about. It's the
| manipulation of public consciousness which I believe is the
| most alarming.
| bpolovko wrote:
| Tinder is a sucky way to meet people anyway, when more people
| realize it and stop using it, that is when the change will come.
| P.S: Kyiv not Kiev
| staticelf wrote:
| > Kyiv (Ukrainian: Kiyiv)[a] or Kiev[b] is the capital and most
| populous city of Ukraine.
|
| From Wikipedia ;)
| bpolovko wrote:
| Read this if you could, this will give you more context:
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/kyiv-
| not-...
| staticelf wrote:
| I have a gut feeling that Americans care more about this
| than Ukrainians themselves. I am no fan of russia and using
| the "incorrect" spelling kiev instead of kyiv doesn't imply
| that IMO.
| bpolovko wrote:
| Gut feeling is not the best thing to rely on in these
| situations, because there is a chance of jumping into a
| prejudice. It all depends on a large number of factors
| which you have to understand before making any
| conclusions I will not go proactively into explaining
| why, but I will be happy to provide you with some
| resources if you are interested to dive in deeper into
| this topic
| staticelf wrote:
| Into what topic? I have no problems using Kyiv if that's
| what Ukranians want. I do not require any other
| explanation or further discussion. I am just no that
| politically correct that I care either way.
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