[HN Gopher] OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognit...
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OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC
says
Author : whiteboardr
Score : 271 points
Date : 2026-03-31 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| everdrive wrote:
| At this point, nearly every online service should be considered
| hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising
| your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a
| small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting
| you, they will.
|
| Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by
| being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an
| alternative these days.
| stephenhuey wrote:
| I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused
| apps. Sure, plenty of people don't know or don't care to value
| that, but if there are enough, maybe you could have a whole set
| of apps that emphasize they are not seeking world domination or
| selling out to the highest bidder, and a major selling point
| for using them would be that they are not < your expected
| chat/dating/photo/social site >.
|
| Am I too idealistic? If such apps are not aggressively seeking
| hyper growth, it seems like these more trustworthy services
| could be deployed to cheap servers and let people use them for
| cheap without having to resort to selling user data.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The problem is that large-scale use of the Internet for
| social networks and for organizing meetings in real life is
| fundamentally incompatible with privacy. It works for small,
| tight-knit insular groups, but as soon as you expand the
| scope of the network to include acquaintances and friends of
| friends you'll eventually find a connection to someone who
| cares less about privacy than about making a buck.
|
| If we had a sort of "federated" system we'd still have this
| problem because you might always find yourself federated with
| someone who just wants to sell the information.
|
| It's a cultural problem within this hyper-aggressive version
| of Capitalism that we've adopted, that even data about people
| has value. Until we decide as a culture that this kind of
| data sale or data use is shameful and unacceptable we'll be
| in this situation no matter what technical solution we adopt.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Users who want to be private and are willing to pay extra for
| it are necessarily highly valuable for data brokers and
| advertisers. So incentives always push towards betraying them
| eventually I think.
| jmye wrote:
| Is that true? Not arguing, just curious. I would imagine
| that the highly valuable users are those most likely to buy
| things, and people that into privacy would be fundamentally
| more likely to also go to extremes to block that
| advertising, but this is very much not my area.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is a multi-axis problem.
|
| On one spectrum, you have privacy -- at one extreme, the most
| private of people don't even use social apps, they are
| traditionally private people. At the other extreme, you have
| the highest consumers of apps -- the people who demand
| sharing the most.
|
| On the other spectrum, you have technical acuity -- at one
| extreme you have people who can audit software they use and
| verify that it actually does what it says -- at the other
| extreme, you have people who have no clue and will believe
| whatever is convincing.
|
| Given this, the market for "app that enables sharing, but has
| privacy controls, and is verifiably so" is a tiny circle
| somewhere in the middle of this grid.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > at one extreme you have people who can audit software
| they use and verify that it actually does what it says
|
| Unless the software sends data off to the cloud or a sever
| somewhere. You can't audit what happens there.
| kube-system wrote:
| I was referring to the acuity of potential users, who
| like you, would be able to identify that.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Not privacy-focused, but OKCupid itself fit many of your
| requirements when it first came out. It wasn't aggressively
| seeking hyper growth and barely marketed outside of existing
| SparkNotes and SparkMatch users. It was just a few math nerds
| at Harvard that wanted to model human romantic compatibility
| by categorizing you into a shareable cutely named personality
| type, and they bolted on crowd-sourced questions to see if
| whatever they hadn't thought of themselves might be relevant.
|
| Ten years later, the social media revolution is in full
| swing, the relatively small service they built that had
| catered mostly to nerds was suddenly lucrative, and they sell
| to Match Group and this happens.
|
| To be entirely fair to these guys, I don't think they came
| into it intending to sell out as their long-term goal. But
| four guys who got into data analytics in college also didn't
| find themselves as their mid-30s approached particularly
| wanting to run a dating service for the rest of their lives,
| either.
|
| Whatever happened to FetLife? If any dating service had to be
| privacy-focused, that was it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-
| focused apps.
|
| The real problem is how to trust that a "privacy-focused" app
| is actually privacy-focused. You certainly can't take the
| publisher's word for it.
|
| The only safe stance is to withhold as much personal
| information from as much software and services as possible.
| pesus wrote:
| Even if they were initially trustworthy, it's surely only a
| matter of time before they start wanting/needing to make
| (more) money and start abandoning their principles in
| pursuit of profit.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Or the company is sold to a big corp that doesn't give a
| dammn about or privacy or one whose goal is to actually
| get the data.
| asveikau wrote:
| > The real problem is how to trust that a "privacy-focused"
| app is actually privacy-focused
|
| I think the real problem is actually that legislative
| bodies will make privacy focused apps illegal. California
| AB 1043 is an example of what can happen.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If a company wanted to, they absolutely could include
| something along the lines of "If we violate the terms of
| this privacy policy, we owe all affected users $1000" in
| their Terms of Service. Pointing a gun at their own head to
| prove that they're serious. Companies don't do this,
| because they are cowards.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Am I too idealistic?
|
| Open source developers are wildly idealistic. In the rest of
| the world, I have finally internalized...
|
| 1. Most people say they care about privacy... but won't spend
| even $1 for it. They care about their privacy about as much
| as an open source developer cares about user experience. Just
| extract the tarball, it's not that hard.
|
| 2. Most people don't care about technology and want it out of
| their lives. They don't want to know what sideloading is.
| They don't want to know how to discern safe from dangerous.
| And they aren't wrong. How many open source developers know
| how to drive manual? Car enthusiasts have just as much of a
| righteous claim to attention, after all. The model railroad
| enthusiasts are also upset by our community's lack of
| attention. Every enthusiast, in every field, hundreds of
| them, are upset by lack of mainstream attention, and this
| will never change.
|
| 3. Linux and open source software in general are not even
| close to being popular on the desktop. Gaming and web
| browsing is a tiny subset of what people buy PCs to do, and
| Linux isn't even close on the rest. Even the gaming success
| is so niche it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things
| (Switch 2 outsold 3 years Steam Deck sales in the first 24
| hours).
|
| 4. Some of this optimism was deluded from the start. Like
| when Stallman said we can defeat proprietary software with
| open source, then openly admitted he had no idea how any open
| source developers could afford rent. "If everyone works for
| free, while the big companies stop working, we could get
| ahead" is gobsmackingly naive and it's honestly astounding
| anyone fell for it.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Popular apps, like OKCupid, will get bought, along with their
| user data. Also, mission creeps when management changes.
|
| I mean, an app that starts out as "privacy focused" won't
| necessarily stay that way.
| fsflover wrote:
| F-Droid is the app store for such apps. FLOSS requirement
| ensures that everyone can verify the claims.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| I'd ask what's the market size for an app with a truly great
| user experience then ask if adding basic privacy (we don't
| sell your data) helps at all.
|
| There's a perfect storm of apps getting worse, more
| predatory, less scrupulous, etc. People may not care about
| one of those but the market for an app that cares about all
| of them could be popular.
|
| Problem is the business model. A subscription model where the
| users are _directly_ the customers, free accounts don 't
| exist, and nothing is ever ad-supported is the only viable
| option.
|
| Ten years ago that was a non-starter. People got so much
| functionality for free. Now? We're seeing the cost of free.
| Ten years from now? Paying a subscription to not have to deal
| with the nuclear-level bs they'll be throwing at us will seem
| like a no-brainer.
| uoaei wrote:
| The persistence of data means that if you expect a firm to
| eventually become hostile, you should treat them as hostile
| today.
| prepend wrote:
| I've never posted information anywhere off a machine that I
| control unless I'm comfortable with it being sold or made
| public.
|
| Reduces anxiety.
| cromka wrote:
| That's great if you live like it's still the 90s.
| pwndByDeath wrote:
| I guess I have no sympathy for the addicts, let the social
| media hyper capitalists consume your FOMO lives, I'll find
| value elsewhere. It is sad to see how pathetic we are and
| yet have so much potential.
| stickfigure wrote:
| So the answer is to go back to the 80s and not have social
| software at all?
| Simulacra wrote:
| Another point to add, is that old saying: if the service is
| free, you are the product. I have long considered that dating
| apps are taking all of our data, and selling it. What's more
| personal than social media? What do you think about dating. Who
| you swipe on, the information you put in there, all deeply
| personal. Sometimes more so than what you put on places like
| Facebook
| andai wrote:
| I want to say "we structured the system like that, right?",
| i.e. maximize profit at all costs.
|
| But it seems to be the natural outcome of the incentives, of an
| organization made of organisms in an entropy-based simulation.
|
| i.e. the problem might be _slightly_ deeper than an economic or
| political model. That being said, we might see something
| approximating post-scarcity economics in our lifetimes, which
| will be very interesting.
|
| In the meantime... we might fiddle with the incentives a bit ;)
| als0 wrote:
| > we might see something approximating post-scarcity
| economics in our lifetimes
|
| Can you elaborate more on this? All I see is growing
| inequality.
| hamdingers wrote:
| The upper arm of the K shaped economy uses their capital
| invent and control the replicator and the lower arm dies
| off? Seems like the most realistic path to "post-scarcity"
| from where we're standing now.
| freeAgent wrote:
| This sort of stuff continues to ramp up as everyone rushes to
| train LLMs while governments are pushing for ID verification
| that would make it impossible to use the web (or even one's own
| computer) anonymously. It's a very dark time for anyone who
| cares whatsoever about privacy or digital sovereignty.
| rdevilla wrote:
| Nonsense, I have it on good authority that the old internet
| sans LLM surveillance capitalism is still alive and well. You
| just stopped going there.
| baldrunner2049 wrote:
| Counting the number of comments in this thread 50 minutes later
| (2 including mine), I can just extrapolate most of HNers have an
| OKCupid account
| tenderfault wrote:
| no comment
| amiantos wrote:
| Considering how long OKCupid has been around, there's a good
| chance a significant majority of internet-using millennials
| have had an account at some point in their lives.
| morkalork wrote:
| It _was_ good. I can 't tell you if it is anymore tho
| glerk wrote:
| I never created an OkCupid account, but I've had someone create
| an account with my name and pictures for who knows what
| purpose. Getting it closed required me sending OkCupid my ID
| and a selfie after a couple of angry emails threatening legal
| action. No way around it and no way to know what they did with
| it afterwards.
| Igor_Wiwi wrote:
| Reminds me of another story when 23andme sold dna data
| https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5451398/23andme-sale-ap...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I remember warning everyone I knew that 23andme was about to go
| bankrupt and this would almost certainly mean all their data
| being sold to anyone they could.
|
| I was dismissed. "The privacy policy doesn't allow it"
|
| Peeps: privacy policies are not binding agreements, and even if
| they were, it _always_ allows a corporation to sell your data.
|
| _Always_.
|
| No matter what it says today, because literally tomorrow they
| can change it to whatever they want.
| cromka wrote:
| Didn't this actually _not_ happen at the end of the day?
| ge96 wrote:
| At least back then it was just 2D Tinder for verified you have to
| do the side to side maybe photogrammetry
|
| I don't participate in this stuff anymore the dating app algos
| have put me in the ugly stack, sad but true
|
| Also nowadays hard to tell if people are real
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion on source:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47575616
| ex1fm3ta wrote:
| The vast majority of users have not idea what exif metadata are.
| It's probably time to look it up. You know that automatic
| geographic location data that shows up in your favourite photo
| app ... There you go.
| cmxch wrote:
| Between this and "date safety" invasions of privacy, maybe have a
| discussion on data ownership and privacy?
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Does this still leave them open to liabi9lity in a class action
| lawsuit? The criminality is staggering.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Google GCP updates me with a list of third party subprocessors
| which potentially interact with my data. All end users of any
| service should be informed of direct and transitive
| subprocessors.
| Lio wrote:
| > _The alleged conduct at issue does not reflect how OkCupid
| operates today._
|
| I mean, come on. This bullshit is what you said before.
|
| You haven't changed, you're just pissed off you caught but a bit
| smug you got away with it scott free.
| amelius wrote:
| In these cases can we use 3.0M to disambiguate from the company
| name?
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I suspect that instead of them "giving" the photos to the facial
| recognition firm they sold them. Those photos and the PII data
| associated with them are the only things of value that a site
| like OKCupid controls.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The company was run by someone on the board of directors for ok
| cupid so it likely was just given
| thinkcontext wrote:
| You are wrong, the article discusses this in detail.
| Bengalilol wrote:
| > But even if they had no "commercial agreement," Zeiler
| [Clarifai CEO] told the Times that his company gained access to
| user photos because some of OkCupid's founders invested in
| Clarifai.
|
| And
|
| > In September 2014, the CEO of Clarifai, Inc. e-mailed one of
| OkCupid's founders requesting that Humor Rainbow give Clarifai,
| Inc. (i.e., the Data Recipient) access to large datasets of
| OkCupid photos. Despite not having any business relationship
| with Humor Rainbow, the Data Recipient sought Humor Rainbow's
| assistance because each of OkCupid's founders, including Humor
| Rainbow's President and Match Group, LLC's CEO, were
| financially invested in the Data Recipient.
| neilv wrote:
| Lawyers: Besides whatever issue the company(ies) and
| investors might have with that behavior (self-dealing?),
| could it also let wronged individuals pierce the corporate
| veil, to go after personal assets?
|
| Could this be the backstabbing surveillance capitalism
| incident that finally gives pause to tech executives?
| Theodores wrote:
| From what I understand, most profiles in dating sites are ghosts
| or bots of some sort. As for what is left, there will be those
| photos of six foot tall men that happen to be five foot and
| exaggerating somewhat. As for age information, isn't everyone
| lying about that?
|
| All considered, I can't think of a worse database to train facial
| recognition on.
| glerk wrote:
| I'm going to say this plainly for the log trace: once the flip
| switches and these evil corporations and their human appendages
| are stripped of any amount of power, I hope the correction will
| take the form of "re-education" rather than mere emotional
| retribution.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| That'd be nice. But if it is even possible, we won't be around
| to see it happen.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I hope the correction will take the form of "re-education"
| rather than mere emotional retribution.
|
| Why? There is no re-education that could make someone like Sam
| Altman, Elon Musk, Donald Trump or the people behind Match
| Group be a net positive contributor to society again.
|
| Therefore... I'm fine with everything that makes them suffer,
| just like they made us all suffer.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _OkCupid and Match do not have to pay a financial penalty_
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| Joke is on them i generated that face
| ianberdin wrote:
| If people can misuse - they will.
| bensyverson wrote:
| Oh man... all across Chicago, lawyers are popping champagne right
| now. [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_...
| cromka wrote:
| "The Act prescribes $1,000 per violation, and $5,000 per
| violation if the violation is intentional or reckless."
|
| Per violation. Wow.
| tantalor wrote:
| Oh, not https://www.3m.com/
| saintfire wrote:
| "... agreed to a permanent prohibition barring them from
| misrepresenting how they use and share personal data. "
|
| So... Their punishment for breaking the law is having to promise
| to follow the law going forward?
|
| I wish I had that superpower, too.
| cromka wrote:
| Looking forward to my 30 USD class action compensation.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In a free market the company that makes every cent they can has a
| survival advantage. Enough time and transactions and the market
| will be made entirely of survivors. The rest will have been out-
| competed.
|
| One counter-pressure is regulation. But hey the US has a fetish
| about deregulation and so here we are.
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