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

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/03/ftc-takes-action-against-match-okcupid-deceiving-users-sharing-personal-data-third-party

by gnabgib • 4 months ago

317 153 4 months ago

ftc.gov

https://www.reuters.com/world/match-group-settles-us-ftc-cla...

toomuchtodo• 4 months ago

Federal complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/OkCupid-MatchCo...

Proposed settlement: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/MatchGroupAmeri...

altairprime• 4 months ago

Do I interpret the settlement proposal correctly that the unlawfully-transmitted copies, and any training outcomes derived from them, are not ordered purged?

verdverm• 4 months ago

I can think of a few federal agencies that need the same treatment, Palantir too

tetromino_• 4 months ago

Key quote:

Even though it did not have any business relationship with OkCupid, the third-party data recipient asked the company to share large datasets of OkCupid user photos and related data with it because OkCupid’s founders were financial investors in the third party. OkCupid provided the third party with access to nearly three million OkCupid user photos as well as location and other information without placing any formal or contractual restrictions on how the information could be used, the FTC alleged.

I wonder what is this third party that the complaint does not list by name?

ImJamal2• 4 months ago

Just guessing, but the third party company did not break a law or go against their privacy policy.

Reuters says it is "Clarifai" if you wanted to know.

https://www.reuters.com/world/match-group-settles-us-ftc-cla...

rose-knuckle17• 4 months ago

no. but it seems possible, or even likely, that they used the pictures to train targeting for military drones (think Project Insight from Captain America:Winter Soldier).

I'm not sure privacy violations are the biggest concern here.

CoastalCoder2• 4 months ago

I'm wondering if this means 3 million copyright violations that could be litigated in civil court.

alsetmusic• 4 months ago

I'm wondering if this means 3 million copyright violations that could be litigated in civil court.

Outstanding observation! Class action suit in the making. Only lawyers get rich, but still could hurt the offenders financially.

Aurornis• 4 months ago

Nearly every app that accepts user-generated content includes an agreement that you give them a license to use that content.

It's basically required for those apps to function. No platform would exist very long if users could upload content and then sue the platform for hosting it.

The agreements usually include a clause about allowing them to sub-license it.

So you still retain the copyright to the photos, but you can't sue them for using it.

hector_vasquez• 4 months ago

The FTC article links to the federal complaint[0] which names the third-party data recipient as Clarifai, Inc.

"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."

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/OkCupid-MatchCo...

realreality• 4 months ago

So, your dating photos were going to a government contractor involved with AI killer drone technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarifai#Military_work

tamimio2• 4 months ago

The platform includes the ability to moderate content, perform visual search, visual similarity, and organize media collections. It has pre-built recognition models that can identify a specific set of concepts like food or travel, NSFW, and its general model which can identify a range of concepts including objects, ideas, and emotion.[18] It also has the ability to create custom models which can identify other arbitrary objects such as cars or breeds of dogs.[19] The 2018 Model 1.5 with machine-labeled datasets claims to recognize up to 11,000 concepts from object detection, as well as things like mood or theme.

sooo, why are they after some dating profile pics if the model was about “identifying and labeling pictures”? You can safely assume their new model will be (already) trained on your pictures to crosscheck you on other platforms or surveillance system, coupled with accurate positioning, you can guess the rest.

rationalist2• 4 months ago

No class action or fines for discrimination based on gender? OkCupid gave users different prices based on whether they selected male or female for their profile.

john_strinlai4• 4 months ago

OkCupid gave users different prices based on whether they selected male or female for their profile.

never heard or thought about this before, but it kind of makes sense for a dating app. its one of the only levers available to them to attempt any sort of balance between user genders. it sucks for everyone (including the users) if the male:female ratio is like 20:1 or whatever.

i would rather pay a couple of extra dollars, relative to the opposite sex, if it meant access to a wider pool of potential matches.

justonceokay2• 4 months ago

If your main problem with a dating app is that men pay more than women, then you’re not going to like being in a relationship very much at all :)

loeg• 4 months ago

The ratio is that bad anyway.

hamdingers2• 4 months ago

If you exclude bots and otherwise fake accounts the ratio is much worse than 20:1.

avgDev• 4 months ago

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

Acrobatic_Road• 4 months ago

There's so much shady and unethical behavior from these companies I'm surprised there's not more lawsuits and litigation against them.

CoastalCoder2• 4 months ago

Does anything in the FTC action prevent users from filing their own class action suit(s)?

(Sincere question, not snark)

junkaccount100• 4 months ago

Throwaway account. I tried these sites a couple of times each in the past (the UK versions at least). I'm married now and fortunately don't have to deal with "the dating scene" and how awful it is/was.

When I signed up for Match, about ten minutes into the process my account suddenly changed to that of another man including different photo, descriptions, orientation etc. I don't know why this happened but it was absolutely mortifying and an outrage Match did this. I dread to think how shit their code has to be to somehow merge accounts or whatever happened. I deleted "my" account immediately.

I imagine that counts as excessive sharing of personal data.

the__alchemist• 4 months ago

I had my OKC account hacked or merged to in the same fashion. I've never had this happen before with any online service.

Sohcahtoa823• 4 months ago

I met my current wife on OKC in 2010, before online dating became an utter cesspool.

I've been out of the dating scene for 16 years now, but based on what I see on social media, I think online dating sucks today for three reasons.

1. Many men (Not all, but many) are there simply because they want to get laid. They're not looking for a relationship, they're looking for a hook-up, and they're not honest about their intentions. It doesn't help that people argue over whether Tinder is a dating app or a hook-up app.

2. I'm not sure how to put this without seeming misogynistic, but some women greatly over-value themselves. Or at the very least, they have out-dated ideas of courtship. Some of them expect to be taken out to $50+/plate restaurants on a first date, while many men think women are just trying to score free meals. It's hard to make relationships kick off when they begin so adversarial.

3. Dating sites/apps have a financial incentive for your relationship to fail. They can give you matches they know are bad since it keeps you as a serial dater and on their app. They're in a sticky spot where their most successful customer is one that they will never see another dime from, and there's not really a way around it.

yieldcrv2• 4 months ago

misogynistic

the definition requires "contempt", but it has been diluted to mean any statement that merely points out of corrosive behavior

additionally, many of the statements are actually class based and not inherently gendered, for example, we would call out a man trying to date for free meals too, but since its seen in contexts about women, its stated in reference to that gender, masquerading as contempt and misogyny, but not highlighting what is in the observer's heart and mind whatsoever.

yieldcrv2• 4 months ago

1. Many men (Not all, but many) are there simply because they want to get laid.

so are many women, unnecessarily gendered observation

you just hear less about guys crashing out over it

mjr00• 4 months ago

Many men (Not all, but many) are there simply because they want to get laid. They're not looking for a relationship, they're looking for a hook-up, and they're not honest about their intentions.

In fairness, this is not at all exclusive to online dating.

Forgeties794• 4 months ago

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

If you don’t want to spend that every first date, then I would suggest not making dinner the first date. Do something more casual first time around. Bar, coffee/walk, whatever.

stanford_labrat• 4 months ago

They're in a sticky spot where their most successful customer is one that they will never see another dime from, and there's not really a way around it.

naive question: why has no one made an app with the reverse incentive structure? i understand that the current business model is much more lucrative...but i feel like with how fed up people are with the inability of modern online dating to provide quality, long-lasting relationships a new platform that optimizes for match quality and longevity would eat all of Match Groups offerings lunches. i guess there just isn't enough money to be made so it's not even worth it?

johnnyanmac3• 4 months ago

Many men (Not all, but many) are there simply because they want to get laid.

Honestly, that's fine. The issue was when the "get laid" app suddenly decided to be the "find serious relationship" app. Makes about as much sense as Roblox thinking about a dating app, but I guess the MBA's told them it brings more monies.

but some women greatly over-value themselves.

It's overblown, but the high level concept of "women are picky" the inevitable course of nearly all dating aspects. Evolutionary wise, women need to be picky due to their long gestation period, and men aren't as picky because they can copulate with dozens of women over the course of days. Add in a caste system and the pareto principle, and even scenes from millenia ago aren't as different from 2026 Tinder as you'd think.

But of course your last point only polarizes this existing natural phenomenon.

Dating sites/apps have a financial incentive for your relationship to fail.

This is why we needed to litigate these sites yesterday. But we were too busy fighting amongst ourselves, like serfs warring in the streets while the kings sit in an ivory tower. This is an issue only regulation can fix. The human element shouln't be sold off to capitalism, especially in this time where people are supposedly concerned about falling birth rates.

neonstatic• 4 months ago

Criticizes pathological behavior of some men openly
Puts a disclaimer before criticizing pathological behavior of some women

Nothing will improve until we as men stop gatekeeping ourselves from stating facts openly, without apologies. Women can be very shitty, often are, and that has to be said without the need to preface it or soften the blow.

1659447091• 4 months ago

Many men (Not all, but many) are ... not looking for a relationship, ... and they're not honest about their intentions.
Some women ... expect to be taken out to $50+/plate restaurants on a first date, ... women are just trying to score free meals
It's hard to make relationships kick off when they begin so adversarial.

I think you're letting a judgmental and expectant point of view toward certain women on the apps cloud over a very real problem of why the apps are not very useful for finding relationships. The basis of which is our expectations of how we want others to be and when they are not, they are the problem (justified or not) -- that then morphs into a cascading sequence of issues, if engaged with, on repeat.

That these particular women, who have expectations, at least say so -- up front. Yet comparing that with men are "not honest about their intentions" (expectations).

How is a woman looking for an actual relationship suppose to work with dishonesty? Men looking for an actual relationship can steer clear of that impending disaster.

I can ignore someone who declares their expectations, which I find off-putting. And if they don't declare it but expect a mindreader and they instead get a coffee, well I'm out a coffee and thankfully they showed who they were early and I move on. Their loss, not mine. On the other hand, if my date was stringing me along and lying about what they wanted until I was deceived enough into handing over what that actually was -- that's a far more consequential loss than a $4 cup of coffee. We should want everyone to clearly state what they want and expect, without the judgements, then everyone (with proper intentions) would benefit.

dzonga• 4 months ago

you're right no on the problems (symptoms) but didnt' state the cause.

social media i.e especially instagram has caused women / men etc to curate this idea of themselves that doesn't match to reality.

hence every activity / date etc has to worth an insta moment.

whether you meet initially in person or online - the problem remains - pretense.

no one wants to be shit-shovler(working non-glamorous jobs), home-idler anymore or to be seen as bland / boring which 90% of people are.

IAmBroom• 4 months ago

You admit you haven't been in the dating scene for almost a generation. You then go on to generalize about supposedly significant portions of both sexes, based on your observations of "social media".

rm999• 4 months ago

This article has more information - looks like this was from 12 years ago https://www.reuters.com/world/match-group-settles-us-ftc-cla...

The FTC said OkCupid users were never told their information - including nearly 3 million photos, demographic information and location data - would be shared in 2014 with Clarifai, a facial recognition technology company, contrary to OkCupid's privacy policies.

dang• 4 months ago

Thanks - we've put that link in the toptext as well.

chaps7• 4 months ago

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

m463• 4 months ago

makes me wonder if the person you went on a date with cherry-picked you due to your data. (anyone who would post on hacker news is obviously a good catch!)

toast0• 4 months ago

anyone who would post on hacker news is obviously a good catch!

"the odds are good, but the goods are odd" may apply here

chaps7• 4 months ago

You're funny.

I think the "only thing" that would make me cherry-pickable from their data is that I used an autoclicker to give everyone a 5 star... I have mixed feelings about doing that, but I got a couple (surprisingly nice) dates out of it that never went anywhere.

scottyah2• 4 months ago

If only they had the long term data too. It might make for easier discussions on the first date, but maybe there's more to opposites attracting/different roles in a relationship.

probably_wrong• 4 months ago

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

[1] https://blog.photofeeler.com/okcupid-is-wrong-about-smiling-...

jacquesm• 4 months ago

You mistook a marketing effort for science.

scottyah2• 4 months ago

I did like that they shared a lot of hard data with insightful analysis. At the time, there were a lot of narratives about what women wanted and it was refreshing to see them post what was actually working. I remember being skeptical about anything being private online at the time, but I guess that perspective wasn't as pervasive.

crazygringo5• 4 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

chaps7• 4 months ago

You realize that you're responding in a thread about OkCupid deceiving users and sharing data with 3rd parties right?

  34. In response to this request, Humor Rainbow gave the Data Recipient access to nearly three million OkCupid user photos. Humor Rainbow’s President and Chief Technology Officer were directly involved in facilitating the data transfer.

  35. In addition to user photos, Humor Rainbow shared other personal data with the Data Recipient, including each user’s demographic and location information.

loverboy693• 4 months ago

As a former employee, we did do NLP on messages but exclusively to find and suppress spammy/scammy/offensive messages. That system is dead now tho.

smcin2• 4 months ago

No it totally wasn't a fucked up admission, it was actually a useful and pro-user measure (all this good stuff was before the 2011 acquisition).

Christian Rudder's OKTrends blog (and Sam Yagan's presentation at their acquisition celebration) even spelled out the reason why: some women on OKC (or, more rarely, men) would acquire the "Replies rarely"/red color on their profile, for almost never (<10%) replying to initial messages, which was generally considered to be undesirable behavior, even in the negative (there is value in a negative message: "Thanks but I'm not interested due to age/location/other factor". And also OKC could then measure whether users' stated preferences mismatched preferences inferred from which set of users they message e.g. people who say they're looking for 30-55 for LTR but tend to message people 21-35 for short-term). And before anyone points out that younger more attractive female profiles would get more initial messages than males (up to 200:1 more), OKC used to allow you to set filters on the other user's age/distance/other criteria, so you could automatically filter those out. Also, factor in the usual caveats that many users on dating sites tend to lie about their age/weight/height/location/status/etc.

Anyway, to avoid getting labeled the dread "Replies rarely", some (mostly female) users got in the habit of sending one-liner responses that were ambiguous/non-committal/cryptic/negging. And then not responding further (but without unmatching, which only took a single click). This was making their profile look less undesirable but generating pointless message traffic and reducing the overall utility of the platform at actually attempting to match people (for compatibility, not just initial attraction). Hence, OKC tried to actually measure initial exchanges to figure out which ones led to genuine back-and-forth conversations of 3+ messages (which is an ok proxy for inferring a match, certainly a better proxy than just counting initial messages/likes/votes on photos). Yagan jokingly referred to this as "Every Monday morning, we ask 'How many three-ways did we set up over the weekend?'"). (PS, Rudder and Yagan both stressed that users' names/identities/ identifying characteristics were kept out of the analysis.)

After the 2011 IAC acquisition, most of this platform quality control (and looking for constructive insights) went out the window pretty quickly and the three cofounders moved to OKCupid Labs. But it was good for the brief while it lasted. By 2013 a chainsaw had been taken to most of OKC's unique features, esp. for free users.

chaps7• 4 months ago

Hey, my point is that it's fucked up that I went on a date with someone who admitted their job was to read other people's messages. If you don't think that's fucked up, then we simply have a difference in opinion. I don't know what the rest of your post is about.

jgalt212• 4 months ago

As part of a settlement, OkCupid, operated by Dallas-based Humor Rainbow, Inc., and Match Group Americas, which provides services for Humor Rainbow, will be prohibited from misrepresenting its privacy policies.

Because everyone else is "allowed" to misrepresent its privacy policies.

unyttigfjelltol• 4 months ago

It’s more like “strike one,” and sets up a clear standard for what happens if this continues, as it did in another well-known case.[1]

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/facebook-agrees-pay-...

john_strinlai4• 4 months ago

this kind of "action"/"settlement" is too funny:

"As part of a settlement, OkCupid [...] will be prohibited from misrepresenting its privacy policies."
"Under the proposed settlement, OkCupid and Match are permanently prohibited from misrepresenting or assisting others in misrepresenting: [...]"

every company should already be "prohibited from misrepresenting its privacy policies" and the collection/controls stuff.

12 years, including intentional obstruction of the ftc investigation, and we get "please dont do that again". (dad voice: im not surprised, just disappointed)

gruez2• 4 months ago

12 years, including intentional obstruction of the ftc investigation

To be fair, the complaint only alleges one instance of data transfer, so it's unclear whether the privacy violations were actually occurring for 12 years.

Claims that they were engaging in "intentional obstruction of the ftc investigation" are also unsupported beyond the false statements they made to the media and the users. It's like if your nemesis died under mysterious circumstances, a journalist asked you whether you killed him, you said no, and it turned out you did. Is it a lie? Yeah. Could it be reasonably characterized as "intentional obstruction of police investigation"? Hardly.

john_strinlai4• 4 months ago

so it's unclear whether the privacy violations were actually occurring for 12 years.

i wasnt clear in my comment, but i meant it in the sense of "12 years to resolve this one incident".

Claims that they were engaging in "intentional obstruction of the ftc investigation" are also unsupported beyond the false statements they made to the media and the users.

i am not particularly inclined to take OkCupids side here, and will default to accepting the FTCs allegation.

ryandrake• 4 months ago

The US Government routinely treats corporations with kid gloves. When they're found to be breaking the law, the company usually says "oopsie doopsie, did we do that??" and the government in turn settles with "naughty, naughty, just don't do it again!" It's like kindergarten punishment. But if you or I break federal law, it's PMITA Prison for us.

mrguyorama• 4 months ago

Americans explicitly voted for this. From Reagan on, it was explicit policy that we should leave corporations be, for god knows what bullshit reason. Then, finally Biden's admin started gearing up the government to actually enforce the laws on the book for a functional market.

So people voted for not that. Again.

mlmonkey• 4 months ago

All of these sites do shady shit. I'm so glad I'm no longer single.

I signed up for eHarmony with a unique email address dedicated to that site. After wasting 6 months, I chose to delete my account.

Lo and behold, soon spam started to show up on this account, as if the floodgates had been opened. It was a unique account that I had not used anywhere else just for this specific reason, and my hunch was justified.

johnnyanmac3• 4 months ago

They were good 15 years ago. As with all things, it went to shit when Match.com started consolidating everything and the bean counters realized that a quality product was not as profitable.

Surprised it took this long to get litigation. So many people complaining about how crap dating sites are, but no one thought to realize the site itself was the problem and fell into the whole "looksmaxxing" grift. Some people really will do anything except admit that rich people are corrupt.

socalgal22• 4 months ago

My experience was poor more than 15 years ago so ymmv

miki1232112• 4 months ago

Dating sites are an extremely hard business to be in.

On a traditional (social) network, whether that'd be Facebook, the railroad or the Bloomberg Terminal, you have the network effect. The more users you get, the more interesting the network becomes, which means yet more users want to join. This is a positive feedback loop.

The entire point of a dating site is to find somebody to leave that site with. Statistically speaking (and at that scale, statistics is the only thing that matters), attractive users[1] are more likely to find a match and leave, while unattractive users are likely to stay (or come back) and keep looking. As time goes on, the fraction of unattractive users will keep increasing. You can fix this with enough growth, but exponential growth can't go on forever due to population size constraints. And once you get into that state, your growth will be constrained further, which just puts you onto a downward slide into hell.

And then there's the question of revenue. It's hard to scalably do deals where the user must pay you when they find a relationship on the site (like the matchmaking services of old used to do), so subscriptions or one-time fees are your only options. Neither of them are great, subscriptions encourage you to keep users on the site (which puts your goal opposite to what the users want), one-time fees work against the network effect and constrain growth.

[1] By "attractiveness", I mean something much wider than just visual / physical attractiveness. An ability to enter and maintain a successful long-term relationship in general.

reaperducer2• 4 months ago

After wasting 6 months, I chose to delete my account.

Lo and behold, soon spam started to show up on this account, as if the floodgates had been opened.

Facebook is also guilty of this.

I set up a Facebook account for a relative around 2006. The e-mail address is name_facebook@ a domain that I control.

Every six months or so, Facebook will send out almost daily e-mails for a month saying "Person x commented on your post!" or some variant. You know how I know this relative of mine didn't make a new post?

He's been dead since 2011.

joatmon-snoo• 4 months ago

That's called a compromised account, not Facebook sharing the email with a third party data broker.

rapidaneurism3• 4 months ago

How do you know they are not commenting on old content? FB could be pushing old content like 'remember X from 18 years ago' and then someone comments about remembering their friend under an old photo.

leptons2• 4 months ago

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

guelo• 4 months ago

When match was illegally allowed to buy okcupid an then tinder in violation of antitrust laws is when I realized how thoroughly libertarian propaganda has won and is destroying the country. I mean we've now fully legalized gambling and bribery of politicians for the sake of fake freedom. We're cooked.

crazygringo5• 4 months ago

What are you talking about? Match didn't buy Tinder.

IAC had owned Match.com for a while and then developed Tinder from scratch.

Match didn't buy Tinder. Tinder was always part of the same company from day one.

loverboy693• 4 months ago

You're right, and you're wrong.

IAC owned both Match and HatchLabs (which developed Tinder in 2012). They were later merged into one entity, and even later spun off from IAC altogether. They were "part of the same company" in that giant mega-corp super conglomerate owned both, but practically they were fully separate entities when Tinder was created. Match didn't buy Tinder, but it was merged with Tinder by parent company, just like OkCupid was acquired by IAC and merged with Match.

nodesocket2• 4 months ago

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

jarjoura• 4 months ago

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

Tostino• 4 months ago

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

mikkupikku• 4 months ago

Realistically the party with the most straight forward financial incentive to do this should be the first we suspect, and that would certainly be the platform itself.

ramesh31• 4 months ago

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

I can tell you with absolute certainty from working in the industry a decade ago that the entire business model revolves around fake female profiles and dark UX patterns (lies) to trick lonely men. I can vividly remember that it was this big open secret that we all had to dance around all the time, pretending our product was legitimate and helping people. It's literally the only viable model for dating apps and sites; anyone who is actually successful at using them stops paying. I have no doubt the big apps are using their own LLM bots at this point.

globular-toast• 4 months ago

I don't know. I don't think they need to. There are enough women who love the attention they get on these apps.

ninininino• 4 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam

We invest $125 million annually in trust and safety teams, features and initiatives to help prevent and disrupt potential harm on and off our platforms. As we outlined in our Impact Report, we remain focused on several areas, including safety policy, features, social advocacy, law enforcement operations and outreach, and safety by design.

from:

https://mtch.com/single-news/922/#:~:text=We%20invest%20$125...

"Americans are losing at least $119 billion every year to scams, according to a new estimate from the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group."

from:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/scam-cost-price-money-...

yowayb3• 4 months ago

In 2013, I went to Pebble Beach for an expensive car show. I met a couple guys that started newlydivorceddating.com. They told me they purchased thousands of fake starter profiles, so the site wouldn't seem dead.

Tangent:

I was a "pickup artist" (2005-2010). Most of it is creepy bullshit, but the process teaches you a powerful aspect of hookup-style dating (as opposed to courting for a long-term relationship): guys need to be ok with embarrassing themselves.

I'm sure there are ways to optimize online dating, but the SNR was always bad, and it only seems to get worse.

So yea I'm encouraging guys (or whatever the current term is for the one that takes the initiative) to work thru rejection.

Of course, it's not that simple. If you simply memorize interactions that have been posted online, you'll quickly find yourself subtly outed as a weirdo.

But that feeling of rejection is important. That's how your mind+body learns in real time. It's much harder for some of us that didn't quite socialize properly at younger ages (often due to horrible things like broken families, bullies, etc).

And there are of course lighter approaches (what i described earlier often occurs within bars/nightclubs) within more casual groups that may involve more introverts.

However, if you can get over rejection (and certainly pace it; don't be a sociopath) it will dramatically accelerate so many things (many of which do lead back to dating), and you can avoid these scammy dating sites altogether (I personally find 100% guarantees like this very compelling and will regularly consider if I can can just completely avoid entire classes of stuff).

nodesocket2• 4 months ago

very interesting. I bought The Game 10+ years ago and read 3/4 of it. I just can’t get myself to do tactics like magic, negging, and psych-ops. Though, I will confirm it works. Seen with my own eyes many times in disbelief. Couldn’t believe women fall for what seem like such corny and ridiculous behavior. I do think women are much more socially focused, tend to follow (sheep behavior) and in a miraculous turn of events if you ignore them, or don’t show interest they want what they can’t have.

I’m in my mid forties now and frankly don’t have the energy and metal capacity to play The Game. It’s only gotten much worse (most dramatic for westerns) for more traditional and “old fashioned” men to find partners. We can thank instagram, snapchat, tiktok and perhaps most negatively onlyfans. I have traveled allover the world and find South American women still have a feminine mindset and want to genuinely settle down and start a family. Again more traditional; I assume because faith and family are such strong forces down south.

Some may read my comment as “toxic masculinity” or whatever buzzword of the day is used to shame and emasculate men, but clearly something is broken with western and asian civilizations as marriage and birth rates are plummeting.

hulitu• 4 months ago

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

Google ? Meta ? Microsoft ? Oh, i see, they pay well.

tamimio2• 4 months ago

related data with it because OkCupid’s founders were financial investors in the third party

can we know that third party?!

MoonWalk• 4 months ago

"As part of a settlement... will be prohibited from misrepresenting its privacy policies."

Did I miss it, or were there no other parts to this settlement mentioned?

In other words: no punishment at all.

maest• 4 months ago

Your punishment is that you will now have to follow the rules

lazide2• 4 months ago

Or just do it a different way until they get caught again.

dboreham• 4 months ago

Lest you wanted to know what happens if the right campaign contributions aren't made.

readthenotes1• 4 months ago

"facial recognition" "dating app"

Was surprised to find it was Match and OkCupid and not Tinder/Grindr

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

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