Do I interpret the settlement proposal correctly that the unlawfully-transmitted copies, and any training outcomes derived from them, are not ordered purged?
> 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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>"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)
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.
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.
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.
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).
23 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.0 ms ] threadProposed settlement: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/MatchGroupAmeri...
> 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?
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 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.
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.
Because everyone else is "allowed" to misrepresent its privacy policies.
>"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)
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.
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).
Google ? Meta ? Microsoft ? Oh, i see, they pay well.
can we know that third party?!
Did I miss it, or were there no other parts to this settlement mentioned?
In other words: no punishment at all.
Was surprised to find it was Match and OkCupid and not Tinder/Grindr