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How Tinder could take back the White House

• jordan801 9y ago
  I am definitely not pro-republican, but I think that crap like this really fuels the republican fire. It feels unethical. It feels like yet another attempt to jam politics down my throat at every turn. "Congratulations you've got a match" - Just kidding no one wants to date you, they just want to sway you to their political agenda. Honestly I think that part of the problem with politics, is that it's become so repulsive. Partially from b.s. tactics like this.
  • walls 9y ago
    Agreed, this is a super scummy practice that is most likely against the terms of service.
  • lalos 9y ago
    Scummy but most probably legal since its a form of speech. One could restrict this with the ToS and enforcing it.
  • lucideer 9y ago
    "Tinder is too casual a platform for users to feel hoodwinked by some political conversation. By and large, users surprised us with their receptiveness. Some people who received bot messages asked how they could join us." It seems that the data contradicts your own personal view of this practice. I don't really see what's repulsive or b.s. about it tbh. It's just automating the initiation of a dialogue. People are volunteering for it. There's nothing sinister as the intent is upfront and above board, and in terms of the content of your average Tinder conversation, politics is as fair game as any other topic surely? I don't live in the US though, like many on here, so perhaps the perception would be different in the political climate over there.
    • phil21 9y ago
      In the past we simply called this spamming, and it was pretty much universally reviled. I find it somewhat ironic/interesting given my past that the current industry is effectively focused on spamming society to sell stuff. I find the e-mail spammers of old to be far more ethical than what is happening today backed by billions of dollars.
      • lucideer 9y ago
        This isn't spamming though, by any definition. Spamming is unsolicited contact. All contact on Tinder is solicited (and a good deal of the non-automated content is a lot more "scummy" than this). I'm finding the sentiment on HN in response to this bizarre but I guess your reference to "industry" (and billions of dollars) may be a hint. US political campaigns are quite a different beast to elsewhere, and yes, a lot more comparable to campaigns of massive multinational corporations.
        • phil21 9y ago
          Huh? It's spamming by every definition. When I swipe right on Tinder, it's not to get a political message. It's to (presumably) get laid. Bots that send me a political or commercial message on a service that specifically denies such contact is the definition spamming. It's the same thing as giving your e-mail address to play a cool new game, the game not existing, and now you're being spammed to death. Or messaging that interesting/hot girl from the AIM chatroom, only to find it's a bot advertising a commercial site. I'd say this is exactly the same line of thought, something I know for a fact since in a past life I've worked for folks who "marketed" in such a manner. The thought patterns are absolutely identical, and I'd be surprised if this political company didn't actually hire a SEO/chat spam company to implement such a feature. All you have to do is s/politics/penny stocks/ and this turns into an entirely different story. The content of the message doesn't matter, it's still abusing a service to send an unwanted political or commercial message. Edit: Typos
          • lucideer 9y ago
  • chroem- 9y ago
    >...crap like this really fuels the republican fire. It feels unethical. It feels like yet another attempt to jam politics down my throat at every turn. Understatement of the year. The fact that the Clinton campaign thought that it would be a good idea to create an online astroturfing group, and then tell the world about it like it was a brilliant idea, is what made me vote third party.
    • lern_too_spel 9y ago
      The fact that you didn't know that the Clinton campaign did no such thing contributed to our current situation.
      • lern_too_spel 9y ago
        And the fact that GP still doesn't know to this day suggests our future is bleak. Democracy relies on an educated electorate. With that out of the way, using spam to educate the electorate as in this Tinder example or as in GP's imagined Clinton campaign rubs me the wrong way.
        • chroem- 9y ago
          Sure, it was a PAC, but to deny that it existed and the two had close ties is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. The amount of gaslighting by the old guard in the DNC to justify why they supposedly lost unfairly does not bode well for the next election. You need people to actually like you in order to win elections. You can't do that by selling out to big business, and then trying to smooth things over with billions in ads and outright sockpuppetry. Here, read up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record
          • lern_too_spel 9y ago
            Why don't you read your own link? Nowhere is there any evidence that they were astroturfing. All of their social media accounts were clearly marked as paid for by the PAC, just like the social media accounts of any other PAC, as required by FEC rules.
• grej 9y ago
  I'd be very surprised if the users who "lent" their profiles to allow the group to make political spambots aren't violating Tinder's TOS. Regardless of your political leanings, this whole operation feels pretty scummy to me.
• allendoerfer 9y ago
  There are no girls on the internet.
  • guessbest 9y ago
    > With the help of two software engineers, Erika Pheby and Kyle Buttner, There is at least one.
    • GauntletWizard 9y ago
      At least one who self-identifies with a feminine name. Did you just assume her gender? Or perhaps you know that Kyle is female-identifying.
      • true_religion 9y ago
        I had actually thought Kyle was a girls' name due to only knowing a female Kyle (spelled Kyle, pronounced Kylie).
• protomyth 9y ago
  I suppose they think they are helping, like Hollywood actors spending an awards show spouting off. Really, they just feed into the "us vs them" mentality and help the politician they hate get a few more votes.
  • lucideer 9y ago
    In this case, there's a lot to indicate that this initiative did in fact help.
    • protomyth 9y ago
      I'm a bit unconvinced given all the other polling and election predictions that has failed in the last couple of years.
      • lucideer 9y ago
        I was referring to results, not predictions. This election is in the past...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• GauntletWizard 9y ago
  I encourage them to try this. It will deliver amazing results - To republicans. It will virtually assure not just Trump 2020, but Schwarzenegger 2024; It will be a coup of epic proportions for the GOP. Who are they targeting with this system? Angry young men. What have they identified as Angry Young Men's problem? Women won't have sex with them. What do they propose? Offer sex, then never deliver. If a chatbot delivers ridiculous political pandering, and gets in the way of the actual end goal (Sex) by delivering chaff and false-leads, where will the anger be concentrated? Certainly, fundamental attribution error will slough plenty of it off on women, further radicalizing them. But mostly, and correctly, their ire will fall towards the PACs who've set out to 'convince' them; By playing a game wrong and showing that they're untrustworthy, they'll become more jaded and resistant to whatever ideas they're proposing. It's the evolutionarily correct response - Don't co-operate with those that are trying to trick you. The continued rise of cognitive science as a persuasion tactic, "gamification", and other means of non-subtle manipulation are significantly responsible for the national divide - It's not unreasonable to fight aggressively against those you believe are manipulating you. It's just that there are two camps to the manipulation, and it's much easier to see the manipulation in the other camp.
• lucideer 9y ago
  The overwhelmingly negative response from the primarily US-based HN audience to this, in stark contrast to the very positive responses from actual recipients of contact in this initiative (and the subsequent extremely positive and progressive election turnout statistics) are surely symptomatic of some significant fundamental differences in the perception of politics in both countries. I appear to be literally the only person in this thread who thinks this is OK. As someone who's largely opposed to advertising full stop, in any form, this doesn't seem the same to me in any way. Nor can I see any reason to find it objectionable. What exactly is it about this that makes people uncomfortable?
  • GauntletWizard 9y ago
    It doesn't pass the sniff check. They've made an extraordinary claim - That people want to be catfished so that they can be politically re-educated. They provide only anecdotal evidence. The bar of evidence that they'd have to clear is incredibly high - If they paraded out a thousand happy people saying that they'd been on the receiving end of this bot, and that they {liked it, changed their views, were indifferent}; It would still be significantly more logical that they'd simply paid a bunch of actors than that they'd actually done what they've done (which most conservatives would call significantly immoral; A form of fraud that's certainly not illegal but worthy of community shunning) But I don't actually believe that anyone could actually believe this is OK. I think it's more likely you're a paid shill for this 'service' than that you're an outside observer that's believes this is a public good, or even a public neutral. You're a troll, and I guess I've just fed the trolls. Edit: Actually, I take most of this back. There's a more logical conclusion: There's a population of not-conservatives who play one as part of the mating ritual, allowing them to be 'convinced'. They were happy to have confirmation that their ploy worked.
    • qbrass 9y ago
      More likely, there was already a bunch of people on Tinder trolling people for fun, who came across this and wanted in on the deal so they could troll people and get paid for it.
• arandr0 9y ago
  I think HN has been majorly mis-reading this -- it sounds like the article describes a Tinder-mediated get out the vote campaign. It attempts to reach youth (vastly more likely to be progressives, statistically) and convince them to vote by using a marketing strategy that works very well on youth in other media, that is, convince them attractive eligible potential partners care about (whatever is being sold: voting, owning a particular car brand, using a particular kind of perfume or cosmetic). It does not specifically target conservatives and again, especially in the UK, a minority of people 18-25 vote conservative. But for what it's worth, I believe the electoral system in the US will make this less effective there. Telling all the young millenials in college towns to go vote by quirky social media means is unlikely to have an effect on the older rural population (The campaign only targets 18-25 and a lot of people in rural areas don't use Tinder), and a lot of states can't be won only through college towns.