6 ms·

Is there any real benefit to this change? It seems like a wash for men and a serious increase to cyber-stalking for women.

by iaw 9y ago

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
> It seems like a wash for men You seriously think this is consequence free for men? Thats... pretty amazingly unimaginative.
officemonkey 9y ago
It enhances bad behavior from men because they it helps them "hide" their user name. Also, if you think that men are immune from cyber-stalking and harassment, you haven't been dating on-line very much. Frankly, it's a bad idea to supply ANY personal information to random strangers (like on a dating website.) If you have an unusual first name, it's almost trivial to search Facebook to find someone. There are certain communities (such as people who are genderqueer and transsexual) who experience targeted harassment. Asking users to expose additional personally identifying information is a really shitty thing to do.
- oxplot 9y ago
  > it's a bad idea to supply ANY personal information to random strangers How about your photos? Those are as PII as it gets. If you're not careful (and majority of people aren't), and upload the same photo you use for your linkedin or twitter account, a 5 second Google Image search can easily reveal your true identity. In fact, I have, in the past, emailed OKC and others and asked them to put measures in place so when a user uploads a photo, it's checked against various sources online and if it's a match, the user would be warned that it's potentially revealing their identity. I'm not sure if they took note of that.
  - gaius 9y ago
    The old pre-Match OKC might have, they were proper old-skool data geeks. Match execs won't have understood what any of those words meant.
jacques_chester 9y ago
They didn't explain their reasoning, but on current form, they see a way to turn it into a buck. They're trying their hardest to turn it into a Tinder clone, presumably there's an internal bonus scheme bending their minds. The fact that being a clone of another service with > 10x as users is radiantly idiotic when your only hope of survival is creating a distinct niche is probably not lost on them. It just doesn't matter. Someone's bonus this year is riding on numbers that kill it next year.
- vimy 9y ago
  The weird thing is Tinder and Okcupid both have the same parent company, Match Group. Why do they want two similar apps?
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    Match will be setting the incentive schemes, but not the policy. I imagine the incentive scheme is pretty much being shaped by the massive gravity of Tinder.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    It's perplexing. You have different products for different market segments. My guess is that OkCupid isn't raking in enough money compared to it's siblings, and it was given a directive: make more, or die. And right now its management is thrashing about trying to find a formula to survive.
    - smelendez 9y ago
      OkCupid is arguably a product from the desktop-laptop era of the Internet. Its long, verbose profiles aren't as easy to read or write on a smartphone. It is designed for an era when going on the Internet was an activity. You were in front of your computer or you were not, and you had screen names that were not your real name. I'm betting all of that is alien to the current generation of single people, and for the young women who are the bread and butter of any dating site, seeing men with in-joke names is off-putting in ways it wasn't a decade ago.
greggarious 9y ago
I assure you men can suffer from stalking on dating sites too.
- jordigh 9y ago
  Let's not bring whataboutism into this. The problem overwhelmingly and vastly disproportionately affects women. Yes, men are affected too, but if we have to start anywhere to address the problem, focussing mostly on women and less on men would solve most of the problem.
  - Kluny 9y ago
    I hate that attitude. Stalking is a problem that can only be solved by both genders working together. You're not going to get any men on your side by acting like it doesn't matter that men are stalked as well.
    - jordigh 9y ago
      It matters less because there's less of them. If you have to focus on where resources should go (e.g. time and money) most should go to women. Why do men have such a hard time accepting that women have it harder?
  - briandear 9y ago
    > The problem overwhelmingly and vastly disproportionately affects women. Any proof of that? > Focusing mostly on women ... would solve most of the problem Any proof of that? Everything you wrote is simply sexist to the core. Why does there need to be a focus on a specific gender to address a problem?
    - ben_w 9y ago
      > Why does there need to be a focus on a specific gender to address a problem? Because everything is broken and we are mere mortals with limited attention and ability to improve the world and shortcuts are always tempting. This particular problem probably varies by nation, but it is only bad to stereotype like this when you either assume that the partial solution is a total solution, or when your perspective fails and you cause more harm than good with your solution. Both of those failure modes happen. Yet, all the evidence I have seen says men are more likely to harass than women are. Same effort should provide a greater benefit by focusing on male harassment… except that this is online, so “does this text look harassing?” is probably how this should be handled specifically by OKC, but now I’m definitely guessing.

Is there any real benefit to this change? It seems like a wash for men and a serious increase to cyber-stalking for women.

by iaw 9y ago

Is there any real benefit to this change? It seems like a wash for men and a serious increase to cyber-stalking for women.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

> It seems like a wash for men You seriously think this is consequence free for men? Thats... pretty amazingly unimaginative.

officemonkey 9y ago

It enhances bad behavior from men because they it helps them "hide" their user name. Also, if you think that men are immune from cyber-stalking and harassment, you haven't been dating on-line very much. Frankly, it's a bad idea to supply ANY personal information to random strangers (like on a dating website.) If you have an unusual first name, it's almost trivial to search Facebook to find someone. There are certain communities (such as people who are genderqueer and transsexual) who experience targeted harassment. Asking users to expose additional personally identifying information is a really shitty thing to do.

oxplot 9y ago
> it's a bad idea to supply ANY personal information to random strangers How about your photos? Those are as PII as it gets. If you're not careful (and majority of people aren't), and upload the same photo you use for your linkedin or twitter account, a 5 second Google Image search can easily reveal your true identity. In fact, I have, in the past, emailed OKC and others and asked them to put measures in place so when a user uploads a photo, it's checked against various sources online and if it's a match, the user would be warned that it's potentially revealing their identity. I'm not sure if they took note of that.
- gaius 9y ago
  The old pre-Match OKC might have, they were proper old-skool data geeks. Match execs won't have understood what any of those words meant.

jacques_chester 9y ago

They didn't explain their reasoning, but on current form, they see a way to turn it into a buck. They're trying their hardest to turn it into a Tinder clone, presumably there's an internal bonus scheme bending their minds. The fact that being a clone of another service with > 10x as users is radiantly idiotic when your only hope of survival is creating a distinct niche is probably not lost on them. It just doesn't matter. Someone's bonus this year is riding on numbers that kill it next year.

vimy 9y ago
The weird thing is Tinder and Okcupid both have the same parent company, Match Group. Why do they want two similar apps?
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  Match will be setting the incentive schemes, but not the policy. I imagine the incentive scheme is pretty much being shaped by the massive gravity of Tinder.
- scarmig 9y ago
  It's perplexing. You have different products for different market segments. My guess is that OkCupid isn't raking in enough money compared to it's siblings, and it was given a directive: make more, or die. And right now its management is thrashing about trying to find a formula to survive.
  - smelendez 9y ago
    OkCupid is arguably a product from the desktop-laptop era of the Internet. Its long, verbose profiles aren't as easy to read or write on a smartphone. It is designed for an era when going on the Internet was an activity. You were in front of your computer or you were not, and you had screen names that were not your real name. I'm betting all of that is alien to the current generation of single people, and for the young women who are the bread and butter of any dating site, seeing men with in-joke names is off-putting in ways it wasn't a decade ago.

greggarious 9y ago

I assure you men can suffer from stalking on dating sites too.

jordigh 9y ago
Let's not bring whataboutism into this. The problem overwhelmingly and vastly disproportionately affects women. Yes, men are affected too, but if we have to start anywhere to address the problem, focussing mostly on women and less on men would solve most of the problem.
- Kluny 9y ago
  I hate that attitude. Stalking is a problem that can only be solved by both genders working together. You're not going to get any men on your side by acting like it doesn't matter that men are stalked as well.
  - jordigh 9y ago
    It matters less because there's less of them. If you have to focus on where resources should go (e.g. time and money) most should go to women. Why do men have such a hard time accepting that women have it harder?
- briandear 9y ago
  > The problem overwhelmingly and vastly disproportionately affects women. Any proof of that? > Focusing mostly on women ... would solve most of the problem Any proof of that? Everything you wrote is simply sexist to the core. Why does there need to be a focus on a specific gender to address a problem?
  - ben_w 9y ago
    > Why does there need to be a focus on a specific gender to address a problem? Because everything is broken and we are mere mortals with limited attention and ability to improve the world and shortcuts are always tempting. This particular problem probably varies by nation, but it is only bad to stereotype like this when you either assume that the partial solution is a total solution, or when your perspective fails and you cause more harm than good with your solution. Both of those failure modes happen. Yet, all the evidence I have seen says men are more likely to harass than women are. Same effort should provide a greater benefit by focusing on male harassment… except that this is online, so “does this text look harassing?” is probably how this should be handled specifically by OKC, but now I’m definitely guessing.