7 ms·

Bumble Swipes Left on Match Group/Tinder Allegations

41 points by Sonnol53 9y ago

acobster 9y ago
Sigh. I guess I'm not surprised at the negativity here on HN about this, but I'm still disappointed. If you take offense to the effort to dismantle masculine posturing as it's practiced in corporate culture, or see a meaningful effort to rebalance gendered power structures as sexist, maybe you should check your blind spots. Gender has everything to do with it, because gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys). On many many dating apps, that expression is extremely lopsided, especially in terms of abusive and otherwise unethical behavior toward other people - namely women. I'm personally much more likely to look into this platform now that I know that they take a principled stance. (Edit: typo)
- drharby 9y ago
  I don't see gender, i see business tactics in practice. Gender politic us good pr, and a brilliant response to their received attacks. Hope they kick ass, but this isn't about gender, that's consequential. At least thats like my opinion man
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    Exactly this. They're responding to an IP law threat with an appeal to emotion through weaponizing one of the hottest topics in the media. It's a genius PR move, bring morality into a trite legal dispute, gain righteous upper ground.
    - 18pfsmt 9y ago
      It's so transparent, it's anything but genius. They've taken a completely disingenuous stance in order to manipulate the less logical. Is their PR consultant Hannity?
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Your comment contains a bunch of suppositions that are by no means widely accepted or indisputable truths. For example you characterize Tinder's mode of conduct as "masculine posturing". Inherent in that comment is the supposition that there is something toxic about masculinity itself. Imagine if someone called Bumble's letter "feminine posturing". Irrespective of the content of the letter, could you ever perceive the use of that term as anything but ignorant and misogynistic? You also claim there is a "gendered power structure", and imply that Tinder is part of it, which is a very serious and broad allegation, that's made without supporting evidence, which is irresponsible. You claim that "gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys)", but the letter says Bumble is proud to be women-run. It's not necessarily bad to embrace femininity and celebrate a company being run by women, but be upfront about it, and don't gas light anyone who recognizes it as a form of tribalism. Instead of trying to cast women as victims, and men as victimizers, I think we should step back from identarianism and recognize that members of both genders are disproportionately afflicted with their own set of maladies (e.g. 92% of workplace fatalities afflict men) and that it would be more constructive to put aside this 'which gender is a greater victim' competition and focus on empowering all individuals irrespective of gender.
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    This is a generalization, but I wonder if what we're seeing, with the job world becoming more evenly split between the genders, is men and women playing to their traditional strengths to advance in their professional goals. Historically women don't pick up the club and physically assault their opponent. They instead often indirectly attack a challenger's reputation (see shaming, guilt inducing etc), which is still very powerful. Men, when facing a challenge, will avoid complaining, buckle down and try to power through the obstacle. Women, on the other hand, will play the victim card instead of using brute force, and will rely on their cunning to accomplish the same business goal. Both strategies are likely very effective. I wonder if, as we have more majority-women and women-led organizations, we will see more of these indirect tactics deployed by those organizations. More covert corporate warfare than what we're traditionally used to. Nothing wrong with it per se, but just a shift in tactics people might have not foreseen.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > or see a meaningful effort to rebalance gendered power structures as sexist Given that the app is designed around encouraging people to treat professional networking as a dating opportunity, it's not entirely clear in what direction they're trying to rebalance things.
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    Context?
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      - You can't use the networking functionality unless you have a public profile on the dating side, so everyone you are networking with knows you are open to dating or whatever. (Trying to disable a public profile on the dating side turns off the networking functionality.) - Just like in the dating app, women go first in the networking app, sending the signal that maybe it's not entirely about dating.
  - darkr 9y ago
    I think that’s a separate app/Platform? > https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/02/bumbles-business-networking-feature-launches-today/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/02/bumbles-business-networkin...
    - BadassFractal 9y ago
      It's definitely within the same app. It's just a separate profile you can fork off of your main one.
- dahdum 9y ago
  I don’t see Bumble any differently because they are women owned or women led, they are just a startup likely infringing IP that’s using the best possible PR angle to defend themselves. In the public perception their mission statement matters, but not to the law.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  If you view an IP lawsuit as masculine posturing, you should check your blind spots.
QML 9y ago
To people who use Tinder or Bumble, would you prefer matching yourself or have an algorithm do the matching for you?
- samirillian 9y ago
  Well OkCupid already kinda does the algorithm thing. I prefer tinder/bumble because it at least leaves the possibility for some sort of "je ne sais quoi" in the process, or for something you didn't know you liked until you saw it. But that's just me.
brucephillips 9y ago
I'm a bumble user. They sent this post as an email to their user base. I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish by airing their dirty laundry publicly. Users don't care if you're in an IP battle. Also, I could have done without the sexist implication that bullying is a masculine characteristic.
- jamilbk 9y ago
  I thought the same thing. Why bring gender into this? Bullying should be discouraged in all walks of life, whether the victims and perpetrators are male or female. Interestingly, all of my female friends who use Bumble are actually annoyed that they must act first to open the dialog with their matches. They don't seem to notice or care that the feature is placed there to empower women, nor do they know or care about Bumble's feminist origins. They use it because it has more attractive males than Tinder.
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    100% consistent with my anecdata as well. My girl friends who use it are all annoyed they have to say something first and mostly default to "hi", which is essentially passing the ball to the guy, who's expected to get creative (assuming similar dating market values).
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    Interesting. I suppose that's not too surprising, though. As a man, my biggest gripe with tinder is how much work it is.
  - Kalium 9y ago
    What's really funny to me is that I've had to explain to more than one female friend that there's a reason no guys start conversations with them on Bumble.
- 9y ago
laretluval 9y ago
Tinder : Bumble :: Uber : Lyft
- brucephillips 9y ago
  Maybe by market share, but Tinder predated Bumble, whereas Lyft predated Uber.
  - mvid 9y ago
    But Über predated Lyft (Zimride) by 4 years
    - deepakhj 9y ago
      Sidecar came up with drivers using their own car.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      Zimride predated Uber. Lyft predated UberX.
BadassFractal 9y ago
Notice the narrative: to attack Bumble is to attack women's empowerment.
- drharby 9y ago
  Ding ding ding
dbg31415 9y ago
Undeniable that much of Bumble looks like Tinder. The fact that the Bumble founders came from Tinder, of course they stole whatever IP and concepts they could. No question. But there's still a long way to go here. And squabbles like this distract companies from making honest feature advances. The core issue with Bumble or Tinder is that they aren't designed to help make matches, rather give people the perception of options. This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort through. I matched with 1-2 women a day, but my close friend who introduced me to Bumble matches on 70+ guys a day. I have to craft witty, funny, and sexy messages... all under the pressure that I only have 2 choices that day. She gets to disqualify guys if they take too long to write back, write too much, or for any reason she wants... knowing she has 70 more to choose from. (Worth noting that despite all the options, she's still single...) Anyway, the whole thing could be a lot more efficient... lots of ways to go about this. Dating and finding love takes effort, compassion. These tools should, ideally, help make it less of a numbers game. # First feature request Let anyone pre-approve in bulk. "Pre-match me with anyone who is between this age rage in this zip code who mentions hiking..." simple as that. If you really want to go all out, just learn my type from my swipes and pre-match on that -- plus gives me incentive not to just swipe on everyone as it's learning what I like. # Second feature request Let users block based on rules. "I don't ever want to match with anyone who works for my company, Dynacorp, and I don't ever want anyone from Dynacorp to see my profile." # Third feature request Only show people to me I have the potential to match with. "I liked her... but unknown to me, she only likes guys who are older than me... she'll never see my profile to match back... why did I see her in the first place then?" # Fourth feature request Don't show people who have already swiped left. "I see her... but unknown to me, she's already swiped left on me... we'll never be a match, probably best to just not show her to me."
- the_watcher 9y ago
  > This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort through. This is not at all true for all men (I have never heard of this being necessary from an IRL friend).
ythn 9y ago
> We — a woman-founded, women-led company I don't know why, but this made me want to stop reading the article immediately.
- hnuser1234 9y ago
  Thanks for saving me a click. I can't wait until the gender war dies.
- jazoom 9y ago
  Probably because it was completely out of place and was only inserted to play the victim female card. I'd be surprised if Tinder's attempts at buying them out or sueing them would not have occurred if the founders were male.

41 points by Sonnol53 9y ago

Sigh. I guess I'm not surprised at the negativity here on HN about this, but I'm still disappointed. If you take offense to the effort to dismantle masculine posturing as it's practiced in corporate culture, or see a meaningful effort to rebalance gendered power structures as sexist, maybe you should check your blind spots. Gender has everything to do with it, because gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys). On many many dating apps, that expression is extremely lopsided, especially in terms of abusive and otherwise unethical behavior toward other people - namely women. I'm personally much more likely to look into this platform now that I know that they take a principled stance. (Edit: typo)

drharby 9y ago
I don't see gender, i see business tactics in practice. Gender politic us good pr, and a brilliant response to their received attacks. Hope they kick ass, but this isn't about gender, that's consequential. At least thats like my opinion man
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  Exactly this. They're responding to an IP law threat with an appeal to emotion through weaponizing one of the hottest topics in the media. It's a genius PR move, bring morality into a trite legal dispute, gain righteous upper ground.
  - 18pfsmt 9y ago
    It's so transparent, it's anything but genius. They've taken a completely disingenuous stance in order to manipulate the less logical. Is their PR consultant Hannity?
CryptoPunk 9y ago
Your comment contains a bunch of suppositions that are by no means widely accepted or indisputable truths. For example you characterize Tinder's mode of conduct as "masculine posturing". Inherent in that comment is the supposition that there is something toxic about masculinity itself. Imagine if someone called Bumble's letter "feminine posturing". Irrespective of the content of the letter, could you ever perceive the use of that term as anything but ignorant and misogynistic? You also claim there is a "gendered power structure", and imply that Tinder is part of it, which is a very serious and broad allegation, that's made without supporting evidence, which is irresponsible. You claim that "gender is a cultural mode of expression (and it is most certainly not a tribe you have to defend, so just calm down, guys)", but the letter says Bumble is proud to be women-run. It's not necessarily bad to embrace femininity and celebrate a company being run by women, but be upfront about it, and don't gas light anyone who recognizes it as a form of tribalism. Instead of trying to cast women as victims, and men as victimizers, I think we should step back from identarianism and recognize that members of both genders are disproportionately afflicted with their own set of maladies (e.g. 92% of workplace fatalities afflict men) and that it would be more constructive to put aside this 'which gender is a greater victim' competition and focus on empowering all individuals irrespective of gender.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  This is a generalization, but I wonder if what we're seeing, with the job world becoming more evenly split between the genders, is men and women playing to their traditional strengths to advance in their professional goals. Historically women don't pick up the club and physically assault their opponent. They instead often indirectly attack a challenger's reputation (see shaming, guilt inducing etc), which is still very powerful. Men, when facing a challenge, will avoid complaining, buckle down and try to power through the obstacle. Women, on the other hand, will play the victim card instead of using brute force, and will rely on their cunning to accomplish the same business goal. Both strategies are likely very effective. I wonder if, as we have more majority-women and women-led organizations, we will see more of these indirect tactics deployed by those organizations. More covert corporate warfare than what we're traditionally used to. Nothing wrong with it per se, but just a shift in tactics people might have not foreseen.
Alex3917 9y ago
> or see a meaningful effort to rebalance gendered power structures as sexist Given that the app is designed around encouraging people to treat professional networking as a dating opportunity, it's not entirely clear in what direction they're trying to rebalance things.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  Context?
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    - You can't use the networking functionality unless you have a public profile on the dating side, so everyone you are networking with knows you are open to dating or whatever. (Trying to disable a public profile on the dating side turns off the networking functionality.) - Just like in the dating app, women go first in the networking app, sending the signal that maybe it's not entirely about dating.
- darkr 9y ago
  I think that’s a separate app/Platform? > https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/02/bumbles-business-networking-feature-launches-today/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/02/bumbles-business-networkin...
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    It's definitely within the same app. It's just a separate profile you can fork off of your main one.
dahdum 9y ago
I don’t see Bumble any differently because they are women owned or women led, they are just a startup likely infringing IP that’s using the best possible PR angle to defend themselves. In the public perception their mission statement matters, but not to the law.
brucephillips 9y ago
If you view an IP lawsuit as masculine posturing, you should check your blind spots.

QML 9y ago

To people who use Tinder or Bumble, would you prefer matching yourself or have an algorithm do the matching for you?

samirillian 9y ago
Well OkCupid already kinda does the algorithm thing. I prefer tinder/bumble because it at least leaves the possibility for some sort of "je ne sais quoi" in the process, or for something you didn't know you liked until you saw it. But that's just me.

brucephillips 9y ago

I'm a bumble user. They sent this post as an email to their user base. I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish by airing their dirty laundry publicly. Users don't care if you're in an IP battle. Also, I could have done without the sexist implication that bullying is a masculine characteristic.

jamilbk 9y ago
I thought the same thing. Why bring gender into this? Bullying should be discouraged in all walks of life, whether the victims and perpetrators are male or female. Interestingly, all of my female friends who use Bumble are actually annoyed that they must act first to open the dialog with their matches. They don't seem to notice or care that the feature is placed there to empower women, nor do they know or care about Bumble's feminist origins. They use it because it has more attractive males than Tinder.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  100% consistent with my anecdata as well. My girl friends who use it are all annoyed they have to say something first and mostly default to "hi", which is essentially passing the ball to the guy, who's expected to get creative (assuming similar dating market values).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- brucephillips 9y ago
  Interesting. I suppose that's not too surprising, though. As a man, my biggest gripe with tinder is how much work it is.
- Kalium 9y ago
  What's really funny to me is that I've had to explain to more than one female friend that there's a reason no guys start conversations with them on Bumble.
9y ago

laretluval 9y ago

Tinder : Bumble :: Uber : Lyft

brucephillips 9y ago
Maybe by market share, but Tinder predated Bumble, whereas Lyft predated Uber.
- mvid 9y ago
  But Über predated Lyft (Zimride) by 4 years
  - deepakhj 9y ago
    Sidecar came up with drivers using their own car.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    Zimride predated Uber. Lyft predated UberX.

BadassFractal 9y ago

Notice the narrative: to attack Bumble is to attack women's empowerment.

drharby 9y ago
Ding ding ding

dbg31415 9y ago

Undeniable that much of Bumble looks like Tinder. The fact that the Bumble founders came from Tinder, of course they stole whatever IP and concepts they could. No question. But there's still a long way to go here. And squabbles like this distract companies from making honest feature advances. The core issue with Bumble or Tinder is that they aren't designed to help make matches, rather give people the perception of options. This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort through. I matched with 1-2 women a day, but my close friend who introduced me to Bumble matches on 70+ guys a day. I have to craft witty, funny, and sexy messages... all under the pressure that I only have 2 choices that day. She gets to disqualify guys if they take too long to write back, write too much, or for any reason she wants... knowing she has 70 more to choose from. (Worth noting that despite all the options, she's still single...) Anyway, the whole thing could be a lot more efficient... lots of ways to go about this. Dating and finding love takes effort, compassion. These tools should, ideally, help make it less of a numbers game. # First feature request Let anyone pre-approve in bulk. "Pre-match me with anyone who is between this age rage in this zip code who mentions hiking..." simple as that. If you really want to go all out, just learn my type from my swipes and pre-match on that -- plus gives me incentive not to just swipe on everyone as it's learning what I like. # Second feature request Let users block based on rules. "I don't ever want to match with anyone who works for my company, Dynacorp, and I don't ever want anyone from Dynacorp to see my profile." # Third feature request Only show people to me I have the potential to match with. "I liked her... but unknown to me, she only likes guys who are older than me... she'll never see my profile to match back... why did I see her in the first place then?" # Fourth feature request Don't show people who have already swiped left. "I see her... but unknown to me, she's already swiped left on me... we'll never be a match, probably best to just not show her to me."

the_watcher 9y ago
> This plays out in that men essentially swipe right on every woman they come across (we're forced to in order to have any chance of making a connection), and women end up bombarded with more choices than they can meaningful sort through. This is not at all true for all men (I have never heard of this being necessary from an IRL friend).

ythn 9y ago

> We — a woman-founded, women-led company I don't know why, but this made me want to stop reading the article immediately.

hnuser1234 9y ago
Thanks for saving me a click. I can't wait until the gender war dies.
jazoom 9y ago
Probably because it was completely out of place and was only inserted to play the victim female card. I'd be surprised if Tinder's attempts at buying them out or sueing them would not have occurred if the founders were male.