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TFA is a bit imprecise with the wording, so it's not exactly clear to me, but from what I understand, there's two different things that could be happening. In
by zaroth 7y ago
TFA is a bit imprecise with the wording, so it's not exactly clear to me, but from what I understand, there's two different things that could be happening.
In one case, a dating site company internally creates fake profiles and/or operates bots which cause the fake profiles to interact with real potential users in an attempt to get them to sign up. This is like what AM did on their site, where there weren't actually very many women on the site at all.
Alternatively, a dating site can be rife with scammers who have themselves created fake profiles on the site and are messaging potential victims. For example, I read that Tinder used to be particularly rife with bot accounts that would message obviously bot-y greetings to attempt to get a user to click an external link (to what end, I'm not sure).
In the second case, dating sites may have a somewhat symbiotic relationship with the scammers, who create appealing looking profiles and make the site seem to have more activity than it really does. But the real users are potentially being targeted for fraud / scams, so this is just as--if not even more--egregious than the false marketing fake account scam, because at least the company bots aren't trying to convince you to share your bank account number.
It's not entirely clear to me if this is a case of #1 or #2, but it seems like it's #2. And because Match wouldn't even let potential users read the message (or see who it was from?) before signing up, the bot accounts would provide a significant signup boost to users thinking they had a potential match waiting for them on the site.
If it is #2, then the immediate question is how prevalent was this, and did Match take action to close bot accounts that were reported / flagged as such. Any social network will have at least some bad actors, and the platform should be judged on how they respond and defend against those actors, not whether they existed at all. I think TFA does not provide enough information to reach a conclusion.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago#2 sounds like a twisted symbiotic parasitic relationship, where the host is harmed indirectly through the harm of their users. Almost like some sort of systemic effect. Fraud is such an interesting problem. Are the incentives ever truly aligned such that businesses should rigorously stamp out bad actors? Or, in a toxic twist, should they do the bare minimum to satisfy some regulatory body/their brand perception? Treacherous times indeed.
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoOne time on Match I got a wink from someone who passed me a web URL that was for an event, a performance of performance art IIRC. My entertainment tastes range all over the place, but at the same time I can only be in one place at any given time so I have to reject ideas. When I shared my rejection of that particular idea with my fellow Match participant, there were no further messages. So I have no idea if maybe this was some sort of cult-front come-on or there was actually an attempt to fill some small venue with paying attendees for a legitimate entertainment, based on keywords in my profile that indicated a likelihood of interest perhaps? The latter of course is the most charitable guess. It was clearly not my sparkling personality they were interested in. It was "in the middle" of my time on Match so I don't think there was any link with getting me to renew. Also the process passed the Turing test, so the term bot seems misapplied. But scammer in a gentle sense does apply in the sense that apparently romance was not the goal, but was a lure.