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Pakistan blocks Tinder, Grindr and other apps
- bashwizard 6y agoMaybe it's time for the rest of the civilized world to block Pakistan.
- aerodog 6y agoWith your implying a country of 200 million people is "uncivilized" (hate speech), perhaps it's more appropriate that HN blocks you?
- bashwizard 6y agoNever did I ever imply that Pakistan isn't civilized. But since that's what you got from my comment it's safe to say that you're most likely a racist piece of shit and that HN should probably block you instead.
- knolax 6y agoThere's nothing civilized about Tinder.
- bashwizard 6y agoTinder is shit, that's for sure. But blocking it for the entire population isn't civlized and so isn't the Pakistan government.
- garbagetime 6y agoMaybe the commenter edited his comment, but as it is now, it doesn't mention or imply that Pakistan is uncivilized (which wouldn't be hate speech, anyway).
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoPeople regularly say damn near the same thing the GP said (that the "civilized world" or something along those lines should reduce or cut ties with) but they say it about a country of ~320 million people or (more rarely because we don't discuss it as much here) a country of ~1.4 billion. If that flies so should this.
- aerodog 6y agoPeople have a traditional way of building family. The American way, i.e. via casual dating, often enhanced by apps, is experimental (barely a generation in) and not looking good for society's long-term stability.
- celticninja 6y agoThat's a huge leap.
- mamon 6y agoYou know, people make jokes about, for example, Indian arranged marriages, but they have one significant upside: you get to know not only your future partner, but also their family, their past, the environment that they were raised in, etc. It's basically a full background check. With casual dating via Tinder you might as well end up dating a serial killer, and even if you don't you still have much harder time really getting to know the person if you don't have any common friends, come from different cities, etc.
- have_faith 6y agoWhy does using Tinder to meet someone suddenly negate meeting the family and doing these "background checks"?
- noisy_boy 6y agoBecause the "background checks" happen upfront in case of arranged marriages. That way there isn't any emotional issues in case they fail.
- celticninja 6y agoI mean that is absolute rubbish. There are plenty of arranged marriages that fail because e.g one partner was gay and hid it from their family. No 'background' checks prevent it and there is plenty of fallout.
- _trampeltier 6y agoMeanwhile in the western world banks decide about the content on pages like Fetlife and about the color of dildos in webshops.
- ravenstine 6y agoI wonder if the ability to send and receive money should be considered a right as we become cashless.
- gambiting 6y agoIt is in some places already. In the UK for instance a bank has to open a basic checking account for you when asked, to avoid situations where people without jobs or homeless cannot have a bank account(which is required for nearly everything else). There can be many restrictions placed on such account later on(no debit cards, no overdraft, no mobile banking etc), but it's practically impossible for a bank to close a basic checking account for someone.
- _trampeltier 6y agoI think in the EU, one bank has let you to open a basic account and give you a debit card. But as far I know, this is just for people, not companys. And in they ask you for a fee to use the account and in theorie there is no upper limit for the fee.
- ihadtosayit 6y agoBanks decide the color of dildos in webshops? I want to know more about this, I am not even doubting this seeing as banks and credit card companies are basically driving political censorship online these days.
- thefounder 6y agoPerhaps the pakistani people should be left to decide what's immoral and what's not?
- iso8859-1 6y agoThey have, it is a representative democracy.
- ooobit2 6y agoWestern people are usually surprised to find out that people actually have freedoms outside of America and Europe. They just often choose to sacrifice more egregious ones for communal good than not.
- frequentnapper 6y agoYes, like the freedom to murder someone in broad daylight without the police doing anything for "insulting" Mohammed. No thanks!
- thefz 6y agoLike what, the freedom to install the software you want on your device?
- acephal 6y agoThis entire thread is completely toxic and predictably so, the fact it hasn't been flagged yet is telling
- thefounder 6y agoThe freedom to harm others(i.e women) or restrict other people's freedoms(i.e what to install on my device, what books to read etc) is not really freedom
- implements 6y agoAre Pakistani human rights different from the universal kind? My viewpoint is that people should have freedom of religious conscience, and with that a large degree of moral relativism with certain bounds. Given that, is it appropriate that a country interferes with the expressed sexuality of freely consenting adults? I don’t think so.
- ponker 6y agoI don't know about "immoral", but based on my younger acquaintances' experiences on Tinder, I believe that in the long-term it and its peer services will be seen as equally destructive to Facebook -- what Facebook did to interpersonal relationships/friendships Tinder will do to romantic/sexual relationships. I think that the world will basically have to have a reckoning with "freedom," i.e. that technology has created the ability to build digital technologies that basically destroy the things we typically value. The companies in charge are too hyperoptimized and the average human is too underoptimized for this to be a fair fight... in the name of "engagement" Facebook can easily destroy the basic subfloor of politics in a representative democracy, and Tinder can destroy the basic subfloor of couplehood and family life.
- rkachowski 6y agoImplicit here is the idea that couplehood and family life were more stable and somehow more resistent to damage before technology came along and made it easier for humans to interact. An alternate theory is that Tinder actually reenforces the "basic subfloor of couplehood and family life" by enabling and normalising ephemeral sexual and romantic interaction, instead of requiring the individual to succumb to social pressure and enter marriage for reasons other than personal. This would be supported by the fact that divorce rates have been decreasing in the USA since the 90s.[1] I agree that more attention needs to be directed towards the ill effects that technology can have on societal values, but the technology exposes and works upon impulses already within us. The things we value are incredibly relative and the ideas + images of friendship and family life we have now are drastically different from even 40 years ago. (that is to say, views are always changing and the idea that "this new thing will destroy what we value" works in the exact same way that fm radio / home taping / digital piracy killed the musician + music industry so many years ago (i.e. it did not)) 1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states-dropping-because-millennials/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states...
- thewatcher2 6y ago> This would be supported by the fact that divorce rates have been decreasing in the USA since the 90s. Divorce rates are decreasing because marriage rates are decreasing. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Marriage_and_Divorce_Rates_in_the_US_1990-2007.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#/...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thewatcher2 6y agoI'd support this action. Social media and dating apps are an experiment on the population that they never consented to. We need a reserve of people who are not as much impacted by it for further studies. Until the day AR glasses come that can show you entire financial, sexual, educational, criminal history etc of a person on the street, dating apps is hurting the majority of the population. So are the privacy laws that are going to stifle innovation, if people want social media and hyper competitive dating, the free market would also allow the right to violation of privacy by current standards which would allow for AR glasses to show a person history before you even talk to them. In the past people used to look at the family history or got introduced to potential mates by trusted friends. Dating apps have none of that. The market is neither free, nor fair. A new generation of dating apps that monitor your entire life and do background checks and publicize it to the world would change the playing field immensely.
- Mindwipe 6y ago> In the past people used to look at the family history or got introduced to potential mates by trusted friends. Lol, no they didn't. They got drunk and hooked up at bars.
- thewatcher2 6y agoMaybe your family did that, but people in my family don't. They preferred the civilized way.
- acephal 6y agoI don't understand how this is downvoted, it wasn't uncommon for people to marry a first cousin not very long ago
- thefz 6y agoYou just wish that the focus in dating shifted from being attractive to being financially stable.
- nakodari 6y agoPakistani here, I gave Tinder a try once and it was awful. The majority of Pakistanis don't date the way Americans do due to the conservative values. When we sign up for a dating app, what we're looking for is someone whom we can connect with and marry soon - possibly within 6-12 months timeframe. Tinder is optimized for American dating and is incompatible with our family values. Therefore, when you signed up for Tinder in Pakistan, you saw that it was a hookup app rather than an app that helps you find a lifelong partner. Most Pakistanis who're serious about finding a partner use Muslim dating apps like Muzmatch and Minder. Edit: A lot of people have replied below that this does not justify banning the app. I have simply shared my experience and also the experience of many others in Pakistan. Tinder turned into an immoral app (borderline pornography in many cases) and this being an Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it went against the conservative values of the nation to hookup and thus it was banned by the govt. The govt is the democratic representative of the people and does what the majority of the nation expects them to do.
- clktmr 6y agoOk. But this doesn't justify blocking the app by the government, or does it?
- thewatcher2 6y agoGovernment bans, even the US one, certain kinds of speech like death threats and such. In Pakistani people do not consider the American way of dating as acceptable, and consider it a harm to society as a whole. Individual behavior affects society. There's a reason criminals are in jail. Governments ban things for public interest, and it is in the wider interests of the population that such apps be banned or regulated liked banks so everyone gets a chance like they do in real world. Many governments optimize human happiness, family over money and raw GDP numbers. It might come as a shock to you, but not for the people of Pakistan. They're not for sale under hyper optimized algorithms that suck the soul of the people.
- sergioisidoro 6y agoThat does not excuse banning an app on a moral basis. Some people might not see themselves in those family values.
- ArkVark 6y agoI'd welcome these applications being banned worldwide. Dating should be brought back to the real world: through friends, communities, family recommendations, and events. The emphasis should be on finding a compatible mate, marriage, co-financing and procreation. Dating apps encourage endless hookups and destabilisation - this is their business model.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoWhen your moral views are such that they require banning free apps (or free speech etc) and enforcing your views on other people, that's stops being a morality and starts being a tyranny.
- knolax 6y agoSo if I view murder as bad and I ban MRDR, a hot new SV startup that helps murderers plan their murders, I'm a tyrant? The rest of the world isn't obligated to import every social engineering system SV comes up with.
- thefz 6y ago> The emphasis should be on finding a compatible mate, marriage, co-financing and procreation. Why?
- mellosouls 6y agoWhat is it about Tinder that brings on these flame-wars on HN? It's almost like those who question Tinder's moral neutrality and innocence in its impact on society have a point...
- thefz 6y agoTalk about distros or the cool new tech, we can carry on a decent discussion. Talk about sex life and everyone loses their mind.
- stareatgoats 6y agoSex, Russian trolls, Chinese nationalism, US foreign interventions and Javascript in the browser. Plus a few other topics where everybody is an expert, too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]