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By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my account that's fine but cancel the subsc
by 999900000999 5y ago
By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my account that's fine but cancel the subscription and refund my money.
If y'all haven't looked at it yet, read up on the FCC's filing against Match. They knowingly prompt up tons of fake profiles, to get you engaged. Horrifically this has lead to romance scams being the number one source of fraud in the US. I had one particularly scary experience and after that I don't use any dating apps.
But it's worked out very well, I did have to move to a new city too, but I've been able to meet so many amazing girls in real life. I'm also in a much better place emotionally, if you're staring at your phone constantly waiting for box to message you, that's not good for your mind. Your mind. It makes everything 10 times of stressful, for fraction of the benefit.
When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in their mid-20s to 30s without a job. In real life, everyone I've gone out with has had a decent job, due to another scary experience I don't go out with people who aren't working.
- svalee 5y agoYeah, they specifically mention that at the bottom of the screen[1] when they ban you [1] https://paulefou.com/cancel.jpg https://paulefou.com/cancel.jpg
- callamdelaney 5y agoNot if they shadow ban you which seems to happen quite often. They'll happily accept your money in this instance - it sounds like in the article above this is what happened.
- _fat_santa 5y agoHmm, say they did shadow ban him but continued to charge him. Wouldn't they be open to fraud in this case? You could make the case that you paid for services that were not rendered.
- munk-a 5y agoI think it'd be reasonable to conclude that services weren't rendered - even if I'm totally certain they've got some BS in their TOS somewhere that specifically called out that it would be within the bounds of the service offering to take your money and give you only the fake experience of being a tinder user.
- samhw 5y agoTo be fair, shadow banning has a legit use besides just taking people's money. It prevents genuine malicious actors from simply creating new accounts whenever they get banned. However, it becomes way more ethically complex when the service in question is a paid service.
- munk-a 5y agoShadow banning is a legitimate tool when you assume that it is necessary for you to offer your services with the absolute lowest barrier to entry. There are plenty of other very reasonable approaches to prevent malicious actors from simply creating new accounts - the easiest of these is to attach a modest cost to account creation which is a solution that marketers absolutely loathe band thus has been casually discounted. However, it is an exceptionally good solution. Do you think twitter would be dealing with 10 million twitter bots if they had a five dollar account creation fee? Do you think smurf accounts for harassment would be nearly as widespread if every ban cost the troll $5 of their real money?
- colejohnson66 5y agoWe're literally on a site that uses shadow banning. @dang has mentioned quite a few times.
- munk-a 5y agoYup - I'm well aware - and the barrier to entry for HN is pretty much non-existent. Some features are locked behind karma accumulation but most of the moderation is done manually and the community is small(ish) enough and of a professional bent - meaning that a lot of people know who other folks are IRL. Removing the anonymous factor for a large portion of commenters makes them follow the rules a lot better. There still are lots of issues with smurf accounts though, again, there's a sort of barrier to entry in that extremely new and low karma accounts can get their comments [dead]'d very trivially.
- munk-a 5y agoIt's really pleasant that they use Dark UI patterns to try and make that text as ignorable as possible - fading, making it small, putting it in the margin and putting a hard divider between it and the primary announcement. It's sort of a master class in how to use Dark UI patterns - I'm just disappointed they didn't fade it even more, put an ad between the announcement and the context, include a webmaster@ link somewhere in there and italicize the text. If they did all that it'd look entirely like a TOS disclaimer - but they tried their best at least. We seriously need better consumer protection against Dark UI tactics.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y agoMatch.com, okcupid after match bought it, and tinder are all composed entirely of dark patterns propped up by effectively pimping out women via access (it's men who pay for tinder/match/okc), and then exacerbating the whole dating market. All for a profit. Last I read tinder is like 70% men, and it turns out women only swipe right on the top 5% most attractive.
- diebeforei485 5y agoThis is terrible UI. The app knows whether someone is a subscriber or not. The app should show the appropriate UI for subscribers, with detailed instructions on how to cancel their subscription. Additionally, if they have the user's phone number and/or email (they definitely do), text them and email them the cancellation instructions.
- vmception 5y ago> When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in their mid-20s to 30s without a job. In real life, everyone I've gone out with has had a decent job, due to another scary experience I don't go out with people who aren't working. Overfitting is a modeling error in statistics that occurs when a function is too closely aligned to a limited set of data points. ... Thus, attempting to make the model conform too closely to slightly inaccurate data can infect the model with substantial errors and reduce its predictive power.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoAnd yet forming priors based on experience gained in a classic multi arm bandit thompson sampling approach with appropriate exploitation exploration tradeoff is generally the dominant strategy in any static unfamiliar space. Alternatively, contextualizing things into niche stats frameworks doesn't make you correct, or sound intelligent.
- mavsman 5y agoEventually wet bandits turn into sticky bandits
- vmception 5y agoThe point was to say it without saying it, to provoke introspection in their arbitrary associations. The "it" being that the issue wasn't that they - and the future potential partners - didn't have a day job. And yet, this person chose that specific aspect of the relationship and elevated that to relevance for other relationships. Even further, they are applying this to people in other cities and geographies, amplifying the absurdity.
- diputsmonro 5y ago
- vmception 5y ago
- webdoodle 5y agoTo take it a step further, throw your phone away. I've been digital overseer/fear machine free for almost 2 years now, and can definitively say it's the best decision a person can make for their mental well being.
- Zachsa999 5y agoHow do you deal with the dumb crap related to not being connected when everyone else is? Do you have any records or writings documenting your experience?
- vondro 5y agoI meet in person people I care about, and talk to them. We exchange our recent life experiences, or not, depending on context. I don't care what people I don't care about do. For documenting my experiences, I have photo album on my phone. Can show it to someone physically, or send pictures on Whatsapp for example. Works for me, anyway.
- indigochill 5y agoThis seems like a kind of overfitting. The phone itself isn't a problem, at least as concerns the fear machine. On the other hand, staying linked to Facebook is a problem. I make regular daily use of my phone, but the use is limited to: * Email * Select communication channels (Slack/Signal/etc) * Reading books offline (I download them in advance) * Bus pass * Flashcards * A couple of offline ad-free games I deny push notifications on all apps without exception. If someone needs to get hold of me, they have my number. With this approach, I feel like my phone is a value-adding tool rather than feeling like it's tethering me to anything I don't want to be part of.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoFlashcards? That's doesn't seem to have much to do with ending a phone addiction?
- 5y ago
- emacsen 5y agoI don't know what happened in this situation, but generally refunding money for TOS violations is a bad idea. Let me explain why. Imagine that Alice runs a service where you can send people greeting cards. Bob decides he's going to use this service to cause trouble and instead of normal greeting cards, he sends people messages with hate speech, such as their race, their religion, says he hoped they get cancer, and so on. Alice sees Bob is doing this and it violates her TOS on the service, so she cancels his account. Should Bob get a refund? If he does, then Bob will have used Alice's system to do bad things in a way that actually costs him nothing. He's costing Alice administrative fees and regular costs. That's why ToS violations should generally not trigger a refund.
- 999900000999 5y agoThen at least cancel his subscription. I can imagine a scenario where you need to login to cancel your subscription, but can't login because your banned. A while back Tinder was trying to bypass the Google Play subscription system so this is very possible.
- vlovich123 5y agoThey did if he signed up from Tinder.com. Not cancelling is if he subscribed via Play/App Store which presumably they have no control of on their side?
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoYou can cancel user subscriptions through Play Store, but not through App Store. Yet another way that Apple is truly terrible to developers.
- excitom 5y agoAnd file a chargeback request with the credit card company - service paid for but not received. The "customer is always right" in this scenario (speaking as someone who has an Internet based business that accepts credit card payments). As long as you don't make a habit of doing it, you'll get your money back.
- knubie 5y ago> By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my account that's fine but cancel the subscription and refund my money. Could this have something to do with subscribing through the App Store? Maybe there is something in Apple's ToS, or some limitation in their billing API that prevents them from doing this.
- behnamoh 5y agoI stopped paying for dating apps as soon as I realized tinder, Bumble, and Match constantly try to "lure" me into paying for subscriptions. It happened many times that I would get notifications about new matches/likes just moments after midnight when my subscription plan ended. I found it statistically unlikely that people only liked my profile right after my plan is finished.
- binarysolo 5y agoAssuming it's not outright foul play, it's prob more likely that the matching services intentionally boost your profile gets better reach/impressions as that's a +EV play, and reduce your profile reach when you're subscribed long-term. To carry this thought exercise more, someone structuring this system could also treat hot/responsive/engaged profiles as an asset of retention and intentionally matchmake the results to optimize for a system to be engaged (vs to matchmake two people who find love and unsubscribe after).
- clusterfish 5y agoWhich part of this is not foul play? Man, our standards are low.
- OJFord 5y ago/me shrugs Sounds like 'outright foul play' to me. Vs. what, bully for them they saved the genuine matches to the time that was most profitable, my custom most at risk? That's not foul play? (Maybe I should disclaim I've never used any of this, so my standards are high/low/irrelevant, but ...)
- netizen-936824 5y ago>if you're staring at your phone constantly waiting for box to message you I may be unfamiliar with the terminology, but can you please explain what this means? What is "box" in this context?
- shirleyquirk 5y agoI think they meant 'bots'?
- newsbinator 5y agoA Tinder message box as opposed to a conversation with a real life person?
- not1ofU 5y agoBox can be Irish slang for vagina. Not sure if its the oppocite of Bollox.
- crystalmeph 5y agoI read it as the phone itself.
- newprint 5y agoI met my current girlfriend on Match.com(US) in 2019. She was unemployed back then and we lived 2h+ hours apart. First 6 months of the relationship, she was unemployed. We are still together and now she has a job. I don't think unemployment should immediately be a no go for the relationship.
- IshKebab 5y agoYeah same. Nothing wrong with being unemployed.
- cableshaft 5y agoYeah I had just recently had a contract that ended sooner than expected and was unemployed when I started dating the woman I would later marry. A couple of months after we started dating I had a new job and was making far more than anyone she had ever dated in her past (which was still just a modest salary for this crowd). I can understand someone being hesitant but it's not always a red flag.
- conductr 5y agoExceptions to every rule right. The rule still sounds solid to me if you’re trying to optimize the quality of your interactions. My personal one from my days of being single, no “cat people”. I’m a “dog person”. I like cats but the slight personality difference between me identifying as a dog person and the people I’ve known who identify as a “cat person” is enough that it just sounds like a waste of my time.
- jcadam 5y agoI met my wife when she tapped me on the shoulder in a public place and introduced herself. I just smiled and nodded and ended up with a date - I think I might have gotten my name out at some point -- not sure. She calls me by the correct name now, 20+ years later in any case. Online dating sites/apps seem like they'd be a nightmare.
- 202112222132 5y ago
- kordlessagain 5y agoI’m pretty sure software ruins things that should occur naturally or by chance. Allowing people to over analyze anything while making money at the same time, through hope, is an evil business model. For every happy story used for supporting said model, there are literally billions that did it the old fashioned way.
- diebeforei485 5y ago> Online dating sites/apps seem like they'd be a nightmare. So right now it's pretty much considered impolite / not socially acceptable to ask someone out except on dating apps. This is definitely a downside. But the upside is that a match on a dating app is an explicit acknowledgement of mutual interest, so it's clear that you're meeting up to go on a date and not just hanging out.
- drevil-v2 5y ago> So right now it's pretty much considered impolite / not socially acceptable to ask someone out except on dating apps Says who?
- diebeforei485 5y agoIf you're in your mid-20s in most US metro areas (except in the South, perhaps) - this is what it's like.
- 1024core 5y ago> When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in their mid-20s to 30s without a job. I read this article (a long time ago) about a NYC girl who was saying that investing $30/mo on a Match.com account was the best investment she had made, as it meant she'd get treated to top restaurants, etc. by the guys for free.
- 999900000999 5y agoTo be fair, men do it too! https://la.eater.com/2019/1/17/18186932/dine-dash-dater-arrest-los-angeles-restaurants https://la.eater.com/2019/1/17/18186932/dine-dash-dater-arre...
- ampersandy 5y agoEr, I don't really think dine-and-dashing is quite the same as being treated to your meal because you are on a date.
- llampx 5y agoThis is the lamest whataboutism I've seen.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThat's different Despite "feminism", women can easily get a free dinner out of a date. I have a friend who got into dating (think a different girl every night) and had a budget in the thousands per month just for dates.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoI am still waiting for it to dawn on people that unaccountable power corrupts, becomes authoritarian and capricious, regardless whether it's wielded by corporations or governments.
- ranndino 5y agoWould love to know where you're meeting all these amazing girls. Online dating absolutely sucks for men with the exception of the ones who look like cover models and are over 6 feet tall. Everyone else might as well go die in a ditch.
- garfieldnate 5y agoWould love to hear more details on these horrifying experiences if you're open to sharing. It's good to know what to be careful for.