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Upon logging into okcupid today I received a pop up inviting me to join The League (another dating app), with my phone number already pre-propagated. After acce

by lapphi 3y ago

Upon logging into okcupid today I received a pop up inviting me to join The League (another dating app), with my phone number already pre-propagated. After accepting, they sent me this email. > We use the combination of your Facebook and LinkedIn data plus your About Me and Photos to ensure we are building a balanced, high-achieving and diverse community. Our screening algorithm looks at indicators like social influence, education, profession, industry, friends in The League, number of referrals you've made to your network, as well as supplemental data like what groups you belong to, events you've attended, interests you list, and preferences. Absolutely terrifying.

devoutsalsa 3y ago
Reminds of the days when your name, address, and phone number were automatically listed in the phone book. You had to pay the phone company to not list your information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory
- firecall 3y ago
  Being ex-directory was a status symbol in the UK!
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Sidebar: it used to be completely normal to publish your phone number and address publicly yet far less people had the information. The people who had it were basically a subset of people in your local community. Looking back at this point in time, the world felt so huge because it wasn't so connected and centralized.
- cobbaut 3y ago
  Phone books were local, as in the neighbouring couple hundred thousand people max, so about one in ten thousand less than current social media. And, at least here, they contained last name and one letter of the first name. No information on gender/interests/articles read/ads clicked/locations visited/family/friends/devices used/apps installed/items bought/...
- 6510 3y ago
  With "The phone book" they mean dozens if not hundreds of regional phone books.
- rando_dfad 3y ago
  and cross-referenced with your location at all times, all of your shopping habits, your viewing and reading habits, and every person you communicate with? In an easily searchable database? Sooo tempted to go Goodwin here and mention a nice use of computers from the late 1930s...
mey 3y ago
It sounds like their marketing blurb just copied Tom Scott without understanding the horror it's supposed to represent. https://youtu.be/WByBm2SwKk8 https://youtu.be/WByBm2SwKk8
- willy_k 3y ago
  Can’t tell if you mean this literally or not. I doubt this video had any significant influence the blurb.
officeplant 3y ago
As someone that refuses to use Linked In or Facebook it is wild to me that someone would not only use them, but willingly link a dating app to them. It makes me wonder how many more things I'll never get to participate in because I've deleted/avoid social media.
- digging 3y ago
  You and I, and probably a few others here on HN, are slowly being sifted into a parallel "unsocial" world, I fear. It's genuinely disgusting to see the kind of personal data we're expected to pass out by the truckload for every little digital trinket and feature, let alone entire facets of society such as dating apps.
  - _jal 3y ago
    I'm in the same boat. My internet excludes a bunch of ASs used by surveillance shops. This is what we're asking for. I am refusing to divulge information about me I don't want to share. Other people are building whatever on top of that data. I can hardly complain about lack of inclusion when I am the one refusing to feed their robots. If you want people at Cheers to know your name, you... have to tell them your name. I'm fine being anonymous. It sounds like maybe you're more conflicted.
    - rdiddly 3y ago
      Ha ha - Cheers. I always found that lyric to be flat wrong. The place where "everybody knows your name" is the same place where you spend most of your time, and is almost certainly the place where "all your worries" are coming from in the first place, a.k.a. your life. (Which, if you're an alcoholic, could be a bar, sure why not.) It "sure would help a lot" to go to such a place? Because you're constantly being bothered by total strangers at rates far in excess of the average? Because the first people police interview as murder suspects is everybody who doesn't know the victim? No my friend. Of course now you can give out your name to total strangers many miles away, with a degree of efficiency undreamt-of in the 80s, yet not even have any fun times spent drinking with those people, so...
bradleybuda 3y ago
Okcupid and The League are owned by the same company. So that’s a first-party, in platform ad
- zonotope 3y ago
  I don't think that's the issue. The issue is they use your "profile" from other companies like facebook and linkedin to decide whether or not you're worthy of joining. What other things will people who refuse to use these apps be rejected from if more companies adopt this screening strategy? Jobs? Schools? Grocery stores?
PaulHoule 3y ago
One of those things y'all never upvote is papers about psychodiagnostic software that uses your social media posts, cell phone location data, etc. to diagnose both chronic and acute psychiatric conditions. I'm fairly certain that if a person is highly active on social media such a system could produce a better diagnosis than most people get when they see a professional, if only because the quality of psychodiagnosis is poor since it is often seen as a scam to satisfy insurance bureaucrats, common conditions are never diagnosed, there are fads for certain rare conditions, etc.
- teachrdan 3y ago
  I don't mean to sound flip, but I don't think identifying pathological psychological conditions via web browsing habits is all that difficult. I have a friend who went through a severe depressive episode. As soon as he started watching YouTube at 2am, he started getting ads for depression meds.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    It's not difficult at all. That's the point. A system like that collects a lot of data and very few people are going to feel that they need to dissimulate.
  - aaroninsf 3y ago
    Worse yet, "web browsing habits" is just one neck of the hydra. What you buy (when, as mentioned) serves as strong signal for any number of factors; all your conventional demographics of course... I'm not in the industry but I am very curious to know if we're already in the conditional-execution phase of surveillance/ad-serving/profile-updating: is there an idea [yet] of serving a challenge, and then both recording how/if it is engaged, with automated graph traversal to "look closer"... all offered stochastically... The simple way to put that in part is, are we now getting A/B tests run on us explicitly, rather than merely implicitly? (Personally, I'm 100% off Meta products and TikTok—but am leaking through LinkedIn and, regrettably, Google...)
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "if a person is highly active on social media " .. then the diagnosis of one of their problems sounds quite trivial.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
qingcharles 3y ago
Like this: https://nitter.net/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538 https://nitter.net/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538
xadhominemx 3y ago
I mean who cares? How does this affect your life?

by lapphi 3y ago

devoutsalsa 3y ago

Reminds of the days when your name, address, and phone number were automatically listed in the phone book. You had to pay the phone company to not list your information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory

firecall 3y ago
Being ex-directory was a status symbol in the UK!
nonethewiser 3y ago
Sidebar: it used to be completely normal to publish your phone number and address publicly yet far less people had the information. The people who had it were basically a subset of people in your local community. Looking back at this point in time, the world felt so huge because it wasn't so connected and centralized.
cobbaut 3y ago
Phone books were local, as in the neighbouring couple hundred thousand people max, so about one in ten thousand less than current social media. And, at least here, they contained last name and one letter of the first name. No information on gender/interests/articles read/ads clicked/locations visited/family/friends/devices used/apps installed/items bought/...
6510 3y ago
With "The phone book" they mean dozens if not hundreds of regional phone books.
rando_dfad 3y ago
and cross-referenced with your location at all times, all of your shopping habits, your viewing and reading habits, and every person you communicate with? In an easily searchable database? Sooo tempted to go Goodwin here and mention a nice use of computers from the late 1930s...

mey 3y ago

It sounds like their marketing blurb just copied Tom Scott without understanding the horror it's supposed to represent. https://youtu.be/WByBm2SwKk8 https://youtu.be/WByBm2SwKk8

willy_k 3y ago
Can’t tell if you mean this literally or not. I doubt this video had any significant influence the blurb.

officeplant 3y ago

As someone that refuses to use Linked In or Facebook it is wild to me that someone would not only use them, but willingly link a dating app to them. It makes me wonder how many more things I'll never get to participate in because I've deleted/avoid social media.

digging 3y ago
You and I, and probably a few others here on HN, are slowly being sifted into a parallel "unsocial" world, I fear. It's genuinely disgusting to see the kind of personal data we're expected to pass out by the truckload for every little digital trinket and feature, let alone entire facets of society such as dating apps.
- _jal 3y ago
  I'm in the same boat. My internet excludes a bunch of ASs used by surveillance shops. This is what we're asking for. I am refusing to divulge information about me I don't want to share. Other people are building whatever on top of that data. I can hardly complain about lack of inclusion when I am the one refusing to feed their robots. If you want people at Cheers to know your name, you... have to tell them your name. I'm fine being anonymous. It sounds like maybe you're more conflicted.
  - rdiddly 3y ago
    Ha ha - Cheers. I always found that lyric to be flat wrong. The place where "everybody knows your name" is the same place where you spend most of your time, and is almost certainly the place where "all your worries" are coming from in the first place, a.k.a. your life. (Which, if you're an alcoholic, could be a bar, sure why not.) It "sure would help a lot" to go to such a place? Because you're constantly being bothered by total strangers at rates far in excess of the average? Because the first people police interview as murder suspects is everybody who doesn't know the victim? No my friend. Of course now you can give out your name to total strangers many miles away, with a degree of efficiency undreamt-of in the 80s, yet not even have any fun times spent drinking with those people, so...

bradleybuda 3y ago

Okcupid and The League are owned by the same company. So that’s a first-party, in platform ad

zonotope 3y ago
I don't think that's the issue. The issue is they use your "profile" from other companies like facebook and linkedin to decide whether or not you're worthy of joining. What other things will people who refuse to use these apps be rejected from if more companies adopt this screening strategy? Jobs? Schools? Grocery stores?

PaulHoule 3y ago

One of those things y'all never upvote is papers about psychodiagnostic software that uses your social media posts, cell phone location data, etc. to diagnose both chronic and acute psychiatric conditions. I'm fairly certain that if a person is highly active on social media such a system could produce a better diagnosis than most people get when they see a professional, if only because the quality of psychodiagnosis is poor since it is often seen as a scam to satisfy insurance bureaucrats, common conditions are never diagnosed, there are fads for certain rare conditions, etc.

teachrdan 3y ago
I don't mean to sound flip, but I don't think identifying pathological psychological conditions via web browsing habits is all that difficult. I have a friend who went through a severe depressive episode. As soon as he started watching YouTube at 2am, he started getting ads for depression meds.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It's not difficult at all. That's the point. A system like that collects a lot of data and very few people are going to feel that they need to dissimulate.
- aaroninsf 3y ago
  Worse yet, "web browsing habits" is just one neck of the hydra. What you buy (when, as mentioned) serves as strong signal for any number of factors; all your conventional demographics of course... I'm not in the industry but I am very curious to know if we're already in the conditional-execution phase of surveillance/ad-serving/profile-updating: is there an idea [yet] of serving a challenge, and then both recording how/if it is engaged, with automated graph traversal to "look closer"... all offered stochastically... The simple way to put that in part is, are we now getting A/B tests run on us explicitly, rather than merely implicitly? (Personally, I'm 100% off Meta products and TikTok—but am leaking through LinkedIn and, regrettably, Google...)
hutzlibu 3y ago
"if a person is highly active on social media " .. then the diagnosis of one of their problems sounds quite trivial.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

qingcharles 3y ago

Like this: https://nitter.net/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538 https://nitter.net/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538

xadhominemx 3y ago

I mean who cares? How does this affect your life?