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If the business model relies on fake bot profiles, then it's literally fraud, no?

• 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
  I imagine their excuse is that the dating apps are not creating the bots themselves, so they can deny being complicit. They can claim they're victims of evil scam groups that are very hard to fight against. In the meantime users get the impression that the pool is far wider than it is in reality.
• notaustinpowers 2y ago
  Not entirely. It was years ago but I remember this op-ed of a woman who was hired by a company to build a dating profile on their site (they supplied her with photos of a woman the company had contracted for the photos). The company made money by having men pay per message, or pay for 100 or 200 messages or something like that. Her job was to keep them talking, build relationships with them, and prevent them from finding out that the site was almost entirely made up of contractors like her. She said there was one man who she had been talking to for over a year, making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of him. Ultimately, the company was never fined or the CEO charged with anything as their Terms of Service stated that they may utilize company-made profiles that the user may interact with to maintain an enjoyable experience (although said in much more opaque legalese).
  • 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
    Sounds similar to what's happening with OnlyFans nowadays, where customers believe they're interacting with their favorite "creator" they pay to subscribe to and to message, but in reality it's an outsourced worker in an emerging market economy impersonating them.
  • from-nibly 2y ago
    So just as moraly reprehensible just technically legal.