6 ms·

First of all, the article nails it. Ashley Madison wasn't a dating site that lost sensitive personal data, it was a scam site full of bots. > And the men had t

First of all, the article nails it. Ashley Madison wasn't a dating site that lost sensitive personal data, it was a scam site full of bots. > And the men had to pay for every single message they sent. For most of their millions of users, Ashley Madison affairs were entirely a fantasy built out of threadbare chatbot pick-up lines like “how r u?” or “whats up?” Taking it one step further: Apparently the millions of male users were unable to tell this site apart from any of the "legitimate" dating sites like Tinder. For the male users, this site offered quite the same experience. You pay for attention, get a few chats full of dry "how r u"s and nothing further happens.

Loughla 2y ago
This is just another example of the massive loneliness epidemic in today's world. If there is enough value in basic chat bots for the people using that site, this is a sad state of affairs (pun fully intended).
- saagarjha 2y ago
  I mean, these are presumably married men who were using it. So the problems might be a little more nuanced than just pure loneliness.
  - thetoon 2y ago
    There is loneliness in marriage, sometimes.
- afavour 2y ago
  It really doesnt have anything to do with a loneliness epidemic. There wasn’t enough value in the basic chat bots, the idiots using the site considered that basic chat as a prelude to IRL sex with a real woman, a goal tempting enough to presumably blinker them to how basic the chat was. All of which is to say: no value, 100% scam.
  - delichon 2y ago
    In other words, the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it. But those things do have value given that people pay for them knowingly.
    - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
      Yes, but porn and romance novel buyers know what they pay for. The AM users did not.
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        fantasy is fantasy, it's what humans do. it's not a key element of a story that "this isn't real!", quite the opposite.
        afavour 2y ago
        The point is that AM was not selling fantasy. They were selling the potential of real world hookups.
    - jollyllama 2y ago
      No. Did you read the GP? When you buy a romance novel, you don't think a real life person is going to come out of it and romance you. It's a transparent fiction.
    - afavour 2y ago
      > the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it It’s the “just without knowing it” part that makes it the scam.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    But a low effort scam, back then chat gpt was not a thing. They could at least connect the user among each other, censor/cutting conversations as soon as they reveal ones gender .. basically grindr, but with a scam on top.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  It isn't loneliness, just sex. That market has been around a very long time. Virtually every product advertised to men suggests the product might lead to sex, be them the pretty girls selling trucks/beer, or the bikini-clad models on the beach in every travel commercial. Ashley-Madison just cut out the pretense. Rather than buy the fancy car in hope of sex, men just paid a smaller amount for the hope alone. Dreams have value.
- highcountess 2y ago
  I agree, but would say it’s even far deeper than that. It’s the toxic culture that dangles images of baked women and values of transgression rather than how to communicate and build a healthy emotional relationship with someone that may not be perfect, among other things. If I recall the A.M. ads and site image correctly, it was also full of some hot woman with lush lips and skin showing, which is just an echo of the image men have in their minds, i.e., “I too can get that hot woman that the guy in fantasy world in the TV has”, when it was really even more than the journalist realized. It wasn’t just a bot farm, it was actually a male farm that harvested and monetized male dissociation from their environment and biological imperative.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    > baked women Sounds like you're mixing it up with 420Dates :)
lupire 2y ago
No need to read the "article" behind the clickbait content. New Scientist is a rag. This comment has all the article content, and is wholly unsurprising to anyone who used any dating sites and saw scame site ads over the past 20 years.
codedokode 2y ago
[flagged]
- bsenftner 2y ago
  I'll say it, the obvious no one wants to say: we've got a massive adult immaturity problem in our entire civilization. Not just men, but they're more able to act out their immaturity.
  - ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    It's funny you consider adultery to be a sign of immaturity.
    - bsenftner 2y ago
      Its damning you don't.
    - saintfire 2y ago
      I find the unfaithfulness being considered objectively abhorrent as a pretty narrow minded take but I'm curious why you don't think it's immaturity? As far as I know, just by nature of there being more short than long relationships, In most cases cheating occurs rather early; so its a massive waste of time for every party. Seems short sighted and immature to me. Not telling you you're wrong, just asking for a different take.
      - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
        Outside the context or marriages I have no idea, but it appears in marriage, which is the context for Ashley Madison, cheating occurs when the marriage is well established, at about seven to years. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202308/does-infidelity-peak-in-the-seventh-year-of-marriage https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202... https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-married-people-wait-before-cheating-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-married-people-wait...
b3ing 2y ago
Match got in trouble for doing the same thing when your account was about to expire, you’d get a fake message to entice you to renew
jollyllama 2y ago
A lot of comments are saying things like "oh, we all knew this already." But a lot of the cultural discourse around AM completely misses or forgets this. A lot of prominent people were brought down by it, and it's treated in the context that they were talking to real partners, presumably because that's a bit more salacious than the sad truth.
- dwighttk 2y ago
  What’s the difference between talking to a real partner and talking to a bot if you’re dumb enough to think the bots are real?
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    The way someone answers this question probably correlates to their opinion on police entrapment.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      First, flattened "cheating on your spouse" to "salacious lies" because they failed at it. Now, flattening "doing bad things is bad" to "supporting police entrapment." Beginning to think this is trolling.
      - jollyllama 2y ago
        I'm sorry it comes off that way. I genuinely think these are interesting distinctions. If I had to make an analogy, I would react differently if I found a bag of weed in a kid's backpack vs a bag of oregano that the kid was fooled into thinking was weed.
        pc86 2y ago
        Somewhat related but if you're selling either one the court (in the US at least) will treat them the same. If you tell an undercover cop that you have cocaine and you sell them a baggie of baking powder, you'll get arrested and charged with selling cocaine.
steveBK123 2y ago
Isn't this the nature of most "dating" apps/sites? Men need the illusion of the service having many women members in order to join & pay. Therefore..
- soneca 2y ago
  No. Tinder and similar actually make dates happen, a lot. There are even a few niche ones where only the women can start a “match”.
  - Supermancho 2y ago
    In the last 10 years, I've noted when couples mention that they met on Tinder. It's getting to 50% ! This isn't necessarily married couples, but established relationships (1yr+), nonetheless.
    - flerchin 2y ago
      I don't doubt that this could be true. I also don't doubt that your comment could have been generated by a tinder-bot.
      - jefftk 2y ago
        With hundreds of reasonable non-Tinder related comments going back to 2018? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Supermancho https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Supermancho
        hollerith 2y ago
        I agree that the comments are too high in quality to have been generated by a bot. Also, no mentions of Tinder in any of the other of this last 30 comments.
    - cko 2y ago
      I met my wife on Tinder. In some countries Tinder is less a hookup app and actually a dating app.
jappgar 2y ago
Tinder had only been around for three years when AM was hacked. Presumably a lot of the data predates Tinder. Ashley Madison had been operating for ten years by that point
bena 2y ago
Also, it didn't require verification, so if you wanted, you could sign up any email address for it. And they would charge to delete the account. Which they didn't do regardless. So if you wanted to mess with someone, you could sign up their business email to Ashley Madison and have them receive regular notifications of "hot, married women in their area who are down to clown".
consumer451 2y ago
> Taking it one step further: Apparently the millions of male users were unable to tell this site apart from any of the "legitimate" dating sites like Tinder. When LLMs and gen AI started to become somewhat competent, I began wondering if a TikTok style app with 100% "AI" generated content could be successful. Most people here laughed at the idea, but reading things like this makes me think that it will become a thing.

Loughla 2y ago

This is just another example of the massive loneliness epidemic in today's world. If there is enough value in basic chat bots for the people using that site, this is a sad state of affairs (pun fully intended).

saagarjha 2y ago
I mean, these are presumably married men who were using it. So the problems might be a little more nuanced than just pure loneliness.
- thetoon 2y ago
  There is loneliness in marriage, sometimes.
afavour 2y ago
It really doesnt have anything to do with a loneliness epidemic. There wasn’t enough value in the basic chat bots, the idiots using the site considered that basic chat as a prelude to IRL sex with a real woman, a goal tempting enough to presumably blinker them to how basic the chat was. All of which is to say: no value, 100% scam.
- delichon 2y ago
  In other words, the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it. But those things do have value given that people pay for them knowingly.
  - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
    Yes, but porn and romance novel buyers know what they pay for. The AM users did not.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      fantasy is fantasy, it's what humans do. it's not a key element of a story that "this isn't real!", quite the opposite.
      - afavour 2y ago
        The point is that AM was not selling fantasy. They were selling the potential of real world hookups.
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    No. Did you read the GP? When you buy a romance novel, you don't think a real life person is going to come out of it and romance you. It's a transparent fiction.
  - afavour 2y ago
    > the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it It’s the “just without knowing it” part that makes it the scam.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  But a low effort scam, back then chat gpt was not a thing. They could at least connect the user among each other, censor/cutting conversations as soon as they reveal ones gender .. basically grindr, but with a scam on top.
sandworm101 2y ago
It isn't loneliness, just sex. That market has been around a very long time. Virtually every product advertised to men suggests the product might lead to sex, be them the pretty girls selling trucks/beer, or the bikini-clad models on the beach in every travel commercial. Ashley-Madison just cut out the pretense. Rather than buy the fancy car in hope of sex, men just paid a smaller amount for the hope alone. Dreams have value.
highcountess 2y ago
I agree, but would say it’s even far deeper than that. It’s the toxic culture that dangles images of baked women and values of transgression rather than how to communicate and build a healthy emotional relationship with someone that may not be perfect, among other things. If I recall the A.M. ads and site image correctly, it was also full of some hot woman with lush lips and skin showing, which is just an echo of the image men have in their minds, i.e., “I too can get that hot woman that the guy in fantasy world in the TV has”, when it was really even more than the journalist realized. It wasn’t just a bot farm, it was actually a male farm that harvested and monetized male dissociation from their environment and biological imperative.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  > baked women Sounds like you're mixing it up with 420Dates :)

lupire 2y ago

No need to read the "article" behind the clickbait content. New Scientist is a rag. This comment has all the article content, and is wholly unsurprising to anyone who used any dating sites and saw scame site ads over the past 20 years.

codedokode 2y ago

[flagged]

bsenftner 2y ago
I'll say it, the obvious no one wants to say: we've got a massive adult immaturity problem in our entire civilization. Not just men, but they're more able to act out their immaturity.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  It's funny you consider adultery to be a sign of immaturity.
  - bsenftner 2y ago
    Its damning you don't.
  - saintfire 2y ago
    I find the unfaithfulness being considered objectively abhorrent as a pretty narrow minded take but I'm curious why you don't think it's immaturity? As far as I know, just by nature of there being more short than long relationships, In most cases cheating occurs rather early; so its a massive waste of time for every party. Seems short sighted and immature to me. Not telling you you're wrong, just asking for a different take.
    - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      Outside the context or marriages I have no idea, but it appears in marriage, which is the context for Ashley Madison, cheating occurs when the marriage is well established, at about seven to years. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202308/does-infidelity-peak-in-the-seventh-year-of-marriage https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202... https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-married-people-wait-before-cheating-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-married-people-wait...

b3ing 2y ago

Match got in trouble for doing the same thing when your account was about to expire, you’d get a fake message to entice you to renew

jollyllama 2y ago

A lot of comments are saying things like "oh, we all knew this already." But a lot of the cultural discourse around AM completely misses or forgets this. A lot of prominent people were brought down by it, and it's treated in the context that they were talking to real partners, presumably because that's a bit more salacious than the sad truth.

dwighttk 2y ago
What’s the difference between talking to a real partner and talking to a bot if you’re dumb enough to think the bots are real?
- jollyllama 2y ago
  The way someone answers this question probably correlates to their opinion on police entrapment.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    First, flattened "cheating on your spouse" to "salacious lies" because they failed at it. Now, flattening "doing bad things is bad" to "supporting police entrapment." Beginning to think this is trolling.
    - jollyllama 2y ago
      I'm sorry it comes off that way. I genuinely think these are interesting distinctions. If I had to make an analogy, I would react differently if I found a bag of weed in a kid's backpack vs a bag of oregano that the kid was fooled into thinking was weed.
      - pc86 2y ago
        Somewhat related but if you're selling either one the court (in the US at least) will treat them the same. If you tell an undercover cop that you have cocaine and you sell them a baggie of baking powder, you'll get arrested and charged with selling cocaine.

steveBK123 2y ago

Isn't this the nature of most "dating" apps/sites? Men need the illusion of the service having many women members in order to join & pay. Therefore..

soneca 2y ago
No. Tinder and similar actually make dates happen, a lot. There are even a few niche ones where only the women can start a “match”.
- Supermancho 2y ago
  In the last 10 years, I've noted when couples mention that they met on Tinder. It's getting to 50% ! This isn't necessarily married couples, but established relationships (1yr+), nonetheless.
  - flerchin 2y ago
    I don't doubt that this could be true. I also don't doubt that your comment could have been generated by a tinder-bot.
    - jefftk 2y ago
      With hundreds of reasonable non-Tinder related comments going back to 2018? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Supermancho https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Supermancho
      - hollerith 2y ago
        I agree that the comments are too high in quality to have been generated by a bot. Also, no mentions of Tinder in any of the other of this last 30 comments.
  - cko 2y ago
    I met my wife on Tinder. In some countries Tinder is less a hookup app and actually a dating app.

jappgar 2y ago

Tinder had only been around for three years when AM was hacked. Presumably a lot of the data predates Tinder. Ashley Madison had been operating for ten years by that point

bena 2y ago

Also, it didn't require verification, so if you wanted, you could sign up any email address for it. And they would charge to delete the account. Which they didn't do regardless. So if you wanted to mess with someone, you could sign up their business email to Ashley Madison and have them receive regular notifications of "hot, married women in their area who are down to clown".

consumer451 2y ago

> Taking it one step further: Apparently the millions of male users were unable to tell this site apart from any of the "legitimate" dating sites like Tinder. When LLMs and gen AI started to become somewhat competent, I began wondering if a TikTok style app with 100% "AI" generated content could be successful. Most people here laughed at the idea, but reading things like this makes me think that it will become a thing.