5 ms·

Romance website Match.com sued for $1.5 billion over 'unauthorized' photos

49 points by daegloe 13y ago

objclxt 13y ago
The complaint itself is here: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1585&context=historical http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
aquadrop 13y ago
Hm, why stop at $1.5 billion? $150 billion would be even funnier.
hkmurakami 13y ago
Is this a case where a lawyer reached out to people who would back him in his pursuit of a settlement?
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Quite an accusation : Match are acussed of - seed their database with fake profiles using photos of models to make their site more appealing. So many that they make the difference in their leadership of the US market - match use Russian/Nigerian scammers to do this - or at least knowingly allow the scammers to create enormous numbers of fake profiles (not too clear which choice) My view: yes this goes on, and the whole case hinges on how much effort match puts into cleaning its house on a regular basis .
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yuliyp 13y ago
I'm confused here. Why would match _want_ fake profiles on the site? Wouldn't that drive people away pretty quickly once they catch on that the hot chicks they're trying to talk to aren't what they seem?
- kristiandupont 13y ago
  Well for one, it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem that dating sites face when starting out. And I guess even with traction, you want people to feel like they are in "a crowded room", even if a bunch of the profiles don't respond back or flake.
  - draugadrotten 13y ago
    All dating sites do this. If you know of a single dating site that did not "seed" with model photos when it was started, I would be interested to know about it. badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious the online dating scene is big money and very poor ethics I'd like to see google dating - with a "don't be evil" motto
    - twister 13y ago
      PlentyofFish didn't and it's still the second largest after Match.com. A lot of the smaller niche dating sites you'll find started from a related website or network. Facebook, although not a dating website, afaik never created fake profiles.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago
      > All dating sites do this. That's not true at all. I know this for a fact. I > badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious I don't know the badoo guys personally, but I'm pretty sure they are working just as hard combatting fake model photos. It's not an easy solution, as you can't just say "Oh, look, let's ban everyone with this photo" because they will change photos constantly.
- thu 13y ago
  That attracts people to the site (fake profiles have nicer pictures), so they pay to be part of it. Not a lot of people see it is a fake profile at first. I have tried to use dating websites. Even on non-free ones, you can still register for free and see profiles. Whenever the picture is really nice, I use a small Firefox plugin called "who stoled my pictures" and find the picture is from someone else (models for instance). I don't know if those sites create the fake profile themselves, but they certainly do little to detect them. Usage of something similar to the "who stoled my picture" plugin would be quite effective (even used manually by their staff who goes through new profile to approve pictures anyway).
Brian_Curliss 13y ago
Lol, it must be difficult being sued for $1.5bn in a $2.1bn industry. http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises-Inc-v416/Dating-Services-6773764/ http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises-Inc-v41...
itsbits 13y ago
1.5bn!!!...they have to go bankrupt..
- gaius 13y ago
  Uhhh... Good? Okcupid did a great analysis on why match.com's business is fatally flawed, they took it down when match.com bought them out, but you can probably still find it.
  - philippelh 13y ago
    http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-fo...
    - dirkgently 13y ago
      That was an interesting read. Thanks for the link. It also confirms what I always thought about their 'model'.
  - mjmahone17 13y ago
    ... and now OkCupid is owned by Match.com, and took down said blog post.
arb99 13y ago
Some of the dating sites do worse than just steal pics. They hire cheap labor (3rd world) and using fake accounts send fake replies to guys (paying members). All under a ToS saying it is for entertainment purposes only. Match will just claim it was spammers and scammers, not done by match.com's in house team. There are companies set up out there that will populate a dating site with fake profiles. (I don't know their urls, but seen them before) I think there was also a UK documentary on scammy UK dating sites, on tv a little while ago. All using fake profiles of course.
- loceng 13y ago
  I don't know if Match.com incentivized this kind of behaviour, though it's very possible - however not sure that would make them liable, most likely they have in their ToS that they don't allow certain behaviours - but don't enforce it.
kyledrake 13y ago
I know a lot of the people that are in charge of removing these scammers (they're not really spammers as much) from OKCupid and Match. The idea that they are conspiring with these scammers is mind-blowingly insane. Why would they? Match makes plenty of money charging a highly legitimate subscription for their excellent service of helping us find people we love. What possible benefit would they get out of conspiring on western union money scams with morally and economically bankrupt people that consult witch doctors to gain internet fraud powers (I'm not making this shit up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc) and can barely type out english? My suspicion (without knowing or asking) is that the scammers are probably using profiles stolen from other people, and this crazy lawsuit lady/lawyer/seriously-who-gives-a-fuck decided that there was a conspiracy between the two, while the reality is that Match is working their asses off (especially on holidays like Thanksgiving because the scammers assume people are on vacation and double-time it) to ban the scammers from the site. Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. This is a hail-mary attempt by asshole lawyers to extract money from, unlike them, a productive industry that makes money from providing us with a useful service and doing a good job. If I was as big of a shithead as these people were, I would need about 1.5 billion dollars worth of opulence to forget how horrible I was too. If they're interested in suing scammers, they should sue themselves.
- dirkgently 13y ago
  Putting all other things aside, I know the incentive for the websites to outsource somebody to create fake profiles (see the comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194). But what's the incentive for the 'scammers'? How can they 'scam' people on match.com by creating fake profiles? By making them come all the way to Nigeria and rob them? Give me a break. I am not a big fan of the lawyers, but you sound too biased with statements like - "Match is working their asses off" "their excellent service", "piece of shit a piece of shit".
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Gathering info for a future scam? Match seems like a good vector to get people to divulge personal details that then make a later "it's your friend john, I'm stuck in the airport and need you to wire me some money" scam work. You could use Facebook, but I have no reason to tell people on Facebook details about my past. They're my friends, they already know. Dating sites are the best way to get a stranger to tell you something personal.
arbuge 13y ago
Let me see if I got this right... If the allegations are indeed true, this "part-time model" believes that fake pictures of herself posted on match.com have resulted in $1.5b of damage to her career? If I ever have daughters, I guess I should push them into part-time modelling...
- zecho 13y ago
  You didn't get it right. From the first sentence in the article: "A Florida woman has filed a $1.5 billion class-action lawsuit against online dating site Match.com..."
enraged_camel 13y ago
I had a friend who used to work for one of Match's competitors. He left when he learned of the unethical bullshit that goes behind the scenes. It's actually pretty awful. The fake profiles are almost always female because sites like Match.com are heavily male dominated - they're what you would call sausage-fests. To even out the numbers, the site hires contractors to create fake but plausible profiles of decently attractive women, which is not a hard thing to do. But it doesn't stop there. Let's say that you as a male user subscribe to the service and send out twenty beautifully-crafted messages to women who seem like good matches, and eagerly wait for a response. When none comes (since every decently attractive woman receives tens of messages everyday, and yours was just one of them), you lose your motivation. Just as you're about to cancel though, you receive a hopeful "nudge" or a "wink" from someone. Maybe you message back and forth a few times, enough such that you decide not to write off the site and allow your subscription to renew. What happened is that you got gamed. These sites are very good at algorithmicly determining "at risk" users and they target them heavily with attention from fake profiles to induce them to stay. Of course, nothing comes out of those interactions but that doesn't matter - the longer the site can string along the user, the more money it makes. My friend told me that ALL paid online dating sites (including Match) engage in this practice, which makes total sense. After all, you don't want users leaving your site in droves and signing up for the competition. You need to convince them somehow that they aren't total losers, and the best way to do that is to have a blond, 27-year old "Jessica" -- who loves dogs and just moved to the user's city and is looking for fun things to do -- give them some attention.

49 points by daegloe 13y ago

The complaint itself is here: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1585&context=historical http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

aquadrop 13y ago

Hm, why stop at $1.5 billion? $150 billion would be even funnier.

hkmurakami 13y ago

Is this a case where a lawyer reached out to people who would back him in his pursuit of a settlement?

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Quite an accusation : Match are acussed of - seed their database with fake profiles using photos of models to make their site more appealing. So many that they make the difference in their leadership of the US market - match use Russian/Nigerian scammers to do this - or at least knowingly allow the scammers to create enormous numbers of fake profiles (not too clear which choice) My view: yes this goes on, and the whole case hinges on how much effort match puts into cleaning its house on a regular basis .

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yuliyp 13y ago

I'm confused here. Why would match _want_ fake profiles on the site? Wouldn't that drive people away pretty quickly once they catch on that the hot chicks they're trying to talk to aren't what they seem?

kristiandupont 13y ago
Well for one, it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem that dating sites face when starting out. And I guess even with traction, you want people to feel like they are in "a crowded room", even if a bunch of the profiles don't respond back or flake.
- draugadrotten 13y ago
  All dating sites do this. If you know of a single dating site that did not "seed" with model photos when it was started, I would be interested to know about it. badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious the online dating scene is big money and very poor ethics I'd like to see google dating - with a "don't be evil" motto
  - twister 13y ago
    PlentyofFish didn't and it's still the second largest after Match.com. A lot of the smaller niche dating sites you'll find started from a related website or network. Facebook, although not a dating website, afaik never created fake profiles.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    > All dating sites do this. That's not true at all. I know this for a fact. I > badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious I don't know the badoo guys personally, but I'm pretty sure they are working just as hard combatting fake model photos. It's not an easy solution, as you can't just say "Oh, look, let's ban everyone with this photo" because they will change photos constantly.
thu 13y ago
That attracts people to the site (fake profiles have nicer pictures), so they pay to be part of it. Not a lot of people see it is a fake profile at first. I have tried to use dating websites. Even on non-free ones, you can still register for free and see profiles. Whenever the picture is really nice, I use a small Firefox plugin called "who stoled my pictures" and find the picture is from someone else (models for instance). I don't know if those sites create the fake profile themselves, but they certainly do little to detect them. Usage of something similar to the "who stoled my picture" plugin would be quite effective (even used manually by their staff who goes through new profile to approve pictures anyway).

Brian_Curliss 13y ago

Lol, it must be difficult being sued for $1.5bn in a $2.1bn industry. http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises-Inc-v416/Dating-Services-6773764/ http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises-Inc-v41...

itsbits 13y ago

1.5bn!!!...they have to go bankrupt..

gaius 13y ago
Uhhh... Good? Okcupid did a great analysis on why match.com's business is fatally flawed, they took it down when match.com bought them out, but you can probably still find it.
- philippelh 13y ago
  http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-fo...
  - dirkgently 13y ago
    That was an interesting read. Thanks for the link. It also confirms what I always thought about their 'model'.
- mjmahone17 13y ago
  ... and now OkCupid is owned by Match.com, and took down said blog post.

arb99 13y ago

Some of the dating sites do worse than just steal pics. They hire cheap labor (3rd world) and using fake accounts send fake replies to guys (paying members). All under a ToS saying it is for entertainment purposes only. Match will just claim it was spammers and scammers, not done by match.com's in house team. There are companies set up out there that will populate a dating site with fake profiles. (I don't know their urls, but seen them before) I think there was also a UK documentary on scammy UK dating sites, on tv a little while ago. All using fake profiles of course.

loceng 13y ago
I don't know if Match.com incentivized this kind of behaviour, though it's very possible - however not sure that would make them liable, most likely they have in their ToS that they don't allow certain behaviours - but don't enforce it.

kyledrake 13y ago

I know a lot of the people that are in charge of removing these scammers (they're not really spammers as much) from OKCupid and Match. The idea that they are conspiring with these scammers is mind-blowingly insane. Why would they? Match makes plenty of money charging a highly legitimate subscription for their excellent service of helping us find people we love. What possible benefit would they get out of conspiring on western union money scams with morally and economically bankrupt people that consult witch doctors to gain internet fraud powers (I'm not making this shit up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc) and can barely type out english? My suspicion (without knowing or asking) is that the scammers are probably using profiles stolen from other people, and this crazy lawsuit lady/lawyer/seriously-who-gives-a-fuck decided that there was a conspiracy between the two, while the reality is that Match is working their asses off (especially on holidays like Thanksgiving because the scammers assume people are on vacation and double-time it) to ban the scammers from the site. Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. This is a hail-mary attempt by asshole lawyers to extract money from, unlike them, a productive industry that makes money from providing us with a useful service and doing a good job. If I was as big of a shithead as these people were, I would need about 1.5 billion dollars worth of opulence to forget how horrible I was too. If they're interested in suing scammers, they should sue themselves.

dirkgently 13y ago
Putting all other things aside, I know the incentive for the websites to outsource somebody to create fake profiles (see the comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194). But what's the incentive for the 'scammers'? How can they 'scam' people on match.com by creating fake profiles? By making them come all the way to Nigeria and rob them? Give me a break. I am not a big fan of the lawyers, but you sound too biased with statements like - "Match is working their asses off" "their excellent service", "piece of shit a piece of shit".
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Gathering info for a future scam? Match seems like a good vector to get people to divulge personal details that then make a later "it's your friend john, I'm stuck in the airport and need you to wire me some money" scam work. You could use Facebook, but I have no reason to tell people on Facebook details about my past. They're my friends, they already know. Dating sites are the best way to get a stranger to tell you something personal.

arbuge 13y ago

Let me see if I got this right... If the allegations are indeed true, this "part-time model" believes that fake pictures of herself posted on match.com have resulted in $1.5b of damage to her career? If I ever have daughters, I guess I should push them into part-time modelling...

zecho 13y ago
You didn't get it right. From the first sentence in the article: "A Florida woman has filed a $1.5 billion class-action lawsuit against online dating site Match.com..."

enraged_camel 13y ago

I had a friend who used to work for one of Match's competitors. He left when he learned of the unethical bullshit that goes behind the scenes. It's actually pretty awful. The fake profiles are almost always female because sites like Match.com are heavily male dominated - they're what you would call sausage-fests. To even out the numbers, the site hires contractors to create fake but plausible profiles of decently attractive women, which is not a hard thing to do. But it doesn't stop there. Let's say that you as a male user subscribe to the service and send out twenty beautifully-crafted messages to women who seem like good matches, and eagerly wait for a response. When none comes (since every decently attractive woman receives tens of messages everyday, and yours was just one of them), you lose your motivation. Just as you're about to cancel though, you receive a hopeful "nudge" or a "wink" from someone. Maybe you message back and forth a few times, enough such that you decide not to write off the site and allow your subscription to renew. What happened is that you got gamed. These sites are very good at algorithmicly determining "at risk" users and they target them heavily with attention from fake profiles to induce them to stay. Of course, nothing comes out of those interactions but that doesn't matter - the longer the site can string along the user, the more money it makes. My friend told me that ALL paid online dating sites (including Match) engage in this practice, which makes total sense. After all, you don't want users leaving your site in droves and signing up for the competition. You need to convince them somehow that they aren't total losers, and the best way to do that is to have a blond, 27-year old "Jessica" -- who loves dogs and just moved to the user's city and is looking for fun things to do -- give them some attention.