Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilkkao | Hacker News Reader

If the boyfriend/girlfriend ratio is 60/40, they could almost just connect these people together.

That's romantic comedy stuff. Both sides believe they've hired a bot but have been secretly matched and are just talking to each other, to save costs. They are really happy with the "relationship" they have with the "bot". When they find out, they are outraged and sue the company...

Plot twist at the end: they are actually both replicants.

Bot talks to Bot talking to bot thinking bot is not bot but is actually bot. Bot is also talking to bot thinking it is not bot but is actually bot. Both bots find out Bot is bot but not bot. Both Bots bot. The net Bot is bot net. Bot-ception.

Edit: Bbbbwwwwoooooottttt. Oh, my brain.

Tell Alma, "The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

Hard to believe that movie is three and a half decades old.

Speaking of replicants getting interviewed by HR, another possible profitable relationship simulator, "The HR interview simulator" asking both classics such as "Can you describe how you solved a work or school problem?" and "What bugs you about coworkers or bosses?" and for an additional $10/month it adds "Mr Neckbeard McNed" to the conversation, who asks you to explain various algos randomly drawn from the Book of Knuth. "So I see you're applying to be a web page designer ... css, check, jquery experience, check, no Fields Medal or Nobel, thats something we kinda require here for writing our CRUD app, preferably both, but maybe we can make an exception just for you ... I was wondering if you could psuedocode the Hopcroft-Karp bipartite algorithm on the whiteboard for me. No pressure, I'll give you a minute or two. Or you can write it in Haskell, 6502 assembly, or APL, whichever you'd prefer."

There was a Swedish summer hit song with basically this premisse a few years ago. "Anna, the bot".

Boten Anna! such a classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQUsp-jxDQ

Haha, was that about this? 'Boten' sounds like 'boat' (and the Dutch equivalent, 'boot'), and so we had a cover in our language about someone who had a 'really beautiful boat' called Anna.

With his accent, it is the same in Swedish. Combined with the song playing way too much in commercial radio, it created some resentment. Someone on a festival had a sign saying "You have a boat up your ass".

Reminds me - still waiting for a season 3 of Äkta människor

Isn't that song about their IRC bot and how they love her because she kicks all the lamers from their channel and protects it from takeovers?

Here's a video with english subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7iU0GGVco8

EDIT: oh yeah at the end <SPOILER ALERT> it does turn out that she's really a human girl. </SPOILER ALERT>

Hey! At least write "spoiler alert"!

Basshunter (the artist) is famously geeky, another of his song's is "Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA" ("We're sitting in Ventrilo, playing DotA". If I remember correctly he performed at some gaming/esports event like DreamHack a few years ago, too.

"When they find out, they are outraged and sue the company..."

So knowing this possibility, write a disclaimer first! A generic one of course, that won't rise awareness in (the unlikely) case your clients actually bother to read something before signing up!

I used to work in the phone industry. If you're allowing users to message each other you need human moderators, otherwise you'll get death threats and bizarre fantasies carefully worded to get around any automated filter. If you're going to pay a human to read every message you might as well pay them to write them, it takes a similar amount of time and usually means better service.

Wait, you need human moderators between the customer and the bot? Why?

No, he is saying you need human moderators if you're connecting two users and letting them speak to each other.

Well, there's a limit what even a bot should take...

"Moderated dating" is an interesting idea by itself.

Where both sides have to conform to a very strict etiquette (platform rules), until they both decide to move their relationship to next level anyway. I can see how it can appeal to some people.

That is what a chaperone was in thethe past, many cultures still have that set of rules thing until a certain point.

I think a chaperone is primarily a safeguard against indiscretions. Their raison d'etre is to make sure nobody damages the goods before you have decided on a suitable match for your daughter. Which I find rather archaic.

Chaperon protects social values. Values can and often should change, but the chaperon is a tool that isn't as good or bad as the value it protects.

Seems like eHarmony might agree with you.

http://www.eharmony.co.uk/ehplus/

Seems a bit counterproductive to me!

Why would you choose to not have information about the other party, when you are trying to evaluate them?

Because you don't want to disclose your information.

So you are saying that I would want to use a "moderated dating" platform if I needed a very strict etiquette in order to conceal that I was a dick?

<s>Sounds like an attractive place to me!</s>

All dating sites are moderated, to some degree. At least the mainstream ones. I can't think of one where you start by posting your home phone and address and full name.

You start by sending messages, establish a relationship. Then you elevate it to messaging/calling via other platforms or real world meetings at your own pace.

It's not for concealing that you're a dick (well, it could be), it's more for protecting you from who knows how many people with who knows what intentions. It's not a guarantee, but it's a filter that works fairly well.

How could this protect anyone from anything worse than the occasional verbal abuse? Real bad people with real bad intentions will most certainly not be frustrated by some automatic word filter or a ban on dick pics. They will probably be the /last/ ones to do anything obviously fishy. You just can't be a sneaky bastard luring in innocent victims and an obvious prick at the same time. Unless you are doing some amazingly charismatic virtuoso double bluffing, I suppose. Or you're just looking for a willing victim looking for a perp. I think the whole idea is beyond stupid.

If you don't trust your evaluation function to be optimizing for your actual values.

I remember an interesting piece on the OKCupid blog where they said that they'd blanked out profile pictures for a special event (so people had to just look at what each other had written), and people who went on dates during that event rated their dates much higher.

One of the problems with this is that platforms have an incentive to use the platform rules for monetization - for example, by charging per message and restricting the ability to bypass the platform.

> If you're allowing users to message each other you need human moderators

Sooo Tinder reviews every message? or did I misunderstand your point

Tinder doesn't operate over SMS and so isn't subject to that particular regulator. I have no idea how Tinder deals with harassment/death threats/etc.

   I have no idea how Tinder deals with harassment/death threats/etc.

I have no idea either, but suspect part of the answer is "frequently"

No question that this holds if humans know that they are talking to other humans. But do you think the same is true for humans who think they talk to bots?

This will make a wonderful Turing Test, won't it?

And charge each of them 5$/week for the privilege of entertaining each other.

Dating isnt simply a matching problem... maybe these people don't want to connect with a real person?

Well then they could be fake couples together

Maybe this is what actually happens, but they don't tell anyone ;)

Have you considered that this might actually be what they're doing? ;)

So it's just a dating site, with the understanding that both parties just want a fake relationship?

Cool. The larger players should add that as a profile setting/filter.

Unless most of the clients want a fake significant other that would normally be "out of their league" for some definition of that term.

Likely the standards people in both groups have are higher than what they can obtain for whatever reason.

Like Ashley Madison, I'd bet the ratio is closer to 99/1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com