OkCupid's “Removed” Visitor API
zdware.com
zdware.com
I haven't used OkC since then, but I thought I'd share that in the context of this blog post ;-)
Pet peeve of mine, but too many people don't even think about it and just procreate because it's part of the Standard Life Script™.
As is their right, and not to mention biological imperative. Ironically, people not wanting kids, will be marginalized in the gene pool (assuming the trait is genetic). But yeah, overpopulation, unsustainable food needs, etc, etc. To paraphrase Dr. House, M.D. - "There are only two things people get stupid for - Money and Sex" :P
Even people running the application in Gay Mode or loading other modules using the Gender Extension APIs run into this problem.
The site has changed quite a bit then. Now you would of never been able to message her unless she "liked" you.
5 miles in LA can be a long drive. So I wrote a chrome plugin to add additional drop down options of 0.1, 0.5 and 1 mile. I was surprised to see it work.
It was awesome.
There is also a hack to get the infamous “top X% of hottest people” feature unlocked... :)
This is a little fucked up:
You go through their rating game where you can rate people 1 to 5 stars.
(Optional): You rate everyone you find attractive five stars no matter how attractive because you’re going to need a way to differentiate later...
Go through and rate a bunch of ugly people four stars. A shit load.
When you get rated four stars or higher you get a notification. Those people usually come back and rate you. Hopefully four stars or higher.
So now you’ve crowd sourced ugly people to say you’re good looking but that ugly person is never going to get the feature turned on for them because nobody else is saying they’re good looking.
Now you show up to the hottest people and the hottest people show up to you.
I’ve done this a few times over the years with burner accounts to test it and new accounts just because I canceled an old one.
It takes a few hours of rating unattractive people. I usually just did it flipping through on the toilet for about a week.
If you don’t care about keeping track of the five star people you can just write a script to four or five star people at random And let it run overnight.
- If it starts showing you to unusually attractive people wont those people rate you unusually low until you reach some equilibrium?
- I would expect any feature determining the top most attractive should use a weighting of the raters (like PageRank)
- I would expect OKC to try to be optimizing for total matches: that means they should have some system for "you rate a certain cluster of people unusually high, we should direct you to that set of people since the other people you rate high are already saturated"
I assume it probably wouldnt work for Sloth Fratelli.
It may be impressively fast or unimpressively simple. We won't know for sure.
Disclosure: Paying OKCupid customer. I don't mind paying to support the service, it's provided ongoing value to us.
Aside from a token few they can blog about, what's their incentive to be successful?
Granted, I've never paid for a dating service. But the business model is much like Facebook's: get a bunch of free users to voluntarily give personal data about themselves, then sell that data to power users. There's a good degree of faith that online dating works in general (which is bolstered by successful matches), and some people are willing to pay for an advantage in finding someone (and in being found).
http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...
The issue is websites like match keeping profiles that are inactive or can't reply back.
I found Match to be very guilty of that. and on the app side, Bumble is the worst. Saw someone I knew from elsewhere on Bumble and I asked her about it. She seemed kind of surprised and said that she hadn't used it in almost a year. others have reported that too.. Bumble clearly leaves fake or abandoned profiles there for people to swipe on. it's very deceptive.
But yeah for those interested in more long term relationships, that's what happens. I cancelled my subscription after I went exclusive with someone.
Consider the goals for a dating website. Finding "the one" is hard; there's just too many factors. Even if you could put all the data gathering on the web for that, how many people would want to do it?
However, if a site is enabling the user to meet more people (and the right kind), I think they're delivering the most value they realistically can.
Value is in the eye of the beholder...
Those who are seeking committed long term relationships, yes, likely cancel.
Those who are seeking short-term/multiple relationships and would like a revolving door of them... subscriptions continue to renew.
Probably has a lot to do with the price points between 'casual' dating sites/apps like Tinder and OKCupid compared to something 'more serious' like https://www.itsjustlunch.com/ - where it _starts_ at $2,800.
The dating niche that OKCupid has traditionally filled has been non-monogamous relationships of various stripes
I figure most other paying people are either the same or looking to cancel their subscription once they find a long term partner.
Their incentive to help you find mates is so that future people will join the platform due to you saying "OkCupid worked for me."
I've seen too many 300+ lb women describe themselves as "average".
Is that a multi-user account? Or are you guys swingers or something?
I mean, it was obviously a bug, right? I imagine the only "explanation" would involve detailing the origin and nature of the bug which would be unwise until they've gone through all their other endpoints to ensure that there's not another instance of this same information leaking.
How can the developers behind an endpoint like this not confirm/test that it requires permissions/authentication to consume? (I mean, look at all that data...)
Amateurs I can understand - but OKCupid has been around long enough they shouldn't be employing people of that nature.
Is there no code review process?
This is just nuts.
And I will tell you on sprints where anyone is busy that team introduces something sloppy or nutty when one of us does not watch closely and ask, sometimes both. But when I point things out people are eager to roll it back.
Never attribute to evil that which comes from ... you get the idea!
It works so no one complains.
Are you implying that it's not outlanding for professional programmers to not have these things in mind?
> That's why it's so outlandish to me - I keep user data in mind all the time.
You keeping data in mind has no bearing on whether or not data leaks are outlandish. You don't seem to understand what the word means, tbh.
> Are you implying that it's not outlanding for professional programmers to not have these things in mind?
No, I directly implied that your real or feigned surprise at this happening makes it look like you don't understand the industry. If you're familiar with the industry it shouldn't be a surprise that this happens.
This way it's ruined for everybody, and they get nothing in return, except for some HN points on their blog post.
There was no real-world case where this data was useful in a non-creepy way.
That doesn't make it acceptable in any way.
I'd prefer that it was. This is clearly something that leaks personal information.
And, you know, some increased measure of privacy.
For some odd reason people seem to be concerned about all the private data they (willingly) give to these corporations leaking outside of the corporation proper as if it's a violation of their (misplaced) trust or something. Lots of that going around recently for...reasons.