Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech
paulefou.com
paulefou.com
If y'all haven't looked at it yet, read up on the FCC's filing against Match. They knowingly prompt up tons of fake profiles, to get you engaged. Horrifically this has lead to romance scams being the number one source of fraud in the US. I had one particularly scary experience and after that I don't use any dating apps.
But it's worked out very well, I did have to move to a new city too, but I've been able to meet so many amazing girls in real life. I'm also in a much better place emotionally, if you're staring at your phone constantly waiting for box to message you, that's not good for your mind. Your mind. It makes everything 10 times of stressful, for fraction of the benefit.
When I actually meet someone, It was always someone who is in their mid-20s to 30s without a job. In real life, everyone I've gone out with has had a decent job, due to another scary experience I don't go out with people who aren't working.
Overfitting is a modeling error in statistics that occurs when a function is too closely aligned to a limited set of data points. ... Thus, attempting to make the model conform too closely to slightly inaccurate data can infect the model with substantial errors and reduce its predictive power.
Alternatively, contextualizing things into niche stats frameworks doesn't make you correct, or sound intelligent.
The "it" being that the issue wasn't that they - and the future potential partners - didn't have a day job. And yet, this person chose that specific aspect of the relationship and elevated that to relevance for other relationships. Even further, they are applying this to people in other cities and geographies, amplifying the absurdity.
Maybe not. However,
- If they haven't been able to identify what the real issue _is_, AND
- Avoiding dating people that don't have a day job limits (or completely prevents) dating people that do have the real issue, AND
- Avoiding said people doesn't limit the number of available people to date below a reasonable threshold, THEN
- Using "doesn't have a day job" as a filter seems to be a reasonable compromise for them.
Sure, it may prevent them from finding the "best" match, since there could be a person without a job that doesn't exhibit the real problem. But it's possible that removing that filter would cause so much wasted time (on dates with bad matches) that the odds of meeting a good match, nonetheless the best match, as significantly diminished (as is QoL).
The first one is the vast majority of divorces are due to financial issues, my last partner left both of her husbands because they weren't making enough money. Her first husband didn't really want to work and they ended up moving in with her parents. A close family member had to break up with her husband since he wasn't working and kept overdrafting the joint account
The second reason, is this person who doesn't work is probably being supported by someone else.
Their sugar daddy's going to want to hurt you. I made the mistake once when I was younger of going out with a girl who didn't have a job, and this is basically what happened.
Finally, people with jobs tend to be much more straightforward.
You have a right to whatever dating criteria you choose. Some people won't date someone whose below a certain height. It's easier to fill out a job application than to become taller.
thats the absurdity
Do you think twitter would be dealing with 10 million twitter bots if they had a five dollar account creation fee? Do you think smurf accounts for harassment would be nearly as widespread if every ban cost the troll $5 of their real money?
There still are lots of issues with smurf accounts though, again, there's a sort of barrier to entry in that extremely new and low karma accounts can get their comments [dead]'d very trivially.
Tinder could argue that the shadow banned user is still paying to have the "Tinder Experience"... though, again, I think the difficulty would be arguing that this aligned with service expectations from the customer.
Contracts can't be completely one-sided - they must provide some sort of consideration to each party - but they can be extremely one-sided. Often times if your company is changing their vacation policy or other key employment benefit all the employees will receive a one or five dollar bonus - that bonus is because you're signing on to a contract where you're literally just giving up benefits so there's a legal requirement to give you something in exchange.
We seriously need better consumer protection against Dark UI tactics.
Last I read tinder is like 70% men, and it turns out women only swipe right on the top 5% most attractive.
The app knows whether someone is a subscriber or not. The app should show the appropriate UI for subscribers, with detailed instructions on how to cancel their subscription. Additionally, if they have the user's phone number and/or email (they definitely do), text them and email them the cancellation instructions.
Do you have any records or writings documenting your experience?
For documenting my experiences, I have photo album on my phone. Can show it to someone physically, or send pictures on Whatsapp for example.
Works for me, anyway.
* Select communication channels (Slack/Signal/etc)
* Reading books offline (I download them in advance)
* Bus pass
* Flashcards
* A couple of offline ad-free games
I deny push notifications on all apps without exception. If someone needs to get hold of me, they have my number.
With this approach, I feel like my phone is a value-adding tool rather than feeling like it's tethering me to anything I don't want to be part of.
The person uses their phone for contained things that are not likely to cause a faux-social-reward-cycle.
I'm hoping going forward to have phone free weekends where I just shut the thing off and listen to a simple FM radio on my walks.
No, you can only definitively say it's was the best decision you made for your mental well being. With the plausible suggestion that it might be good for some others, also.
There is certainly value to resiliency and judiciously making the most advantage of each new trend in communication, however.
My view, not every relationship in the world is to be deeply meaningful or productive. I am happy if I get a nice thought or new angle from this blobs-of-text site.
For example, is it worse than watching TV/cable/netflix/gaming/multiplayer gaming/crafting hobbies/reading books etc etc?
To answer my own question, I think Social Media is worse than the other options mentioned above and so I have long drifted off FB. And most of my friends on FB are continuing longstanding relationships.
But I don't know the studies on that and I am willing to accept that different people do things differently.
For example, on this site, I like the intelligent responses, thought provoking discussions, sometimes amazing recommendations on any number of topics. But I don't feel I need to be friends with any particular individual to benefit from that nor contribute to it.
The other important difference is between using social media sites as "literature" (i.e. not interacting with it but just consuming its thought-provoking and useful content, as you mention) and as a conversational medium. The former - in the absence of obviously harmful content like people showing off and then comparing oneself to them, or outrage porn, ect - is as far as I'm aware harmless and has a similar profile to reading in general.
But the constant one-off interactions, like this? It hits different. We know that consistent interaction with the same person - even if it is light meaningless interaction - has benefit. One study that comes to mind is of the daily interaction between customer and cashier every morning at the coffee shop. Believe it or not that has a statistically significant (though by no means large) positive effect on a person's mental state. Deep personal one-off conversation in person also have a significant benefit, at least in the short term.
But this - whatever this is - generally doesn't. Of course everyone is different, and obviously not everyone uses it exactly the same way, so there are outliers. But also human beings are talented at lying to themselves about the effects of things on them, often in the direction of exaggerating or inventing a benefit (and also failing at the afore-mentioned differentiation between pleasure and happiness). That's one of the big problems that researchers in outcomes studies on any number of things have to deal with. Objective observer and close other ratings of a person's happiness after say therapy or anti-depressants are often wildly less rosy than the person's self-report. We humans are often not good at being honest with ourselves.
But you are right about the "attention economy" context. We - near worldwide it seems - have little perfected the art of leisure. Our institutions have failed us, and we in turn have created little to take the place of the old ways. Our choices are too often between similarly poor options. That's probably why work and over-work have remained as popular as it has - what lies outside of it is too often stupefying. Which is one reason why I'm here now, talking with you, embracing (or stomaching) this momentary pleasure in what is perhaps a trade-off with a bit of my happiness.
I feel we could go listing more things around social media and this post could go on forever. But I won't, because of the below.
Every person is acting in their own perceived self interest. Including me.
So for myself, because of many of the reasons you state, I largely gave up on FB. I think I am better off for it due to more meaningful real world interactions.
But then with a social group in the real world space do I need to continue adding friends all the time via HN? Not really. Cue Seinfeld "I'm sure you're a very nice person you seem to have a lot of potential, but we're just not hiring right now." Maybe I am doing myself a disservice by not "socially climbing" but honestly at some point, I can only do so much. I love the people I do, and I am content with that.
But - like the world in general - HN as a site has some amazing people. And what I glean from this site through "literature like" reading I feel benefits me.
And then, like you, I comment occasionally - in the vein of HN trying to make it a positive contribution - so as to try to return to someone else a similar benefit as I feel I have received. I try not to be trite. I try not to worry as to whether a comment is well received as long as I have tried to make a decent contribution. I don't always succeed of course, and maybe that's where the detriment sets in.
But - despite the evidence that social media is only good for pursuing deeper and more meaningful relationships - I don't feel I need to be a particular friend of yours to try add a thoughtful reply. It doesn't mean I love you any less however. Hell, maybe a meaningful relationship will develop of it's own natural accord as we both live on. But it's not my aim.
Have a great day, whether you celebrate Xmas or not.
See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X2...
And: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-...
https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr407158
But there are a minority of folks on either end of the spectrum. On the negative side, specific types of personalities, attachment styles, and so on can suffer significantly on the internet and especially on social media. The media loves these studies, there’s a ton and they are easily found so I’ll just refer you to scholar.
Then there are groups of people that gain from the internet. The few studies that have bothered to investigate how people use their time online and in social media in detail have found that talking to internet randos in one-off fashion does not help, but that - and I’ll quote here:
“When people use social media in a truly social manner (i.e., actively interacting with meaningful social relations in a way akin to in-person social interactions) it was positively associated with psychological well-being. We propose this is because truly social usage promotes meaningful social relations, which result in positive psychological consequences such as reinforcing one’s identity, feeling valued, and mitigating stressful situations. Yet, when people use social media in other ways (e.g., passively engaging with weakly connected others, celebrities, brands, companies, or strangers typically for entertainment purposes) it does not influence psychological well-being. Therefore, how and how much people use social media has implications for their psychological health.” (in https://www.msi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MSI_Report_21...)
Of course this is but one study, and an as-yet unpublished one (though it appears well-designed). A meta-analysis from 2017 using this as a frame though backs this up here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09637214177308... - and a more recent though poorly written one generally mirrors it: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6787....
Another recent study - this time on the 60+ crowd - found “answering questions online were positively related to depressive symptoms” and looking at photos of non-family members on social media was associated with anxiety (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/146144482110543...)
Then there’s the work of Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen, in which he focuses on who exactly gains from their time on the internet and how - and how this in turn perpetuates inequality. You can find his work here: https://research.utwente.nl/en/persons/alexander-jam-van-deu...
But the foundation of the argument for me lies more in the research on what contributes to happiness and well-being, and which of those variables can be realistically gained from time on the internet and social media. What in the long term will make a difference in a person’s life? And invariably the most impactful outcome is the formation of an offline friendships and so-called "social capital". Which appears to generally be a rare thing - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118080263543... - though it does happen, and it seems self-disclosure is a key to that (among other things) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/146144481985874....
There’s more research that can be brought to bear on this, but that at least may provide a start for your own inquiry.
From what I gathered from glancing over a few of the links given, my own takeaway right now is “it’s complicated” since the effects on an individual seem to be mostly determined by the type of interaction as well as who you’re interacting with.
The thing to reflect on is who you are: You are to some extend the way others see or experience you. The way you carry yourself or present yourself depends a lot on that perception.
You've changed into an entirely different creature communicating like this. We all have! All parts of humanity have changed as a rssult with huge implications.
I suppose I wish I wanted to go back. I'm still trying to figure out where we are and where we are going with this. If I wanted to go back it would mean I had that all figured out.
We get to bring non of our expensive cloths or other status symbols to the conversation, no race, sex, age, violence, leverage or accountability.
The diffence is mind blowing.
The HN kangaroo court is already hilarious but the trial by robots is many times more commical. People now build their lives on platforms that may erase them at any moment for no reason at all.
Is everything I wrote here advertiser friendly or constructive for the HN tech crusade to progress? I've never had such constrains on my personality. A new world where being generous, kind and helpfull simply isnt enough?
I could go on for days but im going to have to attend to the push notifications now. haha
I was wondering about this recently but so far unable to unplug. Wish it was a tad easier
There is a difference, between going online conscious, when you turn on the computer - or a stressful always being half online with the phone in hand or pocket.
I have a smartphone, but I regulary have it off for longer periods. That helps.
But I'm glad your decision worked out for you :)
In theory with a basic phone you have some inferior options (like calling a cab company and praying until the cab arrives), but in practice the world has moved on.
When you grow up without a phone, you prepare more than you have to now. You just learn the streets so you don't need a map app. Bring a jacket in case you break down and have to walk. Carry a can of 'fix-a-flat' in the car or a plug kit to take care of flat tires.
I'm too set in my ways to change.
Imagine that Alice runs a service where you can send people greeting cards.
Bob decides he's going to use this service to cause trouble and instead of normal greeting cards, he sends people messages with hate speech, such as their race, their religion, says he hoped they get cancer, and so on.
Alice sees Bob is doing this and it violates her TOS on the service, so she cancels his account.
Should Bob get a refund?
If he does, then Bob will have used Alice's system to do bad things in a way that actually costs him nothing. He's costing Alice administrative fees and regular costs.
That's why ToS violations should generally not trigger a refund.
I can imagine a scenario where you need to login to cancel your subscription, but can't login because your banned. A while back Tinder was trying to bypass the Google Play subscription system so this is very possible.
In particular, it seems likely the author in this case got caught by an algorithmic badness detector or may have violated the TOS in some minor technical way rather than being abusive. I'm counting the latter as a false positive in this case; that's no way to treat a paying customer. People who know what they did don't usually blog about getting banned and post it to HN.
Chargebacks are an effective way to punish companies for this behavior.
Yes - Bob should be returned a pro-rated amount based on the amount time he originally paid to use the service for and the day his account was terminated.
EX: If Bob paid for a month, and Alice cancels him on day 5, Bob should be refunded approx: (30 - 5)/30 * (Cost of subscription).
You do not get to charge people for a service you are no longer providing them.
You're NOT refunding him, you're terminating the contract that allowed you to charge him in the first place. So you bill for time used and return the rest.
In the case of Tinder banning someone, they should automatically cancel the subscription because the customer no longer have access to what they're paying for, and if there's a part of a month left they should refund the value of that. Companies should not be allowed to issue 'punishment' to customers. That's what the criminal justice system is for.
This is not a hard problem. Companies should only charge for the service they provide, and if they choose to withdraw that service they shouldn't take any money for what the user can't use.
Why not? Contracts with penalties are very common.
Subscriptions should be cancelled when an account is banned but it's not obvious to me why there should be a refund. Subscription services usually don't allow for partial refunds when you cancel. If you force companies to refund in case of a ban, you need to force them to allow cancellation at any time with the same refund.
You think a contract where one party can unilaterally cancel, present no evidence to anyone, and keep the money paid is somehow fair and just?
This is what courts are for, and the fact they aren't involved here is the basic problem.
You can learn the article and learn what happened. We are not talking about things in general, but about this particular situation. Basically, it's pure theft. But since the amount is so low, nobody will sue them. In this way they can scam thousands of people and go unpunished.
If someone says you stole something should we ask you for proof that you did and if you fail to provide proof should we say you are being shady by not answering?
Imagine that Alice purports to run a service where you can send people greeting cards. Bob decides that he's going to use this service to send greeting cards. Alice takes Bob's money, and never sends any greeting cards. When Bob asks why the greeting cards weren't sent, Alice claims a TOS violation and cancels Bob's account. In some cases, Alice may not even provide sufficient information to dispute a claim, such as when Alice's own proprietary anti-fraud or anti-cheat algorithms have a false positive.
Should Bob get a refund? If he doesn't, Alice has no incentive to provide the actual service or to avoid false-positives. She's costing Bob the subscription fees, but can unilaterally decide whether or not to provide the agreed-upon service.
That's why TOS violations should always trigger a refund.
1. If Alice expected users to send 2 cards a day and charges a per day rate appropriate to that usage and Bob floods her with 1000 requests a day for a week then that mistake is wholly on her. If you have a per use cost and you charge per day you need to add some kind of rate limiting.
Could this have something to do with subscribing through the App Store? Maybe there is something in Apple's ToS, or some limitation in their billing API that prevents them from doing this.
To carry this thought exercise more, someone structuring this system could also treat hot/responsive/engaged profiles as an asset of retention and intentionally matchmake the results to optimize for a system to be engaged (vs to matchmake two people who find love and unsubscribe after).
Sounds like 'outright foul play' to me. Vs. what, bully for them they saved the genuine matches to the time that was most profitable, my custom most at risk? That's not foul play?
(Maybe I should disclaim I've never used any of this, so my standards are high/low/irrelevant, but ...)
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22423410/apple-hulu-subscr...
I may be unfamiliar with the terminology, but can you please explain what this means? What is "box" in this context?
I can understand someone being hesitant but it's not always a red flag.
My personal one from my days of being single, no “cat people”. I’m a “dog person”. I like cats but the slight personality difference between me identifying as a dog person and the people I’ve known who identify as a “cat person” is enough that it just sounds like a waste of my time.
Online dating sites/apps seem like they'd be a nightmare.
For every happy story used for supporting said model, there are literally billions that did it the old fashioned way.
So right now it's pretty much considered impolite / not socially acceptable to ask someone out except on dating apps. This is definitely a downside.
But the upside is that a match on a dating app is an explicit acknowledgement of mutual interest, so it's clear that you're meeting up to go on a date and not just hanging out.
Says who?
Says who? Have you stepped out during a weekend in a US metro city? To popular nightspots? No app needed to meet and socialise with attractive people - strangers or an extended social circle. In fact some might even say it is like shooting fish in a barrel
If by “some” you mean females in their mid-20s, then yeah probably.
Just make a move in real life
The problem with dating app is exactly what you mentioned: if you both know you're there to date or fool around there's no uncertainty, no tension.
You're missing out on the feeling on trying to pickup a beautiful girl and succeeding.
Besides, girls, unlike boys, compete mainly on looks. It's natural dating app will break the balance in favor women, and that's exactly what happens. Men have a tenth of the matches and are selected by women according to beauty standards instead of being evaluated by their behaviour, providing a terrible filter for dating. If in person you had a chance with some jokes and some confidence, you'll never pass the selection with that nose.
I read this article (a long time ago) about a NYC girl who was saying that investing $30/mo on a Match.com account was the best investment she had made, as it meant she'd get treated to top restaurants, etc. by the guys for free.
https://la.eater.com/2019/1/17/18186932/dine-dash-dater-arre...
Despite "feminism", women can easily get a free dinner out of a date.
I have a friend who got into dating (think a different girl every night) and had a budget in the thousands per month just for dates.
> Tinder may terminate your account at any time without notice if it believes that you have violated this Agreement. Upon such termination, you will not be entitled to any refund for purchases.
> For residents of the Republic of Korea, except in the case [...], we will without delay notify you of the reason for taking the relevant step.
They openly say in advance that they'll ban users who they think violated their terms, regardless of whether they actually did, keep their money, and never tell them why, except in South Korea where they already know that crap doesn't fly. It's only a matter of time till that gets thrown out by more courts in more countries. Until then, it seems foolish to give them any money.
This is definitely not true.
> Even the norms around dating, picking people up in bars, etc. are changing because of these apps
This is true.
> so it's harder to find people in the real world.
This is sort of true.
By not using a dating app, a single person is relegating themselves to how things were pre-app. Some of those pre-app options are less common now, other new ways are more common.
The apps widened the dating door for certain people, specifically for people who are not particularly keen on getting out and meeting people (probably quite a few folks like that on HN) as well as people who are looking to get married asap[1]. That said, for people who get out and do things, meeting people to date is not difficult at all. Getting banned from Tinder for those folks is, at worst, a loss of a time filler activity (swiping).
I will also add that, of the apps, tinder might be one of the worst in terms of quality match ups.
[1] Apps are also good for highly desirable dates since their pool goes from big to biggest, but those folks aren’t really the topic here since they aren’t short on access to dates with or without an app.
[0] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-popular-w...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/06/10-facts-ab...
That said, as the post I originally responded to suggested, I don’t think that getting banned from Tinder or any dating app in particular is a “big deal”. Maybe a minor inconvenience for most people, but it’s not like someone who gets banned from Tinder is doomed to a life without dates.
And yet you admit
>I didn’t bother checking results. Both are US-centric.
...
You need to let the Stanford Professor and Pew Research know they're unqualified to perform research. :S
And I don’t know the author of the second article personally, but if I did of course I would point out an issue with their data.
> methodology is buried in a separate article
It's an EXPLICIT footnote! See "Note; Here [is the report's] metholodgy."
> Methodology of the second article is flawed (you want to know whether people meet online, so you ask people online, great technique)
The methodology goes into statistical techniques to control for biases (e.g. language, gender identity, sampling method, etc.) See Methodology > Weighting about what they did with their ~5k responses.
There was a thread on Reddit a few months ago where people were asking bad places for men to approach women. It was basically
Work
School
Gym
Church
Any place you go for hobby
Public transport
Shops
Bars
Anywhere outside at night
Parks
The consensus was basically the women on this Reddit thread don't want men approaching them in any way whatsoever that isnt a dating app. All alternative s were creepy. Now Reddit is mostly young and American, so who knows.
Dating in the US seems crazy.
If over 50% of people (and growing) say their relationship started on OLD, it's easy to say you're limiting your options by not participating [0]
[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/06/10-facts-ab...
A does not in any way imply B. I strongly doubt that a non-negligible number of OLD users restrict themselves to using only OLD and automatically reject in-person advances. OP's "options" are still the same as before: all the singles in his physical meatspace.
Huh? What are [A] and [B] in this situation?
> I strongly doubt that a non-negligible number of OLD users restrict themselves to using only OLD and automatically reject in-person advances. OP's "options" are still the same as before: all the singles in his physical meatspace.
You're assuming that a non-trivial number of people who use OLD aren't exclusive to OLD. Who's taking issue with that?
OTOH, saying that one's set of available dates is unchanged by foregoing OLD is deeply flawed. You even mention "physical meatspace" which OLD directly overcomes.
I just skimmed the article, but it seems to say that even among the youngest age group only 48% have used dating apps and only 17% were in resulting relationship.
I've just given up on finding a wife/partner. My options are just... bad.
I've been traveling around the world the last few years and have had no problems finding casual hookups and longer term relationships. I'm currently dating a beautiful Colombiana. I would have thought she was out of my league if I was still living in the US.
What do you mean?
I'd suggest traveling like I have to southeast Asia, Europe and latin America for extended periods of time and see for yourself.
The lesbian dating market is a bit different. ;)
My advice is specifically for men because thats my lived experience.
It made being young much less pleasant than it ought to be, plus it means that we were a bit old when we had children..
The best places for dating for a south asian male would be southeast asia, turkey and latin america. White guys definitely have an advantage when going after women that specifically want a foreigner. We're able to get the ones that would otherwise prefer to date within their own country.
I had some success in europe but it was hit or miss. I'd say it was a pretty neutral experience, I felt like the deck wasn't stacked for or against me on average. latin america on the other hand was where I had my best prospects.
In my experience, latinas in colombia love the way we look. If I asked 10 women on a date, I'd easily get at least 8 to say yes and show up while white foreigners I met in medellin would frequently complain that colombians were flakey and prone to cancel at the last minuite. The exact kind of behavior I'd get from white women in america. These days I have one that I absolutely adore so I'm off the dating market but every day I'm shocked that I have her because living in america drove into my head that someone as smart and beautiful as her was completely out of my league..
The other is that I work in politics plus have a politically-diverse family and so I would need a partner who is comfortable being around and loving people who disagree with them politically. Many LGBT people in queer nerd spaces like Tumblr, fandom spaces, art spaces, etc. prefer to live in a political filter bubble (I'm not judging if it's for mental health reasons; I think people have the right to associate with whomever they want), and that's not compatible with my life direction or values.
Being a statistical minority within a statistical minority is exhausting sometimes. I'm super happy you and your fiancee found each other, though! I hope you have a wonderful wedding and many happy years together.
And no LGBT bars in my area. I am NOT a big city person. I gave it the good old college try. I tried multiple countries and coasts, even, but nope. I'm a small city person. I like my hometown. It's dope and the cost of living is low.
I understand why so many people believe this. But pro tip: if you want to opt out of dating apps, the key is to learn the skill of asking for what you want.
Ask the cute person at the coffee shop if you can have their number. Ask the person who's number you got out for a date. Ask the person you're on a date with if they want to kiss, etc. There is an art to successfully asking for things, and you have to get comfortable with people sometimes saying no, but the key really is that simple: just ask!
It's actually easier in real life to get a date with someone you find interesting, because you're not limited by who the algorithm decides to show your profile to, you're only limited by your willingness to ask.
Picking up dates in real life is not only still completely doable, but probably easier these days due to the sheer lack of competition from men who just have no idea how to do it.
Content providers should have the right to cease service to customers who don't abide by their terms. I don't feel that's unreasonable. But, consumers need recourse for the monetary investment. I'd strongly support a law worded something like: Digital service providers who sell transactional content & goods must either (1) offer the goods in an exportable, unencumbered, similarly accessible & functional format, or (2) at the time of service-provider initiated account termination, for any reason, reimburse the user for the full cost of goods purchased.
Many companies would argue: "we don't have the money anymore, we had to pay rights holders." I'd respond, that sounds like a You problem, and maybe you should consider clause (1). "The rights holders won't go for it"; again, that's a You problem. Work it out, or lose money; that's what consumer protection laws are for. They're not to protect your revenue streams.
Some gaming companies would be especially hurt by this, because of the prevalence of blank-check anticheat enforcement and their general inability to meet clause (1) due to the latest Fortnite cosmetic not really being "equally functional" outside the context of Fortnite. Well, I'd first respond: Your reliance on unjust business operating practices is a You problem. But more critically: maybe this will be the kick in the butt these companies need to invest more heavily into more accurate & functional anti-cheat, better customer support, and even new innovative revenue models. I've long felt that gaming has underutilized subscription services, and preyed too heavily on "free to play, pay $100 for the cool stuff later". Battle passes are kind of like a subscription service, and if the terms & expectations of the purchase are rephrased to be more service-like, rather than transactional-like, its reasonable to me that those should escape the law.
The best argument against a law like this is: consumers can, of course, break a company's terms at any time they wish. Most choose not to. But if they wanted to, the purchases with a content provider become something like a bank account, which they can utilize as they wish for as long as they wish, then get a full refund. Response: First, I think this should drive companies to clause (1). There's an out; you just need to work with the rights holders and accept that piracy will happen whether or not you try to control it. Second, again I think it comes back to mixing metaphors; Fortnite sells Goods, but they're only functional within the context of the Fortnite Service. Maybe they should sell the Service, and include the Goods. Third, this is a gap that insurance feels well-suited to help cover. Fourth, I think this would drive more companies to better KYC, so if anyone pulls this, at least they can only pull it once. That's not a bad thing.
The point should be to align what customers expect with what providers sell. If Netflix cancels your account, it sucks; but you don't feel slighted. It was a service; you understood that if you stopped paying, the service goes away. In comparison, the goods Apple sells (Apps, Movies, Books, etc) feel a lot more like going to the DVD isle in Best Buy; and its not ok that companies are allowed to slight customers like they do.
It’s the digital age. My digital items are my possessions. This dichotomy in your head between the “real” and the “digital” doesn’t exist for the younger generation. There are few alternatives to these large tech companies. As I’ve gotten older I’ve wisened up and I buy DRM-free digital goods where possible (because of people who think like you, that big corporations need to be protected from the little people and not the other way around)… but before I got wise, I built up quite a large steam, Apple Books, and Kindle library (all of which call what we are doing “purchasing”… heads they win tails we lose).
That's a weird way to put it. It may not exist "for" someone, but as you seem to acknowledge, it exists "for" numerous corporations and legal systems which even those someones are subject to. I thought this was the primary purpose of NFTs. An NFT physically cannot be revoked without the permission (coerced or otherwise) of the holder, or a fundamental problem in encryption.
And just so other people don't get confused by this pretty misleading hyperbole:
" The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. "
source: https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
No judge is going to weigh what the "buy" button omits over what the EULA actually states. If anyone has an example of a digital content service with an EULA that DOESN'T contain this kind of verbiage I would be fascinated to see it.
Right, but that's my point (as the original poster). 100%, a judge should say "terms are terms, company is in the right"; we need new laws to protect consumers. By and large, consumers don't understand how digital is different; that it isn't ownership (in fact, arguably, consumers don't even understand that when they buy a bluray, that also isn't ownership in a legal sense; but it is ownership in common parlance). Whether these service providers would still see such success, if they did, is an unknown quantity; they probably would, but it can't be known. What is known is that consumers are (rarely) being shafted, with no recourse, because they agreed to something they didn't understand; it doesn't occur to most people that Apple even has the power to ban accounts, and take all their content with it.
Counter-argument: "Well, people should read the EULAs and understand it". Oof. First: the EULA may say "we have the right to revoke access" but that means nothing without the context of how, why, and how often it happens. These companies have not demonstrated even the BASIC DECENCY to EXPLAIN THEMSELVES when they ban users, let alone publish reasonable information about how often it happens. The statements in the EULA are useless without this context, because it enables savvy consumers to compare their statements with their own risk profile to make informed decisions. But, second: arguing this point is basically saying "dumb people deserve to be preyed on by international gigacorporations". Most people don't understand what this language means; in many cases, it seems to be written specifically so it can't be understood without a law degree.
Counter-argument: "Account termination & content revocation is rare, so whatever." Well, this point defeats itself, but think about it this way: If its so rare, then why not protect consumers? Companies will oppose it, of course, but they're arguing from the ground that its so rare that enforcement of this law wouldn't hurt them. If they hurt consumers, it'll hurt them. If they don't, it won't.
The narrative is getting twisted here; its not that consumers should have "irrevocable ownership" over a digital good you buy on, for example, Steam. Well, the NFT crowd would say you should, but let's ignore them. The assertion is: there should be fair and equitable recourse for when a service provider decides to revoke your access to the service which distributes the content you purchased. That recourse would ideally be met by simply unshackling the content from the service provider; the ability to play Steam games without being connected to Steam, for example. However, short of that, reimbursement is fair. It would absolutely hurt companies in this day and age of "terminate accounts for any reason, sometimes no reason, whatever the system decides" but THAT'S THE POINT. Companies only speak money. The point is to make termination hurt them, so they're forced to think more critically about how & why they terminate.
I understand that you may value digital goods. I have some I value too. You just need to understand that just as with physical goods, even more with digital ones - if you don't control it, you haven't bought it. If somebody could just come and take your car, any time for any reason, you haven't bought a car. If somebody can just come and take your game anytime for any reason - you haven't bought a game. You bought a ticket to play it, maybe, but that's wholly other business.
I understand this well enough to at least keep offline backups of my paid content libraries (because I’m older and can afford the expense). Yeah, because of DRM it may be troublesome to access the content if my account was banned… but it gives me more ground to stand on (with our current unjust laws, both in court and in the court of public opinion) if I only claim that the content I already downloaded should still be accessible.
Your car analogy is interesting… If your car was paid off but got repossessed later because you said something nasty about the dealership on a forum, that would be a gross miscarriage of justice, even if they buried a clause deep in their sale terms granting themselves such an unconscionable right.
Also randomized lootboxes should be subject to gambling laws, or at least regulated such that you can’t get duplicates or something reasonable like that.
So yeah, regulate it as gambling. Don't let them advertise to minors. Don't allow them to knowingly let minors participate.
if [Tinder] *believes* that you have violated this Agreement
Until AIs win person-hood, there is no 'thinking' involved in this process. But I wonder if there is any case history on challenging the terminology used to describe these situations.
I feel that these systems should be using something more akin to applitools, which flags discrepancies between real and expected, and then a human rejects or accepts the report on a line item basis. You can still screw up and click yes when you meant no, but at least you have a chance at getting a human involved before doing anything dire.
Illegal business practices are not made legitimate because they were proscribed by the ToS.
... which may, indeed, be the right solution.
So supporting this would require a company to take all manner of new precautions that companies currently don't (circuit-breaker on the new account creation system? But then your growth stalls and your potential customers go to a competitor instead, and you don't blow up into a YouTube or a Twitter like YouTube and Twitter did).
In law, a grace period is a time period during which a particular rule exceptionally does not apply, or only partially applies.
... not to imply it's a bad idea; there's no golden rule that says an ecosystem of millions of competing companies is always a superior alternative to a few well-regulated players. It's just important to note the hidden costs.
You can't provide an online service while refraining from providing an online service.
If you have humans doing the bans manually, then you already have a human in the loop.
Oh no! Then they can't fake growth.
Sometimes regulation is needed
Plastic in the ocean is definitely a huge problem, but it's not a market problem - not yet. When consumers are willing to pay to get plastics out of the ocean, hundreds of companies will appear eager to solve the problem.
There's a comment above (@pdpi: "At what timescale?") that identifies the issue at hand. In this case (and in a lot of cases) we need regulation because market demand to solve this isn't fast enough (or may never exist)
How many more years of recurring "got randomly blocked from the App Store/Play Store/Facebook Ads/whatever other mission-critical service" posts on Hacker News do we need before the market corrects itself?
How, if there is no competition?
Is Tinder a dating service or social media company? If Facebook starts offering a dating feature in app and becomes the biggest player in the dating space, which market is facebook in? Both? If both, does all of facebook's market cap/DAU/whatever metric we settle on to measure market share get fully applied to both markets or split in some way?
Basically, I think implementing "if $market_share > n" is not a trivial problem that will be litigated to death. The companies with the best lawyers will win.
Measuring the size of a company is a lot easier: you pick some metric (employees, revenue, profit, customers, etc...) and apply it to all companies.
Measuring market share requires that you categorize all companies into "markets," which think is pretty subjective. Is Jet Brains an IDE company? A software company? How about Apple? If multiple, are metrics split?
Whatever rules you pick, they're going to be biased towards some companies (including some big ones not popular on HN) and against other companies (including some companies HN loves).
How exactly will it work?
Look, there is no such thing as a "natural market" that can keep the power of the actors in it in check. The internet was the closest thing to a perfect market that has ever existed and all it has produced is overpowered monopoly after overpowered monopoly.
If we want a free society, we don't get that by handing power over to the markets. We get that by building the most responsive democracy we can, and then using that to keep power (in all its forms, including business) in check.
So who decides which businesses are too powerful? People, elected and held accountable by citizenry at large.
I'm all for good regulation and strong government. However, making good laws and regulations is not easy! The details of these things is incredibly important and can't be solved by some sort of generic market vs government debate.
And while I do think government has a role to play, most of our regulations are poorly designed and have been captured by corporate interests.
I don't see how the proposed rule could be implemented in a way that would have the desired outcome.
> most of our regulations are poorly designed and have been captured by corporate interests
Isn't the second comment a generic statement? Do you have specific data? I agree that the details are incredibly important.
But about the issue at hand, I've been specific in my critique: market share is an amorphous concept and thus ill-suited to legislation and a prime opportunity for regulatory capture.
We don't avoid writing code just because it's inevitably buggy and has unintended side effects. Indeed, there's a whole mentality of "move fast and break things" - essentially damn the side effects and full speed ahead - because we, as a sector, recognize that you have to take risks to make the world a better place. Yet, we forget that when it comes to using government power (our collective power) to make laws that shape our world.
Now, I'm not a proponent of "move fast and break things" - more, move steadily and make the best decision you can in a reasonable time frame. But "move steadily" is still moving. We can take our time writing legislation and regulations and do our best to get it right, and still also work to build responsive systems so that when it's inevitably buggy we can fix the bugs.
As I said in the second sentence, the problem with the US right now is that it was intentionally constructed to be the opposite of a responsive democracy.
So, per all of my questions, how does this idea work? How is market share defined and measured?
Nah, I’ll pass. Markets are made up of people, they’re not just some abstraction. Governments have good uses, but determining who is participating in what market and how much market share they have or are allowed to have isn’t one of them.
1. The parent is advocating for a powerful form of command over the economy.
2. I am not advocating for lawless markets.
Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
If you then prove a monopoly, can you also then prove that it’s activities are harmful to the people in the marketplace by denying them choices they would otherwise have? Maybe, but probably not very often and certainly not easily.
Monopolies are generally not granted, except in exceptional circumstances. The US government didn't grant Microsoft a monopoly in PC operating systems.
> Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
What are you referring to?
> What are you referring to?
Most recently (that I can think of): the suit the Feds filed against Facebook that was tossed out of court.
And despite all of that, they’re probably still not a monopoly for anything (haven’t heard a convincing argument on this one yet!), at least anywhere the DoJ and FTC have jurisdiction.
There’s only one Facebook. Without that, you also don’t have Facebook’s network effect tying it all together.
Meta retains the exclusive right to do business using the Facebook mark and they’ll continue to enforce it. It’s the same story for any other company, and it’s a form of monopoly that the government grants, not something that would be enforceable otherwise.
Some of these are just, useful, bad, abhorrent, unnecessary, necessary, or outmoded.
None of that falls into commanding the economy. We’re not even strangers to command economies: the wartime powers of the Federal government are vast, and were most powerfully executed in World War II.
I would argue that exactly what the parent suggested, in respond to the GP falls exactly into that bucket of ideas for commanding the economy. It’s not a just nor good use of Government, no matter how Democratic.
...what would you say the Fed and FTC do?
So your example is valid but maybe not for the point you're trying to make?
There are lots of good examples of better functioning democracies and a fair amount of theory on reforms that could improve even those (things like ranked choice voting).
That's why I said "Build the most responsive democracy we can".
Eh? Subsidiaries aren't usually what people mean when they speak of breaking up companies. Subsidiaries are aligned with the parent company in terms of incentives, so it doesn't really change the landscape at all, besides worsening the user experience if you require the subsidiary to maintain its own isolated silo of users and data.
not saying there isn't a problem, but maybe trying to shoehorn 19th century solutions onto 21st century problems isn't the answer.
A too-clear disclosure gives bad actors information on how to circumvent controls around safety, abuse, and fraud.
If the reason an account is deleted includes some sort of KYC/Money Laundering issue, OFAC style sanction or child porn, then there can be legal obligation, with severe penalty, to both report and not tip off the user.
This is trivially solvable if creating an account required an in-person verification, like when you go into a bank to open an account. Since it's not mandatory, anybody who does so is beaten by anyone who doesn't (worse is better). So we should make it mandatory.
Let me be very clear that any excuse made under the veil of security including the enshrining of such in our books of law is incompatible with a society that respects the dignity to live free. It is a vicious abuse of power by those with knowledge over those robbed of it.
Account deletion tips off the user so we're not talking about cases where there's a legal obligation to not tip off the user.
The only cases where I've seen service providers ordered to not tip off the user were actually associated with order of continuation of the service, to ... not tip off the user.
We have to get past putting people in boxes for arbitrary disagreement/animosity. Formalized politics must be made obsolete.
>There must be an in-group that the law protects but does not bind, alongside an out-group that the law binds but does not protect.
That is why conservatives are so prickly about being regulated: to be bound by the rules is "proof" that they are no longer the in-group.
Your very assertion that the law can be applied fairly (to the point group membership is irrelevant) is a denial of the fundamental thesis of conservatism.
I agree that we should aspire to fairness and equality-before-the-rules, but there are too many people who do deeply believe that fundamental theorem to just deny and ignore.
If it were left-wingers being banned, or centrist Biden supporters, I have absolutely no doubt in the world that there would be a slew of New York Times thinkpieces about 'the complexity of our political liberties in a world where the public square is digital', or whatever nauseating way they would invariably phrase it.
(You can see this from the other reply saying "conservatives hate morals and that's why we can ignore morals in dealing with them", the exact same thing conservatives say about liberals, and eventually they're both justified. But apparently none of us has the necessary higher-order thinking skills to avoid a moral slide into bedlam. This case is perfectly illustrative: no amount of political-tribalist tosh should be able to persuade you that the other side doesn't deserve to be treated morally.)
It is left wingers being banned. Essentially what happens is that conservatives will get banned for violence and bigotry, then companies will ban random rule abiding left wing groups just to appease angry conservatives.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/facebook-antifa...
Do you think the FBI, NSA, etc doesn't already have access to photos posted on dating sites in the US?
By believing in some sort of mythical distinction between private and public business you've created the worst world of all, in which a government can superficially claim its hands are clean, buy unlimited surveillance data from unregulated private firms, without any democratic accountability. You now have the privilege of filling up Peter Thiel's bank account, while Palantir runs a precrime division that your city council has never even heard of[2]
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/22/22244848/us-intelligence-...
[2]https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...
But they are not 100% wrong, Tinder is not here to make people meet each other. They are here to make money and people don't pay because they get more matches, they pay because they are frustrated. Tinder needs a way to keep girls active on the platform, and for that to works they have to prevent boys to have a negative behavior. That's why they shadowban guys easily, as soon as they detect non standard behavior they shadowban, people keep seeing profile and keep paying. Girls don't see those profiles and have a better experience overall and stays longer, which makes guys stays longer because FOMO of matching the one.
This has nothing to do with Big tech. If you want to meet people don't use Tinder, that used to work well in the past, it very rarely works now.
EDIT: And FYI if you want to exit shadowban on Tinder, it is pretty well documented on r/SwipeHelper, you need to change: phone, phone number, Facebook account, Credit card, pictures and don't login from the same IP
Not arguing with the point you're making, but Bumble and Tinder founders are definitely not the same.
Unfortunately, rule #1 on tinder is “be physically attractive”. If you want tinder to work for you consistently as a man, get your personal hygiene in order and hit the gym. That’s the main reason I swipe left; well, that and conservative politics.
That's just how the dating market is :)
For guys it used to be right, now rule #1 is more "be super attractive" or "be attractive and don't have standard"
For girls rule #1 is "be a girl"
> For girls rule #1 is "be a girl"
Not at all. Women can have just as much of a hard time as men, especially for certain ethnicities.
Basically be a model
> Women can have just as much of a hard time as men, especially for certain ethnicities.
Can't find the study, but black women are actually having a tougher time than all others women to get matches on dating apps. But this is still nothing compared to the attention guys get
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170217052152/https://theblog.o...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-desirable-how...
Shouldn’t be a surprise that someone who blames “women” as a whole for his problems would have a hard time meeting women.
And as a corollary, I’ve dated super hot guys before and frankly a lot of them have a hard time with relationships because it was so easy for them to hook up when they were younger they don’t know how to put the effort in to make someone feel desired.
Regarding to that corollary, you're assuming top guys even want to invest in relationships in the first place. Not the case of many I know. The strategy is more like: enjoy the party until one of the girls is so mindblowing feminine and submissive and good person that is worth giving a chance to some investing.
She said yes.
easiest free meal I ever got
wayoutthere: "If you want tinder to work for you consistently as a man, get your personal hygiene in order and hit the gym."
Did you just blame GP's getting banned on him not having personal hygiene or not being fit?
> It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men
[1]. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
There are apple flavored flat earth medicine studies with stronger statistics
some guy dug up a bunch of studies done on abductions by satanists in the 1990s. remember that, from 60 minutes?
the punchline was there had never actually been such an abduction, but there were 30+ studies.
and that's replicated a lot.
the quality of the replication matters.
You shouldn't be swayed by inappropriately small sample sizes. Your response was "well what if I had a lot of them?" My answer was "still no."
.
> In the meantime, I'll go with the best we got.
This isn't even close to the best we've got.
> This isn't even close to the best we've got.
If you've got that then show me and I'll have a look. Until then I'm going with that studies I've seen that all seem to say roughly the same thing (despite widely varying sample sizes and quality of methodology)
1. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
There are none with acceptable sizes. You're just talking.
1. https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...
You can not do that on tinder.
Obviously not everyone who is hot is this way, but it’s one of the “types” you’ll find if you date around a lot.
In real life, people who do not look gorgeous can still sweep you off your feet by their smile, laughter, gestures, tone of voice, scent, the way they move, talk, react, fall into daydream...
Of all my previous lovers, ending with my wife of 16 years, I wouldn't choose a single one based just on a picture. But I was strongly attracted to all of them in real life.
Human magic cannot really be distilled into an algorithmic system. Not yet, anyway.
Also, don't stop just with Tinder. Use Bumble, happn, OkCupid, Badoo. I've got dates from all of these.
That's called "fraud" in most countries. If you believe that fraud is "not 100% wrong" then I don't know what to say to that.
But yeah Match group is a fraud company, I've wrote some posts on the topic in the past
EDIT: It seems I misunderstood this statement. I read it as "If you want to meet people don't use Tinder, [not using twitter] used to work well in the past, it very rarely works now"
I don't understand your reasoning here. You're suggesting that tinder is a vital service for some aspect of life now(I agree, unfortunately), but also saying it's not a problem with big tech? This kind of thing is exactly why big tech needs to be regulated.
I'm not saying there is no problem (I have wrote several article criticizing Match group and the app dating market), I'm just saying this has nothing to do with big Tech. Any dating app (and some do) can do the same as Tinder
Tinder being a "vital service" sounds absurd.
It means it (Tinder) no longer works. I says nothing about difficulty of meeting people outside of Tinder.
If you want to meet people don't use Tinder, [not using twitter] used to work well in the past, it very rarely works now.
"If you >don't< want to meet people don't use Tinder"
the way it's phrased means (unambiguously) that Tinder sucks, and Tinder doesn't work
I’d call that fraud. If you pay for a service you get to use the service.
e.g. ban: you try to log into HN and it gives you a message: "You can't log in, you are banned"
shadowban: you log in to HN with your account, you post comments and vote on stories but unknown to you nobody else on HN can see this. Eventually you start to wonder why you never get replies anymore.
It's definitely an ethical issue if you are doing the latter without telling someone, and additionally charging them for the service you aren't providing.
With a dating app it might be hard to tell for a while; how are you to know that you aren't getting any replies/engagement because of the way such sites work, or because the people you contacted never saw the likes/messages/whatever.
"Hey Doc, I need a new face."
"Mafia? Witness protection?"
"Tinder."
As I said in my comment up-post, Tinder has a near-absolute monopoly in my area. If you're not on Tinder you basically don't exist on the local dating market.
Yes, the future sucks.
You're within 2-3 degrees of separation of dozens or hundreds of single people you can date, so if you just start putting the word out among your friends, family, etc I think they'll start introducing you to people
Glad my dating days are over.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bumble/comments/riwo34/finally_got_...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bumble/comments/p3aeqq/dont_assume_...
Men see a ghost town of responses and think no one of value is here.
Women see a town full of roaches and think no one of value is here.
Same result: no one of value found (some exceptions apply)
An evil data scientist would put almost exclusively users on your screen who you are interested in but they are not interested in you to boost your spendings and would mix a small portion of good bidirectional matches just to make his purpose less obvious. Fortunately evil data scientists does not exist... I mean I definitely wasn't paid to do anything like that. Never.
This is true for brick and morter/mom and pop businesses. It's true for computer programs. Basically any system. It is not an indicator for a monopoly.
Every system that survives, survives because it generates positive value for most people, no? Are you telling me that every business that isn't a monopoly only generates positive value and there's no negative value generated for a minority of customers?
That sure is a monopoly.
Tinder does not hold anything even remotely resembling a monopoly (no, Match does not own every dating app, just many of them) on the dating app space, we need to stop throwing that word around so casually. You're diluting the concept by trying to apply it here, which will lessen its impact when a real monopoly comes along and actually tries to control a market (e.g. Microsoft and how it's handling Edge right now).
The world you're looking for is China, where without WeChat you may as well not exist.
And on the meaning of monopoly, I believe it is fair to describe the "network affect" as a monopoly. The historical example of the US rail comes to mind, the market had several rail companies at the time, but each had monopoly over certain routes, if you wanted to go from place A to place B you maybe only had one choice. The fact that other rail lines existed to places you didn't want to go doesn't mean that it wasn't a monopoly. The same way, those tech companies may have monopoly over the route from person A to person B.
True, your 'island ferry example' is a monopoly. It is also not at all analogous to this situation and Tinder in general.
I'm no expert, but I don't think you understand what the 'network affect (sip)' is, as it does not apply to US Railways at all, and is a relatively new term that only arose in the 1970s. That aside, your example doesn't survive further scrutiny because railways were often the only practical way of moving between two generally public places — cities or towns. With Tinder though, they are providing you access to their own private network of users. Your example is like saying the monorail in disney is a monopoly, but that doesn't make any sense, since it's for transporting you within their own park.
Lastly, Tinder is not the one and only way to meet people. Yes, they have are of the most widely-used companies in the space. But there are others. And, you know, people can still meet in real life — through friends, at work, at activities or interest-based groups. On other social media like Twitter, et al.
I love gaming the algorithm to meet hotter* people than I would meet using the apps the most intuitive way.
*It's not subjective, there are profiles that attract way more attention and would either: never be shown to you, or you never shown to them.
If that's true, how anyone thinks that isn't totally fucked is beyond me. I mean, I'm seriously, deeply concerned by this notion more than the usual privacy, data etc that big tech concerns me with, they're literally shaping future generations according to their "algorithm", by deciding that one person shouldn't even be allowed to know another even exists, let alone have an opportunity to interact with them.
They even tell you when you're "doing well".
The popular profile that chooses a high percentage of others is not a real human being and/or is selling sex. A pretty irrelevant signal for desirability. It's quite simple. Just like in the real world in that regard, people want higher signals of why they were chosen and it is accurate to be skeptical of an undiscerning attractive person because it usually is a low signal since they don't actually want you, they want to sell something.
Game the system by being more discerning. This is counterintuitive for people wanting matches by statistical probability as it seems like matching faster and arbitrarily will help, but that behavior ensures being downranked to the doldrums with other actually unattractive people.
Otherwise, the matchmaker ends up losing reputation and participants trust them less due to higher chances of failure. It works the same way in business relationships too.
A broker’s value is in increasing the probability of transactions closing by restricting the pool of candidates to those likelier to close. Otherwise, they have no value.
The desirability of your profile aside, it's entirely credibly that any profile you create is a poor representation, many people may not know what it is about themselves that others like.
Basically your selection (match, don't match) isn't just a personal choice. It alters the other person's desirability based on your current desirability. Its a weighted choice that affects how they are bracketed to everyone else, people in the same brackets match each other.
Now of course, this is similar to the outcome in real life. But there is a level of consent to these personal choices, and there are way more inputs before this outcome occurs.
Knowing that some derivative of this is employed allows you to game it, which makes it much less objectionable to me, but I greatly disagree with the idea that other people aren't aware. At this point my biggest issue with dating apps is that nobody moderately attractive has their notifications on, so it's easy to forget to check the app for a conversation (after you matched) but at the same time its still uncouth to ask for a phone number or other way of messaging right away, so a simple conversation could take weeks or months or more likely never occur. (Many people have their instagrams or snapchats written on their profile, but its an additional greater gamble to get a response through those as they are inferior forms of inboxes too).
I know its common for married people to think "omg dating is so nightmarish now, this justifies staying with my spouse through anything because I wouldn't know what to do", its not really that different, think of a dating app like a someone at the pier with 5 fishing rods out in the water. 2 of them are dating apps, 3 of them are other things. Its just an additional option to meet people outside of your network.
How?
the opposite than how I hear other guys use these apps.
Like in chess, they show you very high rated people at first, to ascertain your initial rating and above all to hook you with all the attractive profiles. As your rating becomes more and more accurate as people in your pool swipe you, your range of matchable profiles narrows down.
(Edit: As another user said, you may sometimes lose rating by matching low-rated or too many people, but the exact details may change a lot.)
The main target demographics are the really high rated people (who entice everyone else) and the really low rated people, who pay up for every premium feature in order to get noticed, i.e. artificially boost their rating. (But just because you have a GM's rating doesn't mean you have a GM's skill, so the gains are hollow and you have to keep paying to stay above your original rating range). The equivalent would be chess beginners paying up for an Open Tournament in order to help subsidize the GMs appearance fee and prizes.
And as in chess, an elite of very high rated people has all the fun while everyone else sorts of sucks and flounders. That's not because of evolutionary psychology or some fundamental truth of human nature, that's just how rating (and by extension any kind of skill following a power-law distribution) works.
I agree, it comically sucks that people are letting themselves being paired by a shitty implementation of League of Legends.
There are many people that do decently with attraction in person who wouldn't do as well in a visual app. Attraction in person is weighed by energy, actions, social validation and also looks. This method is more useful for people that can do that, but don't match preconceived visual ideals that the potential mates have, but passable.
So replicating that in an app trying to emulate that with match scores means you have to at least reduce the chance of getting matched by others with a low match score. Leave your pending matches pending forever, dont get desparate to match arbitrarily. If attractive people still don't match (give it a month, per area), nuke the profile and try again with different pictures and content.
If you dont have any of that then you need a different strategy.
Many people never get matched because there was never even a chance to get matched. Thats the only observation and mitigation presented.
If you want to meet new people, find yourself new real-life hobbies.
So, naturally, there's never been a better time than this for some bad-faith behavior and profiteering.
All of the avenues to contact Instagram are meaningless and don’t lead anywhere. There are no actual humans anywhere that review these things. No one cares when their crap algorithm screws up and deletes your 1000 photos and memories and all the interactions you had with your friends.
The irony is I got kicked out for doing something that should be their job.
Often patterns of fake profiles that were immediately obvious to me as a user took months for them to block.
Though the idea of a business making an account on Tinder did give me a chuckle.
I feel you. I got permabanned from tinder when I emailed their support asking how the verification process worked with couples. They replied with a ban notice and I was confused, turns out couples profiles are against Tinders T&C. I hadn't actually done ANYTHING to violate their T&C in-app yet, just asking their support about it was enough to ban for life.
To top it off, they embedded a secret key in my iOS keychain that synced across all devices. Even wiping the phone would get new numbers banned on sign in. I ended up having to use a fresh device on a fresh iCloud account on a new number to bypass their ban (I'm a dev with 100+ devices at my disposal and multiple VPS VPNs, good luck Tinder).
Tinder can go fuck itself, but they have an absolute monopoly in my area/demographic so I have to put up with them.
It is not that different from how people forgot to orient themselves in a city without navigational apps. Or how they no longer know how to, say, make butter (unlike in 1900).
I've heard stories of lesbian women, especially, FLYING ACROSS THE COUNTRY to meet another person they have interest in because it's that hard to find matching personalities.
If it isn't wanted, simply decline it.
The idea that no physical touching can be initiated in any manner before asking on a date is a bad thing.
People are just too scared and lazy and hide behind other reasons. Of course it‘s convenient, but it is so strange if you think about it.
But then, i, as freelancer, get even cringes out when using linkedin. So part of the issue obviously lies with me.
Still to all guys: at least be honest to yourself and don‘t use the „you‘re not allowed to…“ argument, when in reality: you‘re just scared.
For how much longer?
If you’re in the EU or from the EU it might be possible to nag them with data protection request.
Of course only if you enjoy nagging.
I’ve used it myself to persist auth tokens.
A while later I tried to use Tinder again, and my account was banned. I don't really remember how I discovered it, if she told me, or a representative told me, but the thing was: She report me as I had verbally abused her, mistreated her and shada shada, because she was angry I dumped her.
So they closed my account without even checking our conversations at least (there was no insults or nothing at all)
While you have no recourse in free services, you do when you pay with a credit card. Likewise the CC will still charge Tinder the processing fee of 1%-3%, so every chargeback is not only revenue lost but also a cost.
Unfortunately all that advice is void if OP used a debit card.
Chargebacks on credit cards may have more protection granted by the banks or the law, but the basic level of disputing a transaction is available even to debit cards.
But wanted to add another thing, chargebacks are for cases of fraud, so the cc network actually charges the retailer a not insignificant fee for each chargeback, it’s why BigTech will shutdown your account if you do a chargeback, bec 9/10 times if it’s on your account you did mean to spend that money you just forgot about it. If you didn’t you better be ready to prove it and still burn the account that you chargeback on (i.e. lose your gmail account bec someone compromised your account and bought stuff on android)
Luckily I bought it on Amazon so I'll be refunding through them, and I expect my Origin account to be banned as a result - however it sucks to deal with these hardline policies with zero transparency when you're on the wrong side of the algorithm.
EDIT: After reading more about false-positive bans, it seems these days having the wrong driver installed (as some hacks pretend to be software that communicates through that "bad" driver) or running peripheral scripts (like mouse macros) can cause a ban. I wasn't using macros and I don't have peripherals capable of running them (eg Logitech G series).
They refuse to share with you why you got ban or reverse it and they keep the money. I got my refund through Paypal and the warning Steam support gave me hinted that I'd lose my account if I did that a second time.
regarding your edit, IMO they shouldn't be allowed to permaban your account for a bad driver without first warning you that you need to update it. Even if they use a fake reason for it, turning off windows update shouldn't be a bannable offense.
This is literally the day-to-day of anyone trying to leverage their profile on any social media account. Endlessly chasing after the algorithm, trying to" hack it" by keeping up to date on its moods and preferences. As someone who used to roll that way, I can attest. The future has been around for years now.
Any centralization, policy, or algorithms that work based on an assumption of default/normal behavior will punish outliers (unless this is accounted for). This guy obviously was one such outlier for Tinder.
> In the future, people will be trying to please the algorithm. They will double-check if what they are doing right now could be considered by algorithms as something strange, something that most people wouldn’t do.
Assuming people understand the algorithms; there's an incentive on the part of companies to keep them opaque. It will be more akin to a religion where people GUESS which actions anger the algorithm and companies and get very mad when others don't agree. Which is worse.
The same thing happens with corporate VPNs. I guess it only makes sense that Apartment.com doesn't want your business if you're making a bank at one of the larger companies who are big enough to require a VPN service!
In the past, intelligence agencies used to devote time and money to get such compromising information. Now people give it out for free.
it's not that of a stigma nowadays, but i could be again, and certainly is if you are becoming a person of interest.
Are you suggesting that private companies should have to take their users to court before disabling accounts
I lost an account a few years ago at the same time I was geospoofing on my phone for something totally unrelated. I guess it flagged on Tinder's side and that was that account gone. Fortunately I didn't think there was any soulmate lost as a result but I could see that being painful if I'd been talking to someone for a while.
On the other hand Tinder is going to be a huge target for romance scammers and other dodgy types and people on it are vulnerable so they've got to have a robust defence mechanism.
It's the lack of recourse to fair adjudication that is the problem - online dating is one of the most common ways of meeting a partner these days and the many platforms are owned by a couple of companies so getting blacklisted by Tinder could also see you barred from Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge and PlentyOfFish - quite serious stuff if you're looking for a partner especially in the current climate.
Tinder, and every dating app I know out there, is directly incentivized to _not_ match properly, but rather to keep you on the app as long as possible. As long as the bottom line is directly influenced by the amount of unmatched users, the dating app will not work with you, but rather against you.
So except for some "open source" or otherwise "community-driven" effort, I don't think we'll ever see it.
The issue with setting this up in your garage is that for such an app to work, you need to have many users. And to have many users, you have to spend cash on marketing, etc. So you have to be able to get that cash back somehow, and then some, for your efforts.
(Also would add legal complications most dating sites, regardless of model, don't deal with because of the Statute of Frauds in relation to contracts in consideration of marriage.)
But back in the golden days of Tinder... (say 7-8 years ago or so-- 2014ish) Tinder worked really well to deliver many matches. These days... very few matches compared to Bumble or Hinge for example.
Matchmaking is such a generic problem anyway. Friends, Business relations, Vacancies, Partners, Sex buddies. We'll get there, I believe.
i have heard that traditional matchmakers get paid years after the first date, maybe even after a marriage.
Not as terrifying as the number of people who defend it.
but this is supposed to match the incognito browser experience and I can still see all my comments in incognito which means everyone else can
questionable.
For some, I was calling out the echo-chamber of the whole place, those are the politics ones. Oh, and calling out a troll account.
I got banned from a number of subs for making comments documenting the bot-like behavior of karma farming accounts. Accounts with millions of karma, reposting low-quality content as if it's organic.
And it looks like I just got banned from /r/ActualPublicFreakouts for calling out a troll for their behavior.
reddit really is a pathetic place for anything other than hobby subs with about 150k members or less.
---
EDIT: I used reveddit and saw just how much of the posts I make are invisible. Not just by getting shadowbanned by hack mods on popular subs, but by other comments and submissions getting deleted for one reason or another. It's absolutely absurd.
I jest but has anyone used Tinder recently? They have interactive choose your own adventure movies now, and then match you with people that made similar choices, instant ice breaker! But actually a decently fun episodic game with moderately high production value.
I’m surprised because Tinder was like the worst of all the mobile-first dating apps from my recollection.
Evergreen xkcd: https://xkcd.com/743/
More seriously, at this point the options are:
- ethically-challenged social media full of relatives and friends
- unintuitive federated platform with no family but plenty of otherkin furfriends
- being left out of conversation and events you care about
I'm also "kinda" banned on Tinder btw - or rather, my account got in an unusable state due to some bug, or an interaction between multiple bugs. The app literally barely works. How pathetic for a company this size. I feel sorry for anyone who has to work on their code base.
In my area, single people also use Hinge, Bumble, CoffeeMeetsBagel, OKCupid, POF, Match... I'm fugly as hell but even I was able to find someone on a non-Tinder platform.
So while they may be options in some market, I'd be curious how long before they share bans between services.
I don't think that's true. Tinder doesn't control the dating app market, nor would it be a problem, per se, if they did.
And yes, it'd be a massive problem if Tinder controlled it in that it'd put an unaccountable company in control of whether or not people get access. And one with a history of refusing to engage people who feel wronged.
If Match expands that to its other properties then it becomes a problem even if Tinder alone doesn't dominate.
-Bumble, OKCupid, POF, Match: 40+ only.
-CoffeeMeetsBagel: ?
All of these are owned by Match Group, the same parent company as Tinder.
- no due process
- no way to reverse their decision
- no way to appeal their decision
they are judge, jury, and executioner
And this is fine, unless you are a company providing a what would now be considered a critical service to the public (even if for pay).
"big data" is just an excel file, so I think this would qualify
You know that's a joke, right?
I think you don't recognize the scale of Match Group. They make two billion per year, they have 2000 staff, and they own basically every dating site.
i too grew up with oss-licences that tell me i'm on my own and thats kind ok, but i don't want to live in a world were commercial products are labeled "not fit for any purpose. use at your own risk"
It's a "Big Tech" problem. Lots of people have experienced getting randomly banned from services with no obvious cause, and no way to get any resolution. I'm banned from AirBNB for example. No clue why and there was nothing that could have triggered it, because I hadn't used the service for like over six months when the ban happened, there were no disputes or other problems with hosts and my last host review had been glowing. They didn't even tell me it'd occurred, but they had been sending emails thanking me for being a part of the "community" just weeks before. Then I tried to log in, got a verification screen, entered the code and was told the account was terminated. Filed an appeal, got no useful response and that was the end of it.
If it was a free service I'd understand, but I've paid good money to AirBNB over the years. If you pay you expect to be treated like a customer, not an enemy, but SV tech firms have all copied the culture of Facebook/Twitter/Google. They seem to forget that when people give money they expect some sort of customer relationship as a consequence.
Unfortunately, as I recently got single again I discovered that this wasn't possible anymore.
To be more on topic, Tinder is a very american company. I haven't had personal issues with the company but I think their new features of weird matching from some shitty interactive videos is a sign of classic over-engineering. It seems like the app is "done". Maybe they should focus on creating something else than add useless features that no one seems to use ( at least where I am from ).
That one is the key. Likely some analytics service (Facebook?) has his phone associated with country A (his country of origin), and Tinder sees the registration coming in from country B (new country). That mismatch then triggered some anti-fraud signalling.
People who frequently travel/change residences or have bases in more than one place seem to get banned or blocked by all kinds of services.
Regardless of the intentions of the people designing these systems, I’d argue this is textbook systemic discrimination; you face issues only due to being different enough in the “wrong” way.
There's also calls out to crash-analytics, firebase, appsflyer and Google Analytics constantly. The app will function if all these services are blocked.
Get a burner SIM card with a new number and create another profile. Easy as that.
But people really forget that is an option to just walk to the nearest phone store and come out with a $20 sim for the month. Useful for way more than just trying to hook up on a dating app you got banned on.
People keep saying this without realizing a lot of people practically can’t these days. In an increasing number of countries, getting an SMS/phone-capable SIM can not be done without KYC/ID verification. Where I live, for example, you even need to be a resident; all prepaids are data-only.
And before you tell me to find a homeless drug-addict and make them get one for me, it’s not that easy and no one should have to do that in the first place.
Same restrictions apply for SkypeIn and similar VoIP services (which BtW come in a separate prefix that most of these services blacklist anyway).
There’s a reason why those dodgy “receive anyonymous SMS” sites all only provide the same handful of countries.
Isn't this often the case with humans minus the algorithm making the decision? Many times of the few times I've been in trouble, with HR, the law, or whatever authority you realize doing things that seem bad but aren't actually bad is almost as dangerous as doing something actually harmful because turns out humans aren't very good judges of ambiguous cases in low information environments.
Even when not ambiguous humans by and large don't have a good grasp of what is or isn't moral. And they typically show a large lack of empathic ability for how their actions will effect others.
A better proxy would be "how much the company spends per user to detect false positives". Whether it's human oversight for each case, or engineering time spent fine-tuning algorithms to exclude known false positives, the more the company spends, the less it's going to screw you over.
(In practice, companies want to spend very little, which is why you get underpaid Mechanical-Turk workers and slapped-together detection systems.)
That's literally how loan applications work now: banks compute all the information they can glean on you to determine a risk index.
Do something the algorithm has considered risky and you get charged more for the same amount of money another person can get. And the algorithm considers it "risky" to not use banks; if you have no history of having owned a credit card, for instance, the bank trusts you less than a person who has carried all manner of debt for years (but paid it down consistently).
What Problem Blockchains Solve
mrjin: centralized organizations are there for reasons, and block chain resolved none of them
The Web3 Fraud
endisneigh: In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user
The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger
Stephen Diehl: Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.
From Wikipedia ;)
> YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TINDER DOES NOT CONDUCT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ON ITS MEMBERS OR OTHERWISE INQUIRE INTO THE BACKGROUND OF ITS MEMBERS. TINDER MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE CONDUCT OR COMPATIBILITY OF MEMBERS. TINDER RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CONDUCT – AND YOU AUTHORIZE TINDER TO CONDUCT – ANY CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK OR OTHER SCREENINGS (SUCH AS SEX OFFENDER REGISTER SEARCHES) AT ANY TIME USING AVAILABLE PUBLIC RECORDS OBTAINED BY IT OR WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF A CONSUMER REPORTING AGENCY, AND YOU AGREE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE MAY BE USED FOR THAT PURPOSE.
1. You understand that Tinder does not perform background checks.
2. Everything you provide to Tinder and everything Tinder can find out about you may be used to perform a background check at Tinder's whim.
Classic.
But, my guess is that he was ruled to be "spamming" because he sent evidence of liking a (probably fake) user more than once in an attempt to test if the app was working.
I was filling out a government form for a relative of mine to get on a plane (Covid-19 regulations). After filling out all the relevant details, I got the negative answer "BOARDING DENIED" because "You are not in compliance with all the regulations".
It never said _which_ regulation of these "all" we weren't in compliance with, exactly.
It took me hours to get to an intelligent person in the ministry hotline, if we skip the "try again" and "try from another PC" and "you've tried too many times and so are banned" guys. After some convincing, they agreed to fill out the form for us. It turned out the system expects TWO vaccination dates, not one, to give its permission, although never says so clearly.
With Tinder, you can move to another platform, but when the government tech decides whether or not you're allowed to board the plane, they usually monopolize that.
I had similar experiences with Tinder - I think their support team just bans people when they don't want to deal with them - without checking the account at all.
What the problem is is that he got banned without being told why.
* Some user reported his account as "fake" or otherwise "inappropriate"
* The algorithm thought he faked his position
Neither one requires any intentional wrongdoing. It is what it is.
Both of these are, at best, a cause for concern.
But they can't decide they want the money but don't want to provide a service. I'm surprised to see comments defending this.
That's the real "Terminator" of today. It's not time-travelling killer robots (yet?). It's letting algorithms deciding the fate of humans. That's especially problematic if the developers of those algorithms don't even understand them (yes, I'm looking at you, neutral networks).
Tinder is one thing, but imagine some algorithm identifies you as a terrorist. E.g., via cameras at every airport. My favorite example is a couple that ordered a steam cooker and a backpack online. Some days later some federal agents knocked at their door. Apparently, these two items raise flags in their algorithms.
Let's say you get banned from Tinder and consequently Bumble. What do you do now? You can create fake accounts, but they'll eventually find you. Coffee Meets Bagel? Plenty of Fish? Match.com? Don't make me laugh.
It's already bad enough that women find it strange that a guy doesn't have an Instagram account (this has been my experience 90% of the time), but at least as someone who is dating you can work your way around that. But if you get shut out of even 1 of the few main dating apps, you've lost a massive pool of dates and potential life partners. Unless something has changed since my foray into that scene, these days those apps are pretty much a requirement for getting any meaning amount of dates.
I can't help but feel bad for the younger generations of today. I was fortunate to come of age during the tail end of where it was still largely acceptable to meet and approach women IRL while online dating was kind of a sideshow. Today, what were once the best places to meet other young single people, are not only where it's become unacceptable to meet new people at bars and clubs or meetups but they also are the places with the most COVID-masking (yes, this DOES affect attraction and being able to read the other person). For most young guys and girls, you're probably stuck with Tinder and Bumble unless you are a 9 or above.
The other day I got permabanned from Nextdoor, not because I did anything wrong, but because I didn't use my real name. Of course the name that I used is the name that I use in real life and as a professional. I logged in one day to find that I had absolutely no access to my account. There was no read-only access to my messages, my activity, settings, or anything. Just a page that said I'd been banned for not using my real name but that I could contact their customer service or whatever. Imagine if that happens to you on Tinder right as you're about to ask someone on a date, or to your Wells Fargo account as you just got a paycheck and are ready to make that big purchase.
As for the rest, it sounds like speculative nonsense. I date and know a lot of people who actively date. There are more and better options today to meet more and better people - not less. Not by a longshot.
> As for the rest, it sounds like speculative nonsense.
That's not particularly respectful.
> I date and know a lot of people who actively date. There are more and better options today to meet more and better people - not less. Not by a longshot.
Maybe you could name some of them?
For women, dating is a process of meeting a larger, stronger person who is a member of a demographic responsible for nearly all sexual violence. If they want a little social proof before meeting a strange man alone, I fully understand. Obviously this goes both (all) ways, but is a bigger concern for women (at least the many women I have discussed this with over the years).
Sorry to be disrespectful. I was specifically talking about the idea that it is no longer possible/acceptable to meet people in person. Do you truly believe this? As I said, I know a lot of people who date actively, and they do still meet people when out and about. Sometimes it's a friend of a friend, sometimes a random person at a bar. One of my last serious relationships started when we met at a wedding. A good friend of mine seems to find dates by just stepping out the door! She's cute, but it's not like men are constantly fawning over her - she just tends to chat with strangers and sometimes that leads to dates! So I see this so much in my everyday life I find it strange when people (especially people who admit they are not dating in the current era) make claims about how dating does and does not work these days.
What I do mind was that their official stance is that they don't reverse bans for any reason. Creating a new account is against their terms of service, so in theory I am locked out of one of the primary ways my generation finds partners.
In the country I live, the competitors don't have user bases nearly large enough to compete so Tinder is effectively a monopoly. With Tinder's enormous market-power comes great responsibility, and they have in my eyes failed to live up to it.
It's happened with people's banks (or "banks"). Earlier this year the fintech middleman Chime began closing accounts without notice or giving customers whose accounts they closed access to their funds.[0]
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/the-chime-banking-ap...
The only way unlimited swipes fixes the numbers game of dating is if everyone gets them.
If getting banned without good justification is the problem, the problem is with all tech services
Who you meet can radically change the trajectory of your life though, and if 99% of your demographic meets new people via tinder being banned can absolutely have an outsized impact on your life.
In my case I met someone normal, got married, had a child, and built a house in an area I never would have discovered had I not met them. I sometimes think how different my life would be if either of us hadn't checked our phones that night.
Go make friends in person and meet dates through normal social interactions. Sounds crazy but it has an impressive track record.
Every one has a fundamental right to appeal, to have their day in court.
"That is something that never happened to me before"
How if you're a first time user? Sounds like they already had a tinder account at some point. This is clickbait at best...
But anyway, creating a new profile is not so hard (given the number of catfish still on the platform)
I am in the process of finding alternate non-reddit sources to match my reddit subs... and moving out of Google.
They said images that don't show me are against the terms of service.
Cc @dang
Also I have no idea who this person is, their about page is empty and Google results are ambiguous at best, so I have no reason to trust their account of what happened.
The point about big tech seems tangential and isn't exactly a novel insight. As for this: "Of course, they cannot name you the reason as this could be later used against them and their proprietary algorithm. How could they?" This is not a problem with "big tech" but with lack of transparency and is a consumer protection issue. The GDPR for example requires automated rulings to offer the option to appeal and have the ruling be reviewed by a human. It would be trivial to change the law so consumers would have the right to be told which part of the ToS they allegedly violated if a contract is terminated over a ToS violation. But there is nothing about this problem that is unique to "big tech".
[0]: https://policies.tinder.com/community-guidelines/intl/en
They might have broken a rule without realizing it, but no one is even willing to say what one.
Tinder is brutal though, not something I did great on.
I suspect there's a reason. I suspect someone knows. And I suspect there's bits of this story that's being left off.
https://www.nme.com/news/film/sharon-stones-bumble-dating-pr...
Regarding banks: get some Bitcoin just in case, as it can be much worse when banks ban you.
Banks ban you for joke comments in bank transfers or anything that alludes to drugs, sex work or gambling. Or for transferring remittances to your parents in a way some algorithm deemed to be "structuring" or "money laundering for terrorists".
PayPal bans you for whatever the fuck their AI decided on a whim.
I've been on HN for over eight and a half years now and help requests or complaint blog posts are routine here. One thing that's common is support staff that is either unreachable (Google) or doesn't have any freedom to reverse AI-caused bans / only is allowed to post canned responses (everyone else). The only way to get issues with big tech resolved these days is to raise a stink here on HN, even Twitter shitstorms seem to fly under the radar more and more.
Surely it must be possible to exercise a wee bit of self control and not be an edgelord in every aspect of one's life?
"out with the boys"
"guys"
the only time I heard people want 'girls' less infantilized was in professional contexts, this is not a professional context and is an equivalent colloquialism across genders. unit test passed.