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.
Online dating sites/apps seem like they'd be a nightmare.
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.
For every happy story used for supporting said model, there are literally billions that did it the old fashioned way.
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.
We seriously need better consumer protection against Dark UI tactics.
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.
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...
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.
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.
* 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.
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.
Do you have any records or writings documenting your experience?
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.
But I'm glad your decision worked out for you :)
I may be unfamiliar with the terminology, but can you please explain what this means? What is "box" in this context?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I've just given up on finding a wife/partner. My options are just... bad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How exactly will it work?
not saying there isn't a problem, but maybe trying to shoehorn 19th century solutions onto 21st century problems isn't the answer.
Oh no! Then they can't fake growth.
... which may, indeed, be the right solution.
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?
Sometimes regulation is needed
How, if there is no competition?
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
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
I’d call that fraud. If you pay for a service you get to use the service.
"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.
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.
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"
That's just how the dating market is :)
Also, don't stop just with Tinder. Use Bumble, happn, OkCupid, Badoo. I've got dates from all of these.
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?
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.
Not arguing with the point you're making, but Bumble and Tinder founders are definitely not the same.
[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)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
i have heard that traditional matchmakers get paid years after the first date, maybe even after a 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.
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.
Not as terrifying as the number of people who defend it.
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.
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.
- 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).
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.
"big data" is just an excel file, so I think this would qualify
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"
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.
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.
Get a burner SIM card with a new number and create another profile. Easy as that.
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.
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.
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.
Both of these are, at best, a cause for concern.
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.
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.
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.
"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.