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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

The destruction of OkCupid by Match Group looks like a politically motivated attack against the minorities and intellectual power users who used to flock there.

OkCupid used to be the best place to match diverse people.
They crowdsourced thousands of multiple choice questions from which you built your search filter:

  • Which answers you accept
  • How important each is to you
  • Your answer for the other side of the match equation
  • Voluntary explanation

The match results were factored into friendship, dating, and sex. "Friendship" contained ethics and communication style, so it also worked for business partnerships.

Then Match Group bought it.
For a while they let it be, but then they:

  • Removed the factoring - no more looking for friends or sex, only complete packages
  • Removed search - no more finding the best matches anywhere on the planet, now you just swipe like Tinder
  • Removed keyword search - no more finding niche interests not included in the questions, like "furry"
  • Removed the compatibility filter, replaced it with sameness filter - now everything has to be the same to match: both of you must have or not have tattoos for example, never mind what you like - two of my likes went from 99% and 95% compatible to 50% sameness (contradictorily, it still finds the opposite sex for heterosexuals)
  • Deleted the voluntary explanations of answers without warning, so no one could back theirs up
  • Deleted ~95% of the match questions without warning (~80% of popular questions), ~500 questions remain
  • Deleted all message histories
  • Deleted all accumulated likes, which were the best matching people around the world with maximal couple/friend/sex partner potential except, for example, location for now. They broke the profile links, so bookmarks became useless.
  • They delete likes, superlikes, and sent introductions without notification
  • They delete matches (break mutual likes by removing a like) if they haven't been messaging in a while, as if that meant they're not a match - no, they have a temporary problem, such as life situation
  • They block previously matched people that have been clicked "pass" on without notifying either party about the blocking. Once people appeared on my recently cleared block list (well hidden under "settings") when I wasn't using the site.
  • They show profile sections in the wrong order, so those written as a continuum won't make sense. After liking and reopening the profile, the sections will be shown in the correct order.
  • They police inconvenient statements in the users' introductions as the political situation evolves - the day after the mass murderer healthcare insurance CEO got shot, the section in my profile containing (for months) "fuck the healthcare system - make a better one" was deleted without sending me a copy to edit

Plausibly deniable attack: "It's just business."

Avoid dating services owned by Match Group.

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[-] jmiller@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

That is a real shame, I met my wife on OK Cupid. We liked it for all those features that are gone now. I've recommended it to several people over the years, guess I'll stop doing that.

As for being politically motivated, maybe? But my first guess would be that the changes were driven by immediate profitability factors. Because really, what is more important than quarterly and annual profit reports?

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

That chart pisses me off, they have comodified companionship and exploited lonelyness in every single way.

This is not news, but for the first time made me realize how huge this is.

[-] Draces@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I think it's much more likely they destroyed it because it worked and was free. It didn't keep users on the platform swiping endlessly and that's bad for it's more profitable apps

[-] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yep met my wife on OkCupid. Been together for going on 12 years now. Sad to hear it's been destroyed. Why the fuck is this group allowed to monopolize the dating apps?

This shit is sick and needs to be torn down.

[-] tektite@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Does anyone remember the study guides on sparknotes.com?

There was also thespark.com and they started sparkmatch.com... which became okcupid.

It feels like it was another lifetime ago.

[-] beebers@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I remember!! I signed up on OK Cupid back in the day because I just wanted to take the quizzes that were on thespark.com

[-] archonet@lemy.lol 0 points 1 year ago

are there any dating apps/sites that don't suck?

Everything is either paywalled to fuck and back or beyond useless. Mostly because of Match Group, but even the few I've tried not owned by them are also shit.

[-] scrooge101@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

There is Alovoa which is open source. By lucky happenstance I met my wife there 2 years ago, since we both were into open source.

The userbase was very small though back then, didn't know if it improved now.

[-] DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 0 points 1 year ago

With how much of dating happens over these apps, it's crazy how much damage Match Group could make if they deliberately wanted to.

You could deliberately match everyone with only the worst possible matches, hide the gokd ones so no one has kids.

They could practice Eugenics breeding some master race.

They could empower sex offenders.

etc.

There is zero oversight or transparency. They could do all of these things already or more and we would have no idea.

You could probably destroy civilization by having that much control over the dating market.

Not that they are doing that, but I'm just saying, that's a HUGE moral hazard.

[-] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

If they got access to the DNA data that many companies collect to analyse heritage and health, the eugenics could work well.

[-] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

By "work well" you mean damage society

[-] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If they'd choose to do dysgenics, sure. Why though? Making a slave race?


Eugenics could be used ethically to improve humanity

Improving humans via new eugenics by transhumanists is compatible with human rights.

We allow natural mutation to produce illness and other problems. Why not design babies?

Gene editing will be cheap and widespread. What laws produce ethical results? Should personal eugenics be a human right? How about parental eugenics? Which baby designs are ethical? Don't say the current natural ones, because many of them are unhappy.


Misplacing the blame

Genocidal people having used eugenics as an excuse for mass murder doesn't make eugenics itself bad. Blaming eugenics does nothing to prevent further genocide with excuses. Hate does genocide, the various excuses do not.

(Similarly, over-optimistic fools slamming one version of communism on a whole country without prototyping different versions in villages first, crashing the whole country, doesn't make communism itself bad. Blaming communism does nothing to prevent foolhardy mistakes in societal change. Development should be nimble, prototypes should be cheap.)

We don't ban money because it's used to hurt people - we regulate dangerous stuff to protect human rights. Or, should regulate.


Eugenics works on animals:

Dogs have better social skills than wolves = eugenics.
Some dogs have trouble breathing = dysgenics.
Stray dogs in the wilderness are worse hunters than wolves = dysgenics in that environment.

Humans could be better:

Humans could be designed to work well in their lives:

  • No disease, no ailment, unless asked for by patient candidate.
  • Happy childhood in a family where everyone's personality is compatible with each other, DNA-matched.
    (can even be done by trading babies, without gene editing)
  • Happy working career, DNA-matched.
    '

Humanity could be better:

Humanity could be designed to work well in its evolution:

  • Better thinkers for avoiding disasters.
  • Fewer born sociopaths, less risk of human extinction on purpose with future weapons.
  • Fast adaptation to environmental changes, such as Mars colony in unhealthy 1/3 gravity.
  • Better disaster survivability through species diversification.

Separate the human kinds from incompatibles

Echo chambers (countries, languages, professions) are cultures protecting their own environment from incompatible cultures. When a group of people demands seemingly absurd laws, they should be allowed to apply those laws to all volunteers, babies being non-volunteers with universal rights. At least personal eugenics should be legal, like body modification is now. Ear piercing is a modification some abhor.

Transhumans and conservatives need to stay away from each other, and current technology could help: phones could navigate people, routing incompatibles around like oil and water. On shared ground, weirdos would always happen to be on the other side of the street. Train cars and elevators filled with groups of people approximately their own kind. All cars good looking on every commute, timed just right for people's tastes. On the web, OkCupid and Quora used to be good at that, matching tastes and interests.

Do the opposite of what the for-profit sensationalist media does, smearing the wildest progressive stunts in the conservative's face, because rage sells, anger is addictive. The blame is mistakenly placed on the depicted, not the media breaking people's boundaries by pushing incompatible people into knowledge of each other.

[-] ownsauce@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Would it be feasible to make an activitypub based successor?

It was a great service to find people with similar worldview, values, and interests.

[-] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Match Group’s stock is down over 80% from it’s peak in 2021.

[-] thevoidzero@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Try before corona vs now. Going down from 2021 doesn't say much as it was outlier situation caused by lot's of lockdown and people not going out.

this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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