Recently, well-known dating apps have been accused of using fake accounts and bots to create a false impression of popularity and lure people to pay.
Text: Womany Jiaqi
"Look who's like you": If one day, all the people who like you are robots
For many millennials, using dating apps is almost a part of life, and many are willing to spend money on it.
In the digital age, Techcrunch reported that Tinder's revenue has increased significantly in recent years. From $175 million in 2016 to nearly $800 million in revenue in 2018, a large part of which comes from paid memberships. (Read more: Swipe right in love: Can dating apps really find your other half?) ）
However, on September 26, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Tinder's parent company, Match Group, for deliberately using fake accounts and bot conversations to create the false impression that users are popular, and then luring users to buy paid content and pay to see who "likes" me. Moreover, not only Tinder, but also other dating apps under Match Group, such as OK cupid, PlentyOfFish, Match and other software, have similar situations.
We pursue "being loved" and "being liked" on the Internet, and while pressing consent, paying a lot of personal privacy information, location data services, and filling in various preferences, we get fake accounts and robot messages, which also makes people wonder if we can really get the "happiness" we want in this market transaction called "love" with the continuous intervention of commercial hands?
Image: okcupid
Fake accounts and bots create the illusion of popularity and make you pay for it
According to Techcrunch , the FTC states that consumers are unaware that a whopping 25-30% percentage of Match's registered accounts are fake. Moreover, for several months between 2013 and 2016, more than half of the conversations in Match took place in the dialog boxes of officially identified fraudulent accounts.
This has led to romance scams, phishing, and ads flooding dating apps.
Perhaps, some people will argue that this situation is unavoidable in many dating clubs and software. More controversially, though, in the case of Match, dating apps even directly profit from the situation.
Dating apps also send out advertising emails or promotional messages like, 'You've got these people's attention!' Go to potential paying users and lure them to spend money to see who has pressed their love.
Despite these messages and love, a large part of them come from fraudulent accounts or chatbots. The Los Angeles Times pointed out that when consumers try to report the situation of this large number of fake accounts, Match will deny it and refuse to refund them.
"We believe that Match is deliberately trying to lure people into paying to see these messages from accounts that they know to be scams." Andrew Smith, director of the U.S. Consumer Protection Agency, noted. "Online dating services, obviously, should not use love scams as a way to make profits."
When love becomes a market transaction, how does the hand of business intervene
Looking back at dating apps, when we choose to hand over love to the Internet, seemingly fair market transactions seem to help us clarify what we want more quickly and conveniently, while at the same time, technology companies also manipulate our behavior by deliberately hiding information asymmetry.
In 2014, Time Magazine interviewed Sean Rad, the founder of Tinder. At the time, he described in an interview that Tinder was designed to be inspired by card games, and that it was subtle and deliberate to addict users.
"We designed the Tinder interface to be a game. What you're going to do, what you're going to do, what you're going to react to, it's all designed." So even if you don't want to date at all, it's hard to stop swiping right and swiping left.
We click on the user to agree to the terms, swipe to select likes and dislikes, and fill in more self-introduction, interests, expertise, and political leanings. These choices are given to make us think that the more we fill in and slip more, the closer we can get to a non-existent true love.
But behind the seemingly endless options of freedom, we only make ourselves better data commodities to sell to other industries. (Read more: Infidelity, cheating, spiritual chastity?) Love in the age of dating software)
The truth is: in this day and age, we pay more for being loved
However, even if we know this, we still find it difficult to resist the illusion of the "right person". It can even be said that the entire dating software industry is almost based on the fantasy of the "right person".
If, our photos really get hundreds of likes from strangers. If, on the other side of the network, there are really some people who are 97% compatible with us who are also looking for love. If, if you keep selling yourself, can you really get a "true love"?
Recently, in order to curb fake accounts and bots, other software has launched AI portrait recognition systems to try to filter fake accounts.
It's just that we are really lonely in this era. Out of vanity, out of emptiness, we try again and again, in the endless sea of data, to find evidence that we have been liked.
Would you rather swipe yourself before swiping on someone else?
Perhaps, the problem is not the tool, but the mindset with which to use it.
First of all, there is nothing to be ashamed of believing that you will always be loved. Love is the basic need for each of us to survive. It's natural to want to be loved.
It's just that we hope that before you "find true love", you can also give the same amount of time to get to know yourself well. If, deduct bots, fake accounts, and choose your person, you don't like it. We hope that, at this time, you will have to choose yourself. I hope that before swiping right on others, one day you will be willing to swipe right on yourself. (Read more: The Compulsory Course of Love: Keeping Yourself in Love)