Burning The Ladder: Match.com Supports Burning Section 230 To The Ground, Despite Relying On It To Exist

from the what-the-fuck? dept

Here's one I didn't quite expect to see. Match.com -- the dating website owned by IAC, which owns basically every other major dating site, including OkCupid, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Hinge, and a bunch of others as well -- has announced that it will support the idiotic EARN IT Act, that would utterly destroy Section 230 and the ability of websites to host user generated content. Match's publicly stated reasons for this are... bizarre. It doesn't actually explain why it supports it. It just says it does, that protecting children is important, and then some mumbo jumbo about the kids online these days -- none of which touches on what the bill would actually do.

At Match Group, the safety of our users is at the heart of all we do and something we are constantly investing in. However, the EARN It Act rightfully acknowledges that online safety is a societal issue that demands action from leaders in the social media and tech space and on Capitol Hill. The EARN IT Act would help accomplish this by establishing a joint commission of lawmakers, experts and industry participants to set standards and best practices for internet companies to follow in addressing online exploitation of children.

The only way I can read this in a manner that makes sense, is Match has realized -- as the absolute most dominant player in the field -- that it can handle whatever recommendations come out of this panel in order to retain its 230 protections. But it also knows that all those smaller competitors, the ones that Match keeps buying up left and right, probably, cannot. So, from a competitive standpoint, this strengthens Match's position vis-a-vis upstart competitors, and probably depresses their value, making them easier to buy up. Win-win... if you're Match.com.

The rest of the blog post is just pure propaganda.

As the mom of a teenager, I am constantly thinking about my own daughter’s safety. And as the chief executive of a company that includes some of the world’s leading dating brands—Match, Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge—I find myself often awake at night thinking about my daughter’s future, her digital footprint and the safety and privacy issues that come with this territory.

And that's why you're supporting a bill that literally removes your ability to decide how best to run your platform and hands it to a bunch of bureaucrats who don't know your business? Say what?

I remember a time when tech didn’t encompass every area of life. That’s no longer true for today’s kids. They have been immersed in a device-driven, always-on world since birth, and it’s incumbent on us to give them the tools to thrive in this increasingly digital world.

And that's why... you no longer want to be able to decide which tools to give them... but instead give that right to the government? Why?

Given our kids spend so much time with technology, we need to take bolder steps to protect them. We know that sex traffickers, pedophiles and other predators target children in places where they believe them to be most vulnerable. The internet will continue to fail our children without the entire internet ecosystem investing in and adopting new rules, technologies and practices to better govern online interactions and crack down on predatory behavior.

Beyond the whole "targeting children" issue being overblown, one place where they are targeted is on dating sites -- and you're now signing up to be held liable for that on your own website.

That is why Match Group has voluntarily chosen to make all of our platforms 18+. Beyond the age requirement, we vigilantly deploy a network of industry-leading automated and manual moderation and review tools, systems and processes designed to find and remove people from our app who should not be there. This includes both underage users and the bad actors that could prey on them. We work with partners like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Polaris, RAINN, Thorn and others to solicit recommendations from these experts. We welcome the opportunity to work with regulators to ensure that we are all coming together to protect our next generation of citizens. And, like most tech companies, we will continue to invest in new technologies and adopt new practices to try to stay ahead of predators.

That already happens. Most platforms already do that. So why are you good with adding liability on top of that, other than knowing you can handle it while your competitors cannot?

What's even more bizarre is why would IAC allow Match.com to support legislation like this that will harm other IAC properties, like Vimeo, HomeAdvisor, Angie's List, Dotdash (the former About.com), and more? The whole thing seems self defeating, unless the entire point is just to fuck over smaller competitors. Section 230 helped Match.com become the giant success it is today, and now it's burning the ladder it used to reach those heights, so no one else can get there. Despicable.

Filed Under: competition, dating sites, earn it, earn it act, intermediary liability, section 230
Companies: iac, match.com

DailyDirt: Online Dating, FTW?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some folks look at online dating services as a tool for meeting like-minded people (with potentially romantic engagements). But as with almost anything on the internet, there are also people out there trying to game the system and figure out how the algorithms behind the date matching systems work. (Though, sometimes the process is a bit simpler.) Just to gear up for Valentine's Day later this week, here are just a few examples of people taking online dating to an extreme.

• Chris McKinlay used his PhD-level math skills to improve his dating experience on OkCupid. Using 12 fake OkCupid accounts and some Python scripts, he scraped millions of responses from 20,000 women... and after 88 first dates with women he found with his own algorithms, he's in a serious relationship. [url]
• About 40 million people in the US are using online dating services like eHarmony, Match.com, etc. And if those dating site users are anything like their counterparts in China, people aren't as fussy about their dates as their profiles might imply -- based on a study of hundreds of thousands of dating interactions on baihe.com (which has 60 million registered users). [url]
• Alli Reed performed her own experiment on OkCupid, trying to determine how awful a woman's profile could be before men would stop messaging her. The one part of her fake profile that wasn't awful was the very attractive profile picture, so the answer should be somewhat obvious. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algorithm, alli reed, chris mckinlay, dating, fake profiles, math, relationships, romance
Companies: baihe, eharmony, match.com, okcupid

DailyDirt: The Mating Behavior of Online Daters

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Online dating sites provide a vast amount of interesting data for researchers studying human behavior. These sites record how much people lie about themselves to try to impress others, and dating sites contain a wide variety of personal data that can be sliced and diced according to age, gender, income, education, interests, you-name-it. Here are just a few studies that have looked at digital dating databases for insights into the minds of people searching for soul mates and long walks on the beach.

• A study of 18 different dating sites, including eHarmony, Match, Plenty of Fish and Yahoo Personal, suggests that online daters are maybe slightly more successful at finding spouses than offline daters. The study also pointed out that there wasn't much difference between dating sites based on breakup rates, although some online dating sites had higher ratings for marriage satisfaction. (A+++ Would marry again!) [url]
• A meta-analysis for over 400 academic studies about online dating stated that about 25 million people use dating websites. The results of online dating aren't exactly conclusive, but with more and more people meeting mates with the help of websites, "online dating" is getting to be just like "dating". [url]
• About 81% of online daters misrepresent the facts about how tall, how heavy, or how old they are. Interestingly, people with online dating profiles are also more likely to admit to being fat than being conservative. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: marriage, matching, online dating, personal data, relationships, romance
Companies: eharmony, match.com

Married Woman Sues Match.com For Using Her Photo In Ads

from the false-endorsement dept

The internet sure makes things tricky sometimes. A married woman named Anne Read Lattimore is suing a photographer and two websites concerning a photograph. Apparently a salon hired a photographer named Roger Kirby to help create a website. As part of this, Kirby photographed Lattimore after she got a haircut from the salon. No documents were signed, but Lattimore apparently gave permission to use the photo on the salon's website. Kirby went further and uploaded the image to Stock.xchng, the free stock photo site owned by Getty Images. From there a few others downloaded and used it -- including Match.com, who used her image in ads on Facebook, implying she was a member. As you might guess, this became problematic when people who knew Lattimore -- who, once again, is married -- saw her picture and were confused about her use of Match.com. In addition, she's suing another site, HealthCentral, which used her photo in a story about coming out as a homosexual. Lattimore notes that she is neither a homosexual, nor has she come out, as the article and photo imply.

It seems like her real complaint is with the photographer who uploaded the images, and suggested they were free and available for a variety of uses. While the license on the stock photo site did say the image could not be used to endorse a product, it's difficult to see how Match.com or HealthCentral could have reasonably known that the photo was of someone who didn't want it used at all. It seems like attaching liability to those sites would open up huge potential liability for third parties using stock images. Of course, you could argue that such sites shouldn't use stock images in the first place, but that's a separate issue beyond the legal questions. In this case, though, she's alleging both defamation and misappropriation of likeness. The law may be on her side concerning the defamation claim (that may depend on the specific state law), but I do worry about the implications if that's the case.

Filed Under: anne read lattimore, false advertising
Companies: match.com

Match.com Plans To Ask Users If They're Sexual Predators

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

We noted recently an odd lawsuit against Match.com from a woman who was sexually assaulted by a man she met via the service. The company is almost certainly protected via Section 230 from liability, but with a bit of interesting timing, Match.com announced plans to start screening users' names against a sexual predator database. This seems like the sort of quickly slapped together ideas that sound good until you think through the details. And, thankfully, the folks over at the EFF have thought through the details and are pointing out how deeply flawed Match.com's idea is:

There are several glaring flaws with Match.com's plan. For one, Match.com can't prevent sexual assault by screening for sex offenders. But even if Match.com's goal is merely to check whether users are on a registered sex offender list, rather than to actually prevent assault, Match.com runs into the difficulty that many people who use the site may not use their real names. And while a portion of Match.com's services require a form of payment, a user looking to conceal her identity might simply use someone else's credit card to purchase a Match.com subscription. For this plan to work, Match.com will likely need to move to a real name policy, similar to Facebook's. And often a legal name may not be enough to establish one's identity -- Match.com could well need to collect other data points, like address or phone number, to truly figure out which "John Smith" has registered for their site. (Of note: a quick search through the sex offender registries for the name "John Smith" returns dozens of results.) This will be a change for Match.com: you can currently sign up for an account without providing your real name and there's nothing in the terms of service that requires an individual to provide her real name.

And the real flaw in Match.com’s plan is the most obvious: criminals who want to use Match.com for nefarious purposes could use a false identity to set up service. So while law abiding citizens searching for love are handing over loads of personal data to Match.com, those with criminal intent are unlikely to provide real information about themselves when signing up for the site.

The post goes on to highlight numerous other problems, and note that Match.com "doesn't promise to safeguard user data," in the company's privacy policy -- so with any verification process almost certainly involving handing over a lot more data, the whole plan seems dangerous from a privacy perspective:

It's an affront to privacy masquerading as a safety feature.

This sort of thing, by the way, is exactly the kind of thing we'll be discussing at the Techdirt Insight Dinner salon on May 18th, where one of the key points is to better figure out how companies can and should deal with the data they're collecting, without trampling on privacy issues.

Filed Under: data, dating, privacy
Companies: match.com

Woman Sues Match.com Because She Was Assaulted By Someone She Met On Site

from the misplaced-liability dept

A few years back, there was an online dating site, whose main differentiator was that it would supposedly do background checks on anyone who joined. That company had a habit of not just playing up this differentiator, but of trying to get laws passed that would make life difficult for other dating sites -- such as forcing them to put a warning on every page reading: "WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL." Thankfully, it doesn't seem like those lobbying efforts have gotten very far, but I'm reminded of this because of a new lawsuit filed against Match.com by a woman, who claims she was sexually assaulted by a man she met on the site. This is, of course, horrible. But the fault lies with the guy, not with Match.com

In fact, the whole thing seems suspiciously similar to those old attempts to get such laws passed, in that the woman isn't asking for monetary damages, but to require Match.com to run background checks on everyone. Of course, this is a liability question and it's difficult to see how Match.com could or should be liable here. Obviously, when you meet someone you don't know, there are risks, but pinning the liability on the tool people use to meet seems quite problematic.

Filed Under: liability, third party liability
Companies: match.com

Match.com Sued Over Dead/Fake Profiles

from the you-only-need-to-find-one dept

Last year, dating site Match.com threatened some rivals, saying that the numbers they put out concerning marketing probably couldn't be supported, and ordering them to cease and desist with misleading claims. Of course, all that really did was make a lot of people turn around and look more closely at Match.com's own claims, which seemed only fair. I have no idea if this latest story is a result of some of that scrutiny, but a class action lawsuit has been filed against Match.com by users of the service who claimed that the company was quite misleading with its own stats. Of specific concern is the actual number of users touted by Match, who (the plaintiffs claim) leaves "dead" accounts on the system just so it can boost its numbers. Also, there are claims that many of the profiles are fakes, using images of porn actresses, models, or people from other dating sites (though, if accurate, this could just be the work of spammers, rather than Match itself). Separately, there are claims that just as accounts are about to expire, members get a notice that someone wants to contact them -- but they have to renew their subscription to respond. Except, when they do renew, it turns out that the person who wanted to contact them has disappeared. All that does seem a bit sneaky, if true.

Filed Under: dating, fakes, profiles
Companies: match.com

Match.com Upset That Other Dating Sites Cite Stats About Themselves, Like It Does

from the less-wrong dept

Online dating site Match.com sent a letter from its lawyer to rival Plentyoffish.com last week, accusing it of citing statistics about itself and its members (like the fact that they'll go on 18 million dates this year) that Match says can't be supported. It then went on to "demand that [Plentyoffish] immediately cease and desist"... or provide Match with user data to back them up. Ever the friendly rival, Match's lawyer said the company would be glad to sign a confidentiality agreement before taking a gander and Plentyoffish's proprietary data. POF's founder basically told Match to get lost, highlighting several figures that Match touts about its service, including one saying that an average of nearly 1000 people per day get married after first meeting on Match. To be honest, a lot of the figures cited by both parties are a little hard to believe, and sound like little more than attempts by the sites to sell hope to prospective users. But starting a fight over a rival's claims -- when all that's likely to do is call attention to your own -- may not be the wisest move for anybody in the online dating business.

Filed Under: rivals, studies
Companies: match.com, plentyoffish