SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On Wednesday, the FTC alleged in a legal complaint that Match.com and other dating sites owned by Match group broke US law when they let accounts known to be fraudulent message netizens who had set up free profiles.
The problem, the regulator says in its Texas court paperwork (PDF), starts with the dotcom's business model of letting users join for free but charging them to view messages, or to see who is interested in them, and send replies.
In this case, the FTC says that the site allowed obvious scam accounts that had been banned from contacting paid customers to message people with free accounts. The free users were not told who was contacting them, nor see the content of the love note, nor that the sender had been flagged as a scammers.
Rather, the users were told they would need to upgrade to a paid account in order to see that sexy memo, and only then, after coughing up cash, were they notified that they were being courted by a bogus profile. In other words, the FTC says that not only did Match allow scammers to operate on its site, but it also used them to make money.
What's a lonely heart to do?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @04:12PM (2 children)
OkCupid is badly broken. I had a lot of luck with it years ago by messaging the women that visited my page. But now you can't message anybody unless you both opt in and as a result, rather than getting a response half the time, I don't bother at all with the site.
The problem with these sites more than anything else is that there's a conflict of interest. They stop making money when you find somebody. There's an incentive to give matches that are just good enough to keep people on the site and no more.
Similarly Zoosk keeps trying to set me up with single mothers even though I've explicitly stated that it's a deal breaker, but parts of the site don't show that information. They also don't check to see that age ranges are compatible, so I get a lot of visitors that are too old for me.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:19PM (1 child)
> there's a conflict of interest. They stop making money when you find somebody.
Lot of businesses have this inherent conflict. Doctors, automobile repair services, and, yes, software engineers are all working against their self-interests. The faster they fix a problem, finish a job, the sooner they're out of work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @12:27AM
The difference is that those other things are repeat business in most cases. Or at least they get word of mouth. You very quickly run out of people to refer to a dating service as your friends and social circle get married.
Yes, you probably won't be involved in many law suits, but you might be and if you're not, you might know somebody that is.