OKCupid: OK, STUPID, YES we set you up with BAD DATES. On purpose The recent uproar from users who had discovered Facebook was meddling with their minds is overblown, according to Christian Rudder, co-founder of dating site OKCupid. Facebook's academic study into manipulating the moods of its users by fiddling with their news feeds has sparked an FTC complaint and a lot of outrage – …
Don't users pay OKcupid for 'matches?'
So if they suddenly change it so that 'matches' are nothing more than random pairings are they no longer selling what they took money for?
Facebook being free, theres not much you can do about what functionality they give you.
But if you've paid for a dating service to then find out its not even pretending to use a matching algorithm.
I would guess that's a subediting error, it certainly looks like one.
But it would be nice to have confirmation. Nicer still if El Reg could take more care in the first place.
On topic: this is pretty much what I said when the Facebook story broke. Heck, I presume El Reg is doing the same thing to us right now: it'll be studying how people click on links, setting its rules for deciding which stories appear in the "top 5", and in that 'bar' 3 stories down the main page, and in the sidebar, and it'll tweak those algorithms - assuming they are automated, not manual, which would make them even more manipulative - to get more eyeballs.
This says a whole more about human nature and our willingness to believe what we want to believe that anything else. Most of these website pages are built on the fly so it's not difficult to bias the results one way or the other. Sure, it's easier with modern technology but this type of manipulation has a long history.
OKCupid has a proud history of coming up with interesting (and absurd) analyses of their users and habits. They have done so publicly since 2009: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/about/. Plus, the website works by having you answer endless questions about yourself, it's a data analytics playground, unlike some creepers like Facebook.
Anyone from the era of Socrates would say that [your looks is all you need for a date].
But, I'll give a thumbs up for OKCupid for being honest. The results actually undermine and question their profile text system, eventually questioning all that [non-visual] data analysis.
It's quite opposite of what FB did. They observed more +ve (/-ve) text in response to +ve (/-ve) texts and foolishly (biased) assumed that the poster were actually happy and not just trying to confirm to social atmosphere.
That article on the OK trends was the first listed since 2011 when they were bought out by match.com and I had thought the founders had simply quit at that point.
It is also worth noting that an earlier blog critical of match.com and other paid dating sites was pulled from the blog around that time.
http://web.archive.org/web/20101006104124/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/
I met my missus back in early 2009 on OK Cupid! I don't recall our compatibility percentage. I do recall seeing her profile recommended to me many times before she contacted me. I honestly never thought she'd even look my way after reading her profile.
Sorry to hear that mactch dot com bought OK Cupid. OK Cupid seemed to be the only dating site that offered real contacts.
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