The dating website said yesterday that, like Facebook, it experimented on users without telling them. But unlike Facebook, OkCupid is unapologetic about the experiments. Co-founder Christian Rudder put it bluntly in a blog post: "If you use the internet you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work."
...The similarity to Facebook's data manipulation is most apparent in OkCupid’s third experiment, in which the company sought to answer the questions, "Does this thing even work?" To figure that out, Rudder writes, "we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30 percent match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90 percent match)." Then OkCupid watched what happened, waiting for users to send first and second messages. Ultimately, Rudder writes, he and the OkCupid team determined that "when we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are.""
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ever used a dating site? It seems a logical use of computers, unless you use one like OKCupid. Or do they all do it, and OKCupid is just being honest about it?
8 comments:
All do what? Pretend that their snake oil is the real deal? Why, yes, yes they do. Makes them no different than economists or politicians. And about as worthless.
The OkCupid people might be jerks but I still like their video with the four treadmills.
Sorry for the off topic.
I just blocked Meade, Crack and Althouse from my e-mail account.
They sent me an e-mail solicitation to contribute to the career of that racist lowlife, Crack.
Hopefully, I've fixed things so that I'll never hear from that crew again.
Seems harmless enough to users. Mostly it seems like further evidence that OKC's "successes" have little to do w/ it's algorithm
Ice, I don't know that they don't work. It seems logical that matching people up, legitimately, could lead to a significant number of successful relationships. That is, people would have never had the time to find as large a number of compatible others by searching randomly through bars or churches.
I understand Crack used OKStupid to find his career, his soul, his momma and his BFF Meade.
But maybe that was some other site.
Deborah, if they tell people they're a good match when the algorithm says they aren't, but they behave the same as if the algorithm said they WERE a good match, it suggests the algorithm is garbage.
Ice, accd to the article, they only followed the first couple communications. I'm under the impression the people tried harder to connect, but it's not clear to me they would have actually connected as they got to know each other.
I don't get the algorithm thing, though. Do different match sites claim to have their own superior algorithms for finding better matches?
Post a Comment