[yumario]

Rewriting one of my earlier comments: I have used Tinder (owned by Match) before and it was one of the must frustrating experiences ever.

First, they do shady things with your data. Since I made a Tinder account I been getting constant ads for random dating sites. This have been going on for months. God knows how many companies now have my data.

Second, they employ dark patterns:

1) Easy account deletion. Why does that matter? Because they own nearly all dating sites. Including: "BlackPeopleMeet.com, Chemistry.com, Delightful, FriendScout24, HowAboutWe, Match.com, Meetic Group, OkCupid, OurTime, People Media, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Twoo, Hinge" So, they don't care if they lose a user as long as they can shuffle them around.

2) They will keep a tab of the number of users who have like you. Then eventually that user will shown to you and you will swipe left or right. In that case the tab count will decrease. This is a complete scam. They would withhold these users to push to a pay subscription. Example: https://i.redd.it/e13yeek795x21.jpg . Moreover, most of these likes a bots and fake profiles.

3) Fake notifications: https://i.redd.it/r0lheira9rh31.jpg

4) Shadows-bans: I saw that my profile was getting no matches. So I made a new profile, ban! a match within minutes. Essentially they shadow ban users as a form of Neg.

[Lewton]

Re 2.

They changed it so swiping left on someone who liked you no longer decreases the like counter

Also before that if you were out traveling the likes you got while on the road will not show up in your stack when you leave the area where you got them

Also if you swipe left on someone and you’re in their stack and they swipe right on you, they’ll show up in the count

The rest is still super scummy, but the “rules” of the like counter are at least somewhat logical

[torben-friis]

I've used tinder in the past, and I remember there were recommendations online to completely delete your account and start from scratch from time to time if you suddenly found yourself unsuccessful, to get around potential shadow bans or just having fallen in a pit of the algorithm.

Do you happen to know if that was a valid strategy, and if it still is?

I always wondered if it was/is actually possible to completely reset your data, considering they have pretty strong links to you like payment information.

[kkarakk]

It is, but you should use a new name/profile pic combo to get around the algorithm re-slotting you into your old position. Ideally you'd only use your first name, a couple of new pics and don't link any other account so they can't track you(if you must - make a new instagram/spotify to link)

[Lewton]

Totally a valid strategy if you delete your profile and wait a week before recreating, even if you reuse the same profile

I imagine you risk being shadowbanned if you do it too often, but it’s pretty natural to do it once every couple of months

[opportune]

Regarding 4, I don't think that is necessarily a shadow ban. AFAIK Tinder will sometimes surreptitiously give you a boost, the huge one being when you create a new account, and subsequently when you change areas, and probably a few other triggers

[kkarakk]

It FEELS like a shadow ban, no matter how many people you superlike or swipe right on you'll never get a match.

Current time to shadowban seems to be around 3 months

[rolltiide]

And if you complain about your experience in an open forum you get berated by people assuming you arent attractive or your profile isnt good

Glad to see the FTC curbstomping it

[kkarakk]

Reddit and other anonymous social media sites have "profile rates" where you can just submit your profile and have people point out issues.

Lots of people are told they have no problem with their profile and that they should just recreate their account to get around their shadow ban.

The house of cards that Tinder built is falling down

[dmoy]

To be fair on the last part, shadow ban can be an extremely efficient moderation tool, though for people caught up as false positive collateral damage it can really suck.

This is true even in hackernews I would assume, certainly it is any other place I've moderated before.

[dang]

When an account is established, we usually tell people we're banning them and why. Shadowbanning on HN is mostly for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or trolling. You're right, though, that there are still false positives in such cases, and those suck.

[lightedman]

"Shadowbanning on HN is mostly for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or trolling."

You routinely shadowban people you disagree with. Or post-limit them. You don't get to act innocent here when I guarantee you're just as guilty of these dark patterns as every other site.

[dang]

> You routinely shadowban people you disagree with

We don't ban people we disagree with. If we did, hardly anyone would be left unbanned.

As for shadowbanning, the practice is as I described it: if the account is established, we tell people we're banning them and why (your account was an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15615092). If an account is new, different rules apply: we (meaning some combo of software and moderators) have to make a guess about whether the account is legit or not. If the guess is that they're spamming or trolling, we shadowban the account. We guess wrong sometimes, but we do what we can to correct those cases. And we're always happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe that they'll follow the site guidelines in the future.

Rate limiting is a separate issue. If an account posts too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or gets involved in flamewars, we rate limit how much they can post in the future. It's annoying and crude, but it's one of the few software tools we have to prevent comment quality from degenerating too quickly. Again, people are welcome to email [e-mail] and we take the rate limit off if they commit to not repeating that behavior. It's not hard to get an account unbanned or unpenalized if you really want to use HN as intended.

[lightedman]

"It's not hard to get an account unbanned and/or unpenalized if you really want to use HN as intended."

For the most part, I DO use HN as intended, IN SPITE of your shadowbanning. You just refuse to read my posting history to see that much.

This clearly shows I have more integrity than you, as you won't dare unhide any of my decent comments, instead preferring to make yourself look the victim by only unbanning my comments which you can unban to make me look bad. You're the real issue here, not me.

[dang]

We've unkilled a lot of your comments and would be happy to restore more if we missed some good ones.

[gizmo686]

On a free product, I have no problems with shadow bans.

On a paid product, shadow bans seem like a pretty clear case of fraud.

[yumario]

Yep, having used Tinder's paid boots and seeing no results. And then making a new profile with the same photos and bio! and getting results within minutes left me feeling rob and manipulated.

[xyzzy_plugh]

This is an excellent case for a chargeback. It's up to the merchant to prove they were in the right, and in the meantime you get your money back.

[dmoy]

Ah I've never used any of those apps I just sort of assumed they're free.

[blaser-waffle]

> 1) Easy account deletion. Why does that matter? Because they own nearly all dating sites. Including: "BlackPeopleMeet.com, Chemistry.com, Delightful, FriendScout24, HowAboutWe, Match.com, Meetic Group, OkCupid, OurTime, People Media, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Twoo, Hinge" So, they don't care if they lose a user as long as they can shuffle them around.

This sounds like something the CCPA was trying to change.