this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Cannot stress enough how organic this place feels in comparison to Reddit, no "your post was removed due to karma" bullshit, no dumb comment chains, no "sponsored" or "related" fake posts embedded in the sub listing. Only raw user participation and community building. Feels wonderful.
Which one? And how was your experience?
Tinder. It was and probably still is, a great place to work. One day at the height of BLM, someone posted an article how another one of Match's companies was removing ethnicity filters in their app to keep out racists. I said wait, who are we to making these kind of societal decisions? Why are we removing users personal decisions because we don't like it? It turned out into a huge argument but it got me really thinking. Were not philosophers, sociologists, etc. Its a couple people from a very certain background making decisions that affect millions of people globally. Who are we to decide?
Then I thought about the fact that these kind of decisions were not even made for ethical reasons (which I don't even trust them to get correct), but were fueled entirely by money. Every single decision was entirely based on how much money it earns Tinder, with zero regard as to how it affects its users, in a very personal and important aspect of their lives. All the KPIs were money, internal projects called "Project Whale", zero discussions on relationships, experiments to get users addicted to the app as possible, etc.
If there ever was a decision that would help people but would compromise profits, profits will win, and if there ever is a concern that a decision is hurting users, it wont ever enter into the discussion.
Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future.
Damn, I knew dating apps were a shitshow and that corporations rigged them to make them as addictive as possible, but this is a whole another level of sinister. Tinder is known for being engineered from the ground up to keep people dependent on it with all sorts of dark patterns and obscure algorithms. This is just a reflection on how big tech's business model is ruining Internet and society as a whole.
There is nothing explicitly sinister there. I liked everyone there, everyone was really nice. In a sense that highlights the issue that this is an inherent problem with corporations. No one was explicitly trying to do harm, in fact people were trying to do good in terms of bringing saftey for women, advertising for racial/trans equality, etc. The problem I see is everyone is so focused on growing the platform and profits, that no one is thinking about what theyre doing wrong.
There are no explicit algorithmic tricks either, and there doesnt even need to be. The matching algorithm is actually dead on simple. But because the core metrics are profits and user engagement, even the corp running random experiments will end up naturally turning the platform more and more into a cash cow, with no regard or care as to what its doing to people.
What I mean is there doesn't need to be a room full of people thinking about how to exploit peoples psychology to use the app more, just the fact that the core goal of the whole organization is to make money, any actions it takes will naturally lead to that. If there's ever a compromise between humane values or profits, it will be profits.
Very insightful points. You're essentially identifying one of the mechanisms by which capitalism allows people to benefit from unethical behavior without taking responsibility. The corporation is a black box which takes in well intentioned individual work and input, and spits out dystopian corporate products and systems. No one person can be held responsible and the corporation becomes the scapegoat for the collective unethical behaviors of it's constituents.
Most people participate in this transmutation unknowingly, but some sharks fully understand that they can afford to be extremely shady and dodge the consequences through the corporate shield. Thus you end up with perfectly good people who become complicit in horrible shit.
That's why I don't have a job ๐ (But I actually do and that seems worse to admit rn)