OKCupid Is Evil-And Ignorant

In an earlier post, I blasted OKCupid and other Internet companies for outrageous, arrogant, and plain evil deception and manipulation of their users customers.

Of course, Internet capitalists have no regard for anyone’s opinion, profit rules all.

We are hearing prepublication buzz for a new book by OKCupid’s Christian Rudder, who drew my ire earlier with his arrogant claims that it must be OK because everyone is doing it.

The book is said to report “findings” from his unethical research, along with his advocacy for not only conducting such trashy “research”, but publishing it.

Actually, I haven’t seen the book, so I shouldn’t use words like “trashy”, at least not until I see the trash.

To be clear, this research is still completely unethical and evil–the data was collected without permission and through deception.  But, based on an interview in the NYT, it is clear that it is bone-headed as well.

Rudder apparently has no background in social science.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t be breathlessly reporting amazing things that have been repeatedly documented in academic research over the past 50 years.  I did work in this area myself in the 1980s, everything he is finding is exactly what we would have predicted at that time from earlier data.

For example, the partners people say they are looking for and the partners people really choose are–wait for it–not the same.

And he’s amazed to discover pervasive racial selection in dating.  Is this news to anyone who has eyes?   Worse, he sees this as evidence of “racism”.

In fact, we have five decades and more evidence that people are often attracted to people like themselves.  If he studied his data more closely, he would discover that race is only one of the many dimensions that people select on.

By the way, no points awarded for discovering pervasive racism in the US.  Duh!

But it’s a bit tricky to see one kind of “likes attract” as part of a pervasive evil, while others go without mention.  There is equally tendency of Catholics to prefer Catholics, Lutherans Lutherans, country folk other people from the same area.  Are these evidence for pervasive and socially divisive prejudices?  Or just human nature?

Based on these reported quotes, I’m not really looking forward to this book.  Sigh.

OKCupid Is Evil, Too

Online dating giant OKCupid reported today on unethical experiments they have conducted on their unknowing customers.

In fact, Christian Rudder boasted, “We Experiment On Human Beings!“, not even pretending to be sorry for this improper and exploitative behavior.

He claimed, “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.”

No.  That is how web businesses work.  “Websites” can be designed lots of ways, there is no need to conduct deceptive and undisclosed research on the users.

I note that the report did not indicate any academic connections, nor has it been published in any independently reviewed journal.  So, in addition to violating norms for research methodology, it is unverified and not subject to critical analysis.  Second rate work, for sure.

By the way, neither the methods nor data seem to be available to other researchers.

As I have pointed out before, this behavior would not be tolerated in any legitimate research institution.  Furthermore, the lack of open review (before and after the fact) means that this wouldn’t be accepted for an undergraduate project, let alone as legitimate scholarly work.

This is not acceptable behavior, and the arrogant attitude and lack of transparency only makes it worse.

Stop exploiting and abusing the trust of your users.

I note that anyone reading this can only think, “I can’t believe anything I see at OKCupid.  They manipulated everything they show me.”  Who would want to use this service, knowing this truth?

Bad move, OKCupid, very bad move.