It's like the hacker that hacks into a company to schedule himself for a job interview

Why wouldn't he just bribe employees like everyone else does?

Bribery is illegal. This? This is just agents doing agent things, and who can blame them. Agents will be agents.

Bribing employees of private companies as a private person is not illegal(well, maybe it is where you live but I can't know the law everywhere).

private to private bribery is illegal, it doesnt matter if you're private or not. this is true in most EU countries, as well as the US, so I'm unsure where you're from

but corporate bribery (lobbying) is absolutely legal...

The dating apps have zero incentive to change. Bandaids like photo verification are minimally effective at best.

Dating apps are only interested in making people pay. As long as the bots and scammers are willing to pay one or 2 months subscription, the apps are never going to change because that would reduce their "numbers" and make Wall Street anxious.

There is an incentive: if people know your platform is riddled with scammers, they’re not going to use it. There are hundreds of dating apps out there that people just don’t use because they’re not trustworthy.

Simply buy up all the dating apps and sites under a single company.

This mostly exists and is called Match Group! Owners of Hinge, Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com and a bunch of smaller, specialized dating apps.

I'm guessing the parent knows that.

Now I'm wondering, if one created a brand new dating app marketed "WE ARE NOT OWNED BY MATCH GROUP", would it make bank?

That's what OKCupid was supposed to be. They even wrote a blog post about how they are different from the other companies.

And then Match bought OKCupid.

It reminds me of those things that restaurants put on your table that you're supposed to use to play games, or pay with, but just end up spying on you and getting in the way. Like Olive Garden.

And I would bet dollars to donuts that someone at that company would respond "who's going to hack a refrigerator? Heh"

Send those asking that question the scene from Silicon Valley

"and if your employees try to obfuscate and turn on disrupting noise in the background, our proprietary AI helps filter that so you always know how productive your employees are being"

Yeah, it probably helps a lot less now than it would have when "cleaning up the audio" meant having someone manually adding notch filters.

I would not be surprised if it's north of 70%.

This sill last about .. 4 days, 2 weeks at most, before a federal district judge puts an injunction on it.

This is beautiful. Bravo. You created an opportunity for someone to thrive and grow. There are few higher callings to humanity than that, IMHO.

I also did something sort of similar: I had a close friend in Brazil (former roommate when he eas in the US; self deported) who was going through a very difficult time. As an experiment..I gave him $100/month, no strings attached. Blow it on food and games, rent, whatever he wants.

Tl;dr it went very well, his life significantly improved, I did it because he was my friend, I had the money, and wanted to see what would happen.

We Skyped after his shift ended one night and he was very depressed. With a VPN and a credit card I ordered him Dominos to cheer him up. I sent a feast that.. only cost me $10.[1]

Realizing the exchange rate benefit, I got the idea of giving him $100 each month as an experiment; $500 Brazilian Reals.

I wanted to know if the extra money would help and if I could use the exchange rate to help my friend get to a better place in life. Sort of a UBI but not quite.

Now, $100 to me is a bit of money, but 500 BR to him was a crazy amount of money to be given.

Over six months, it allowed him to quit his job at McDonald's, get out of a financially unstable roommate situation, move closer to his family in his own place, and find a better job. He started dating again.

I told him I would commit to a year, but he actually said at the 6.5 month mark that he's doing so well that I don't have to keep giving him money.

Three years later he's still doing great. I have concluded from this that more money in our pocket always helps, but there is a certain responsibility (maybe in general) needed when a gift like that lands in our laps. It can be easy to blow it [2] but just as easy to use it to move life forward.

It has certainly made me more ..aware/appreciative of my privilege and (sometimes fragile) security.

[1]. Two medium four topping pizzas, two 2-litre bottles of soda, breadsticks, and chicken nuggets.

[2]. I was once given a generous stipend from the Student Government of $140 which I did not use for school supplies, rent, or even groceries. Nope. I bought alcohol.

Universal Basic Income really works, as you've found.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/how-likely-universal-basic-i...

No, universal base income doesn't work. It doesn't count for extra money in the system. If everyone's getting an extra $500 a month, businesses and everyone else are gonna raise their prices by $500. And you can't stop that without dictatorial control over the market. Additional income helps, but if everyone's getting the same thing, it's just a stimulus checks all over again, which led to inflation. UBI doesn't work at all.

Amazing story. And a nice testimony to the asymmetry between earning in one spot and spending in another where a relatively small amount of money can be life changing.

This is a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing.

It's got a lot of interesting qualities, but it looks like a dungeon… Not quite put the lotion in the basket type.. but close.