If you want to know what the 9th circle of hell is like, join a dating site. I had no intention of joining a dating site. Because I am happy and content. But something very dark is happening in the world of dating apps, and it has to do with two of my issues: protection and AI, so I joined the dating site for research purposes.
If two modern monsters could be bred to create a crazy creature capable of devouring human rights, then those two monsters would be safe and AI.
Recently, I started noticing online forums flooded with complaints from people protesting their innocence after being banned from dating apps for no apparent reason. Reddit is full of these crazy souls, some of whom are so appalled that they’re being summarily accused of unknown crimes of a predatory nature and feigning near suicide.
I decided to buckle up and join Hinge, America’s largest dating app with 30 million users worldwide, an app whose users claim to be the worst offenders. It is owned by Match, which also owns Tinder. With safety in mind, Match Group proudly states that 80% of harmful accounts are now removed using AI before a real user reports them.
Now, it’s clear that I tried to be as moderate as possible going into Hinge. I wanted to experiment, so I decided to start off as innocently as possible before fumbling around with ways to flirt and see what would turn out to be offensive, which I didn’t think was a big deal.
I carefully and accurately created my profile, uploaded a professional headshot, and followed the app’s instructions to turn on the “like” icon on certain profiles to indicate the kind of person I was looking for. I made one comment on a user’s profile, and it was the gentlest flirtation I could think of. “What a lovely tuxedo!” I wrote on a photo of a man dressed stylishly at a wedding. However, the system immediately displayed a warning that the comment was inappropriate. So I deleted it and didn’t post it. I did not contact or message other users. I just looked at their profile for 15 minutes and that was it.
The next morning, I was surprised to receive a nasty email from Hinge with the title, “Your account has been deleted.” “Hello Melissa, your account has been banned for violating one or more of our policies.” If the information is available, you can log in to Hinge to learn more about why your account was banned and how to appeal it. ”
When I logged in, all I saw was acres of general terms and conditions. Therefore, that information was not available to me. I felt like Joseph K. trialI was accused of a crime I knew nothing about, but my accuser did not reveal any details. It was actually worse. Even Joseph K. was put on trial. Melissa K. won’t get that chance. How can you decide to pursue an appeals process if you are not aware of the violation?
I deleted the app. Ironically, Hinge’s slogan is “Hinge – Designed to be removed.” Now I understand why. I was so paranoid that I was worried that if I left Hinge on my phone, other apps would start spreading rumors about me. My bank may exclude me as undesirable. Hmm, I don’t understand how these work. You can never be too careful.
So I contacted Hinge headquarters, told them I was a journalist, and asked them what I had been doing. At this point, companies typically admit their mistake, apologize, and give away the product for free. But two days later, a rambling, bureaucratic, and even more unpleasant email came back from a Hinge spokesperson.
“Thank you for contacting us. We understand that you have expressed concerns about your account, but due to privacy requirements we are unable to comment on the specifics of individual enforcement in the media.”
I assumed that what I had done was so terrible that no amount of detail could embarrass me. “We encourage you to file an appeal,” he said, explaining in a lengthy bulleted explanation that all appeals will be reviewed by human moderators from the “Trust and Safety Team.”
These moderators can take action on the report or “escalate the case” to a senior moderator or safety expert. We determined that if we chose to appeal, things could get much worse. Like the frozen lake in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, I would have preferred to remain frozen.
Hinge, in short, no offense. I haven’t done anything. I know that and you know that too. The AI just did something stupid. Maybe my tuxedo comment was read incorrectly, or my profile’s hobby of “horseback riding” was read as an attempt at innuendo. You can see that AI is as thick as mince.
I sent an email saying that, in principle, I would not sue unless they told me what they were suing for. “We understand the inconvenience this may cause. We are sorry that the experience was not what you were hoping for,” was the reply. But actually, it happened because I started it to prove that some poor crazy soul on Reddit wasn’t lying. Hinge is campaigning against many users. I still don’t know why.
It’s possible they were excluding me for reasons they don’t approve of. Since I was using a free service without paying a membership fee, my first suspicion was that the dating app was weeding out people who weren’t willing to pay.
The second paranoid delusion that bothered me was that Hinge was filtering me for demographic reasons. When I signed up, I noticed that there were some very woke promotional photos of different people who didn’t look like me in love. I had to answer a ridiculously long list of questions about sexual orientation and gender, as well as explain my skin color, race, and religion.
I felt like Joseph K. in The Trial, accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
Reflecting on this and feeling completely persecuted, I threw my deranged paranoid theory at Hinge. The idea was that Hinge had programmed its AI to filter out certain categories of people at certain times to keep its brand awake. Was a 54-year-old straight, binary woman not wanted as this month’s member? That reply didn’t answer the question at all.
So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is a creepy idea they’ve made me imagine with their mystical secrecy.
I would argue that by refusing to elaborate on why they don’t need me, Hinge is willing to allow the accusations to stand, challenging me to a kind of techno-duel and having to weigh how lucky I am that the system doesn’t further misinterpret my innocence even if I try to formally contest it.
This is par for the course with safety measures in place. Too often it is company policy to throw dirt and brazen things at random. With AI, it’s even worse. Hide behind some unknown algorithm and be as rude and non-exclusive as you want.
AI is the only legal way companies can tell their customers, “Screw it, we don’t want people like you!” That’s what AI is good at. It’s horribly rude, unfair, offensive, and, of course, just flat out wrong.
