Oh one more example.

Tinder advertised a ton globally with the message of "Single, Not Sorry". Does Tinder know if being single is actually good for everyone? Is this a message you'd blatantly tell all your friends without knowing them? If there was a study saying this was harmful, would they care enough, cut back and tell people to use the app less/more considerably? No because like I said, if it interferes with profits, these kind of considerations will never be talked about.

Few other things. We released a feature where you pay $3 to see if someone responded to you, and the other user would know. Clearly you're fucking yourself over doing that but they don't care. We released a feature where you can see if someone is online, because it increases engagement.

You'd never see shit like this in any organization or community run by people.

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.