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OKCupid came clean today by admitting is messed with its users in the name of social science – uh.. what the fudge? Just two months ago, Facebook announced a similar experiment with its users by deliberately manipulating the content of the news feeds for a quarter of a million to see how people react. Europe authorities are reviewing to see if any laws were broken.
OkCupid indicated that they did three experiments on its users. In one test, they made it difficult for you to see profile pictures. 2nd, it hid some text in the profiles to see how it affected personality ratings. Lastly, which is the worst sin of all, it misled some users that they were more or less of a match with someone than their intelligence matching software actually determined.
CEO of OKCupid, Christian Rudder, even went as far as saying, “If you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiment at any given time, on any site.” I think this sets a horrible precedence for companies who base their foundation on matchmaking to be admitting, “SIKE!”
I think this is horrible. What if you were navigating through OKCupid and found someone who was attractive but because of the compatibility score was low, you didn’t bother further pursuing the match.
How are you likely to continue using OKCupid?
OKCupid Publishes Findings of User Experiments – NYTimes.com.