
Ashley Madison founder steps down - speg
http://www.bbc.com/news/34090372
======
seren
It seems the revelation there are no women on AM is far worse business-wise
than the security breach (Maybe not legally). How can you go on as a business
if your business model has been exposed as totally fake ?

I would also add, that by extension, there is no reason than competitors like
gleeden.com have a different men/women split.

~~~
Shish2k
I wonder where all the women _are_? I'm fairly sure that the human race as a
whole is 50/50 split; but dating sites are 99% men, the tech industry is 90%
men, when I take public transport it's 75% men, pubs are 80% men, construction
workers I pass on the walk to work are 100% men, etc etc. I can't remember the
last time I was in a room which was mostly women; the last time I even got to
50/50 was high school... It's _really_ hard to avoid bias when the bubble that
I live in is so skewed :/

~~~
niccaluim
Here's a real sample of most of the messages women get on dating sites:

hi [that's the whole message]

u r so beautiful [again, the whole message]

hey babe do u want a real man i will treat yuou lik a lady

This represents the _vast majority_ of messages men send on dating sites. And
the volume of messages women get is insane. It is a firehose of garbage. Why
would anyone volunteer to be on the receiving end of that?

~~~
robwormald
I moderated on OKCupid for years, and this is so, so true.

In fact, it usually went more like:

"Heyyy guurllll lemme holla at you"

"Thanks, but no thanks"

"Fine bitch, you ugly anyway"

That, or dick pics. So many dick pics.

~~~
mikeash
The first site that can reliably filter this stuff out before it even gets to
the target will probably make enough money to form a small black hole. As a
moderator, were you just responding to reports from users, or were you
preemptively checking into messages, or something else?

~~~
nasalgoat
No, it will cost them money because it's the men spending all the money on
subscriptions. If they knew their messages were filtered they'd leave it
droves.

~~~
mikeash
You're assuming that everything would continue to work as it does now. I'm
proposing that if you can filter out the dickheads, you could end up with a
site where it's no longer just men signing up. If you're the only site where
women actually _want_ to sign up, then you'll get all the men too, and you'll
rake in the cash.

Also, you're assuming that the idiot men would even be able to tell. Women
mostly ignore their nonsense now, right? So it wouldn't look much different.

------
s_dev
I've gone from viewing the people in the database as maliciously motivated
cheating jerks who deserved their outing to complete lame asses I simply feel
sorry for. Very few of the women on the database were actually real. They
charged for deleting data and never did. Every successive revelation makes the
AM users look like chumps and AM employees look like incompetent fools.

I would have thought such a security breach would have taken down the entire
business model but nope they're still going. I'm sure a lot more senior staff
will have to step down in order to rebrand at some point so they can distance
themselves from this disaster.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Also keep in mind that the whole affair thing was a branding change done in
2009 so many who signed up before may not have been looking for that. Then you
have stories about people who were looking for a discrete relationship and
wasn't commuting adultery they just needed to be discrete because of personal
reasons (like living in a country that imprisons or executes people who are
gay).

Plus anyone can add someone to the service AND there are plenty of people who
enjoy the trill of simply looking and not doing anything.

So yeah I don't think it's a slam dunk that they're all "cheating jerks".
Though I'm sure plenty are :)

~~~
lotharbot
> _" anyone can add someone to the service"_

Yes, though it's harder to add someone as a paying member using a card in
their name and tied to their address. Based on the stories that have come out,
it sounds like there are dates on those payments.

That doesn't necessarily mean everyone was a "cheating jerk", and even if they
were, that doesn't necessarily mean a judgmental response is the healthiest
response the rest of us can give.

~~~
differentView
Still relatively easy with some prepaid cards that let's you use whatever name
and address. Also some billing processors don't even check the address.

------
chatmasta
I wonder how many new signups they've gotten in the past 2 weeks. Does "any
press is good press" apply in this case?

~~~
minimaxir
That would be the equivalent of people buying more eggs after a salmonella
outbreak.

~~~
chatmasta
One could argue that's the safest time to buy eggs, since recalls will err
toward false positives.

~~~
darkr
One could argue that, but I'm not sure what recalled eggs relates to in this
analogy?

~~~
pc86
Adulterous... eggs.

~~~
elektromekatron
I suddenly want an omelet.

------
JeremyMorgan
I figured Tinder would be putting these folks out of business anyway. It's
like Netflix vs Blockbuster.

The hack and exposures, combined with the revelation most of the accounts are
men.. yeah they won't make it another year.

------
throwamay
Sure he's gone, but he'll have to pay $19 to have his corp email account
deleted.

------
am-user
Throwaway because obvious (BTW, it would be really cool if HN had a way of
allowing anonymous posts not linked to your primary account without creating a
1-time account that just clogs up the user table).

I am an Ashley Madison user, although probably not typical in any respect. And
yes, my details are in the leak. Me and my wife grew up and married within the
mormon church, complete with its absolutely distorted view of human sexuality.
After leaving mormonism, we came to realize our sexual maturity had been
stunted and wanted to experience new things...we now have a somewhat open
marriage. We set a few ground rules because we do love each other and didn't
want to break up, but then we set out on our quests to find other partners.

I tried the tinder thing, and that was okay. I tried just going to bars, and
that was okay. I came away feeling a little skeezy, despite being completely
honest with my wife, because I had to be dishonest with the girls I was
meeting...nobody in those situations responds well to "Oh, by the way, I'm
married", no matter how clear you are about it being okay with your wife. I
also grew tired of hookups and one night stands very quickly. I wanted to meet
women that occasionally wanted to meet up, but were okay with the fact that I
had a family life and couldn't just run away any time either of us wanted
some. Tinder and bars were definitely the wrong target market.

While I was doing this, my wife skipped straight to Ashley Madison. Put up a
few pictures, and within seconds she was getting more messages than she could
read. Like literally 500+ messages a day. She tried to filter them by stating
explicitly on her profile what she was _not_ interested in (specifically, out
of shape or over 45yo). It didn't stop them. Most of the messages could be
described as follows: Shrivelled or obese old men (my wife is 29 btw) well
over 45 (including several senior citizens), accompanied by unsolicited dick
pics, and messages about how they could last all night long or whatever. Some
men were a lot closer to what she was looking for, but after filtering out all
the garbage she didn't feel up to the task of trying to message back. She
decided to ignore the messages and try messaging men herself. They either
didn't respond, or they messaged back asking if she was a fake profile. She
eventually was successful in finding what she wanted, but it was pretty
significant effort.

I grew frustrated with the expectations of tinder and bars, and reluctantly
decided to try AM. After seeing my wife's experience, I knew I was in for a
sausage fest competition, but I also learned quickly what was a turnoff to
women and I am pretty attractive myself, so I thought I had a chance. My
perspective from the guy's side? For the most part, it is an extremely
expensive scam. A single message will cost you $1-2 depending on the points
package you bought (women don't pay for anything). If you want a priority
message, it costs double that. All you get with a priority message is a
guarantee that your message will not be buried in the 500+ message/day inbox
of the woman you are trying to message. It can still get buried, but it only
gets buried under other priority messages. I had 20+ messages a day from other
women (or, more accurately, profiles of women). It was very obvious that most
of them were fake, so I didn't bother with the obvious ones. Some of them were
less obvious fakes. Some of them were scams to get you to sign up for other
sites, or paid "background checks" from women who "just want to be safe". And
occasionally, I got messages from actual women, but I never was interested in
them.

I did have some success with talking to and meeting actual women. Based on my
experience, I would estimate that 1000 is a pretty low estimate for the total
number of active women on the site. I would probably ballpark 100-200 in my
metro area, at least between 20-40yo. And here's another surprise...about half
of them were single. In fact, all of the women I ended up meeting in person
were single. But yes, it was quite obvious that the vast majority were
completely fake.

I actually feel like I enjoyed my AM experience, but can totally understand
why you wouldn't if you aren't comparatively young and attractive. For them, I
guess you could blame it on AM being a scam site as much as you could blame it
on having inflated expectations of what you could get out of it. I mean, if
you are 50+, overweight, and have no clue how to talk to women, of course you
aren't going to land a date with a 20yo hotbody. And yet it
happened...thousands of men threw away their money in an attempt to hook up
with my wife. I'd estimate AM made at least $5000 from my wife alone, in the
two months she was active on it.

And then there is the leak problem. I wasn't worried about my wife finding
out, and I'm not worried about divorce...but I am worried about my extended
family finding my email address, because they are all super judgmental mormons
(albeit with naive kind hearts). I have had to come up with a cover story with
my wife if they approached her about it. My life won't end if they find
out...it just will just become a lot more tense with my extended family. I
also now have to worry about moral crusaders in background checks and other
situations...I get the opportunity to tell people my situation is different
while they smile, nod, and judge me as a sleazy cheater. That sucks. Add to
that the fact that we couldn't delete our profiles without paying a ransom,
and it totally sucks. And while the majority of the active users were likely
men trying to cheat on their wives, there were tons of people just like me, as
well as other situations (including single people, homosexuals, polyamorous,
etc.) where they weren't cheating but they did want something direct and
discrete.

TL;DR: Not a complete scam, just mostly. The site really was mostly a bunch of
desperate men talking to bots and getting ignored by women, and paying out the
nose for the privilege. And Avid Life Media is a pile of shit company that
deserves their inevitable bankruptcy. Their executive team is both nefarious
and negligent and should be burned at the metaphorical stake. I hope they shut
down the company before the picture data gets released.

And maybe have some empathy for the users that got caught up in the leak,
because all you have is proof that they signed up for a website, but you don't
have any clue as to their situation nor intentions.

~~~
nkurz
Beautiful post, thanks for the insights. The info that you only met single
women is interesting. Do you suppose this may have been self-selected?
Otherwise it implies the number of real married women on the site was indeed
vanishingly small.

Adding a "post anonymously" checkbox instead of creating a throw away account
may be worth pursuing, but it's hard to know if making anonymous posting
easier would be a net positive for the site.

~~~
am-user
For me, there was a convenience-oriented self-selection process. Having an
affair is hard. You have to have time, alibis, and "laundered" money
(typically an unknown credit card, maybe wads of cash, etc). When it is two
married people trying to meet up, the difficulty is much harder just from
scheduling alone. Even in my case, it was a lot easier than most to find times
to meet up, but I still can't spend more than a night or two per week out late
without feeling like a crappy husband or father. I found it much easier to
deal with single women on the site because I was constrained on when I could
meet up, but they weren't.

I think a good idea would be to have "verified-but-anonymized" posts tied to
the amount of karma you have (just like downvotes). After building up some
reputation, you could occasionally post an anonymized comment, and have it
distinguished by the fact that it is done by an HN regular.

------
dixx
This is so strange!

How can a business with 30+ million male users looking for sex outside
marriage exist for 14 years while the site has no female users except for
bots!!! Are you saying all those people were stupid enough to not realize they
were not going to get laid(and kept paying too)?

It seems when you have advertising money and a cost structure that let's you
make money and stay alive, you don't even have to have a real product! It
makes sense to invest on people not ideas!

I wonder how many other BIG companies are pulling the same tricks to get
unrealistic valuations (Twitter and Uber, they are not worth that much,
especially Uber)

------
logfromblammo
I simply cannot fathom why anyone would sign up for a site that specializes in
extramarital relationships instead of a general-purpose dating website or
culture-specific or orientation-specific dating website. I just don't see what
value it adds beyond putting "married, looking to swing/cheat" in your
profile.

They say you can't cheat an honest man. So if you want to cheat someone, you
might as well advertise to cheaters.

~~~
dpark
> _I simply cannot fathom why anyone would sign up for a site that specializes
> in extramarital relationships_

Discretion. Most of the people on Ashley Madison presumably were wanting to
keep their attempted affairs a secret. Most of them were probably not in
"swinging" relationships, or indeed they would go to regular dating websites
and just advertise their open relationship status.

> _So if you want to cheat someone, you might as well advertise to cheaters._

That's basically the sales pitch for Ashley Madison. "Want to cheat? Here's
some women who want to cheat with you."

~~~
logfromblammo
_Discretion?_

Hindsight has its benefits here, but I already automatically suspect _anyone_
asking for my e-mail address of turning around to sell it to the highest
bidder.

If I'm looking for discretion, this is what I expect to see on the HTTP site:
"You are being redirected to our secure site." And this is what I expect to
see on the HTTPS site: "How to delete this site from your browser history and
router logs" and "How to access our Tor hidden service."

Finally, on the Tor hidden site, "How to maintain anonymity while using
Bitcoin" and "Create a new account".

But I'm probably more untrusting than most.

And there will probably always be people willing to visit
[http://www.blackmailphishing.cc/new_mark.php](http://www.blackmailphishing.cc/new_mark.php)
to create a new account and upload their dankest, dirtiest, and most
embarrassing secrets, for free!

Wait. Wait. I got that address wrong. It's actually
[https://www.opm.gov/investigations/e-qip-
application/](https://www.opm.gov/investigations/e-qip-application/) . And
they got hacked, too.

~~~
squeaky-clean
I doubt most members care if some corporation, or spam mailing list, or the
NSA, or a "hacker" gets their information. It's more about discretion from
people they know, their wife, their friends, etc. I see friends and coworkers
on Tinder all the time, but if I came across one of my married friends on
there, I would probably tell their spouse.

>Finally, on the Tor hidden site, "How to maintain anonymity while using
Bitcoin" and "Create a new account".

If you need to use Tor and bitcoins to avoid detection by your spouse.... Well
I'd say stop cheating on them because (s)he's a keeper.

~~~
logfromblammo
I'm not all that interested in avoiding detection by my spouse. I don't really
want to do anything that I'd feel the need to conceal. Maybe the setup for a
practical joke?

I was thinking more along the lines of skirting the bounds of some _malum
prohibitum_ crime--like buying unlicensed Mickey Mouse apparel, or eating a
protected species, or building an outhouse in the wrong spot--where a certain
someone other than my spouse might come down on me like a ton of turds if it
ever found out.

The gummint is a lot more concerned about policing my behavior than my spouse.
And it's more uptight about what I'm doing when it's not around. Like a
stalker, really. Tor and Bitcoin is demonstrably not enough to keep it off my
back, and it is definitely _not_ a keeper.

~~~
dpark
> _I 'm not all that interested in avoiding detection by my spouse._

Yeah, that makes you not the target audience. Ashley Madison was sold as a
place meet someone to have a secret affair with. The people looking for this
generally wanted to hide it from their spouses most of all.

Undoubtedly, they had some customers that were on the site with their spouses'
knowledge and approval, but this was most certainly a minority. That minority
is probably bothered by this leak in the same way they are bothered by the OPM
leak, but they aren't terrified of their spouses' reactions.

------
0x4a42
This saga is getting better than Dallas. Someone should port it to TV.

~~~
DiabloD3
For those that don't get the reference, Dallas was a long running prime-time
drama (a "soap", back when they didn't air these solely during the daytime),
that was known for its wild twists (such as the "who shot JR" plot line, which
is considered one of the best moments of TV).

This isn't even close to the levels required for entertaining TV, but in my
humble opinion, the comment is neither bad enough to downvote, nor good enough
to upvote, I merely suspect a lot of HN's readership is just too young to get
the reference or had a knee-jerk reaction to soaps in general (which, hey, I
hate the overly-dramatic nature of soaps too; but apparently what Dallas did
was still novel in the 80s, and worth dragging out for a pop-culture reference
now and then).

~~~
Agustus
Absolutely great TV. Think Silicon Valley but with a name tied to it. We need
to get the naming rights to get initial viewers, but you and me, DiabloD3, we
have a show here.

Treatment:

Name: Ashley Madison or some generic name so as to avoid copyright and naming
issues.

Dramatis Personae: Ashley Madison President, Ashley Madison programmers, IPO
Finance Team, Hacker team

Story Arcs:

A Story: Follow the Ashley Madison president as he goes about his 2014-2015
tour to promote the site across the globe, focus on the Japanese campaign, in
preparation for the IPO. Detail the trials and tribulations of the IPO setup,
pressures from the M&A team. Then lead up to the hack and the bourbon scotch
being thrown against a wall as a man who built an empire realizes it is
crashing. The programmers in Ashley Madison trying to figure out if the data
was expropriated, how much, and lead up to the internal discussions on the
blackmail offer.

B Story: The hacker group recruits team members, identify weak points and sets
up to acquire the data. Once the data has been lifted, they struggle on what
to do with a release, expecting to have received blackmail monies, fending off
the popularity it brings to them and how to exit what they have done.

The season ends when the news report starts to detail you can get the database
on TOR.

This could be on HBO, Amazon, or Netflix.

~~~
skj
> the bourbon scotch

the what?

~~~
Agustus
A dead giveaway that I am not a prolific hard alcohol consumer..

------
hadeharian
Meanwhile, we wait for AM founder to bend over for the soap.

------
kstenerud
Worst thing they could have done. Now is the time to rally, not capitulate.

~~~
qrendel
Tbf, the worst thing they probably could have done is run a scam business
model then get exposed in one of the highest profile hacks in years. This is
just icing on the cake.

------
octygen
Here's a different angle.

I'd recruit ex-AM employees. Their business model is brilliant even if is
basically illegal! Imagine what they could achieve in an organization with
even moderate ethics!

The users? That's another story. I'm checking each applicant against "the
list". On the list? We could probably do better in that position.

~~~
mikeash
I don't think the unethical part of their business model can really be
separated from the brilliance of it. The site is basically a scam. If you
remove the scam, there's nothing of substance left.

------
selimthegrim
Let's hope he's not thinking of going into screenwriting.

edit: [http://gawker.com/the-ceo-of-ashley-madison-was-secretly-
wor...](http://gawker.com/the-ceo-of-ashley-madison-was-secretly-working-on-a-
scr-1726202879)

