
OkCupid Deletes Post “Your Looks and Your Inbox” - d9h549f34w6
https://twitter.com/browserdotsys/status/992106695332687872
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crazygringo
In case anyone didn't catch it... the 4 photos of "random" dudes that follow
the line:

> "here are just a few of the many, many guys we here in the office think are
> totally decent-looking, but that women have rated, in their occult way, as
> significantly less attractive than so-called “medium”"

are the 4 cofounders of OkCupid... ;)

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Avamander
What's wrong with the article and how is it related to incels?

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whataretensors
Is destroying unpleasant data the new version of book burning?

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dspillett
It is a little more 1984 than Fahrenheit 451.

That post never existed. We have never been at war Eastasia. [Your] Ignorance
is [our] strength.

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mindcrash
I think it has more to do with Zuckergate than Incelgate.

In case you didn't know OkCupid and Facebook's data research teams are in
strong competition regarding which team is most borderline unethical, as
evidenced for example here:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/29/okcupid-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/29/okcupid-
experiment-human-beings-dating).

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gruez
>Incelgate

can someone explain what this is?

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speeder
Seemly after the canadian guy killed people with a van, a witchunt for
Involuntary Celibates started...

For example:
[https://twitter.com/ekp/status/991817194987114496](https://twitter.com/ekp/status/991817194987114496)

~~~
J-dawg
Agh, that's scary. What is she expecting them to do about it?

Is she asking them to fire people for being sexually unattractive?

~~~
cimmanom
I think there's a distinction to be made between "people who are unable to
find sexual partners" and "people who self-identify with and participate in
communities that spew hatred and encourage violence over the fact that they
can't find sexual partners".

Sort of like the difference between "white people" and "white supremacists".
Except that currently we don't have separate (reasonably brief) terms for the
above categories.

There's nothing wrong with having employees who are unattractive / can't find
sexual partners, and I agree that that would be just as ridiculous a criterion
to fire someone over as being caucasian. However, if you have people in your
company who are filled with vitriol or considering violence (be it because
they hate women who won't sleep with them or because they hate people with a
different skin color), that's a problem waiting to happen.

~~~
J-dawg
I think this "intolerance of intolerance" is becoming terrifying.

I personally find "people who hate people with a different skin colour" and
"people who hate women" to be repulsive. I'd _prefer_ not to work with those
people, if possible. But I accept that in a free society, I might have to. I
have no special right to be protected from opinions I don't like, and nor
should I.

Nobody should be excluded from employment because of an opinion. And in a free
society, it should never be illegal to state an opinion.

We are crossing the line into thought crime here, and it's frightening to see
powerful people like Ellen Pao being ok with that.

~~~
cimmanom
It is the rare person who can prevent their hate from leaking out into their
day to day interactions and making their coworkers uncomfortable - thus
interfering with morale and the company's viability.

~~~
daxorid
If we remove the ideological aspect of this argument entirely, what we're left
with is the notion that employment is supposed to be 100% comfortable. But...

In any given employment environment: chairs may be less than form-fitting;
different people will have different tolerances for the thermostat setting;
some employees may heat fish and durian fruit in the microwave; one may be
asked to load or unload 40 foot shipping containers; being under pressure to
meet a deadline is fairly normal; a boss or coworker may have an unpleasant
personality, possibly even a personality disorder.

In general, we expect that in many ways, employment _will be uncomfortable_.
In general, we accept this as a nominal cost of earning a living.

But once various ideologies are introduced, there is a sudden expectation that
a small and specific subset of workplace interactions ought to be 100%
pleasant and comfortable. Why is this?

~~~
cimmanom
If I have the choice between working somewhere where my colleague thinks he
has the right to rape me if I don't sleep with him vs a place where my
colleagues are respectful and have my back, where do you think I'll choose to
work? And if I don't have a choice of where to work, do you think I'll be able
to do my best work with that sort of threat present?

It's not just about comfort (though personally I do think people have a right
to a workplace where there coworkers would defend them against bodily harm
rather than claim a right to inflict it). It's also about what's best for the
business.

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whalesalad
I don't think this has anything to do with the incel movement. It was a risky
post to begin with. This tweet is making a lot of assumptions. Flagging as no
good discussion can come from this post on HN.

~~~
J-dawg
> _Flagging as no good discussion can come from this_

..in your opinion. Why do you feel the need to silence that discussion?

I get that HN is a forum with its own rules and as such there is no automatic
"right" to free speech, but is this really what flagging is for?

Flagging should be used for spam and other content which simply doesn't belong
on a tech-related forum. Not for just removing stuff that you personally don't
want to discuss.

Why don't you just ignore it and upvote the stuff you do want to participate
in?

EDIT: this comment now appears as 'folded' when I refresh the page. Does this
mean that it too has been flagged? That's pretty funny.

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dvfjsdhgfv
On HN flagging is used not just for spam, but often for content you don't
agree with; especially if you strongly don't agree with it. In this case you
think this content shouldn't be on HN and click "flag". If enough people do
that, the post disappears. There's nothing you can do about it.

~~~
J-dawg
> _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is
> spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag
> them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you
> did._

Flagging is supposed to be used for spam or off-topic content. People who flag
stuff they don't agree with are not following the guidelines of this
community.

'whalesalad' is apparently breaking the guidelines twice, first by flagging
something simply because they don't agree with the discussion that might
ensue, and secondly by commenting to say that they flagged.

Source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
This is theory. What I describe is how this works in practice: commenters on
HN use flag as a tool to silence opposing views. It happens every day, hard to
overlook it.

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J-dawg
Why do posts like this get flagged so often?

This relates directly to a tech company, and is about the intersection of tech
& societal trends which many people here are interested in. It seems like
perfectly valid HN content.

Do flagged posts get reviewed by moderators, or does HN allow a minority of
users to flag whatever they want out of existence?

~~~
gus_massa
I don't know the details, but the [flagged] mark is added automatically when
enough users flag the post, probably it consider the fags to upvotes ratio,
but I'm guessing here. With even more flags the story may be killed.

The mods usually take a look at the stream of post, specialy the flagged ones,
but there are too many posts and in case you find something classified too
badly you can email them hn@ycombinator.com , they usually reply soon, but
it's manual process so use it wisely.

My guess here is that some users flagged it because the incel angle. It looks
like a exaggeration, but I'm still not sure. So I'm not hitting any buttons
here [no upvote, no flag, no email to the mods].

[My interpretation is that a log time ago OkCupid posted some silly story with
some data and dubious analysis as a marketing strategy. Now they have been
acquired and they must pose as a serious business, so they delete the old
posts that are too polemic or politically incorrect, so ... I'm not sure that
there is a connection or not.]

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dade_
The stat that they don't show are how many simultaneous sexual partners people
have on the site. They could have made it an interactive data exploration site
to compare this to attractiveness!

Just get off of these awful sites and programs. They profit off the worst
traits of humanity and it seems their blog as well. There is nothing
scientific or useful that can come from their data or supposed insights. The
first step in the right direction was to delete the post.

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himom
Why would anyone with integrity and self-respect subject themselves to flawed,
unnatural and zero investment world that are dating apps? Can you imagine how
lazy, distracted and confused are the users of these apps are in real life?
Just stick to the real-world, screen the square root of as many people as you
could ever meet in your remaining life-expectancy and pick the best one that
comes along next. No Paradox of Choice. No “The One.” No waiting for Godot.
Just action.

~~~
dingaling
> and pick the best one that comes along next

The point is that for a set of people there's no-one coming along next. Hence
they turn to dating sites to try to make connections.

I grew up in the 1980s and 90s. There were no dating apps, just classified
'want to meets' in the newspaper and they were expensive and fruitless. I
didn't have a first date until I was 30, it took that long to find someone who
was interested.

I wouldn't lecture anyone today about anything they can ethically & legally do
to avoid that long sentence of loneliness. Even if they don't find a life
partner, just getting one or two dates can be a huge boost to esteem.

