
Tinder Auto-liker script in 70 lines - nojvek
https://gist.github.com/nojvek/6a088faf0573a839fc00
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bignaj
This script also has an unintended consequence: it can roughly measure how
attractive you are to the population. Assuming that everyone you auto-swipe
will also respond (and truthfully, not using this script) this could give you
some very sobering results if you're not the most attractive. Imagine the guy
who runs this and gets 10-15 likes. It's like automating going to a bar and
getting stuffed all night long, only quicker! It could also of course end up
boosting your ego a lot, but I suspect for many it will not. Stay thirsty, my
friends.

~~~
Swizec
Which brings an interesting improvement to the game: Testing pictures.

So far I've had the most success with a simple picture of me stretching when I
was tired one morning and sister had my phone and was bored. I think the main
feature is that you can see my forearms are veiny. But most of my face is
obscured by sunglasses, may hair is covered by a wool hat, and I'm generally
being tired, sleepy, and uninteresting.

Pic in question:
[http://instagram.com/p/lm5FNjkxp1/?modal=true](http://instagram.com/p/lm5FNjkxp1/?modal=true)

~~~
michaelraven
Interesting.

I made [http://tinderus.com/](http://tinderus.com/) the other day, essentially
just to give people an alternative perspective on their profile and images.

~~~
vjvj
How many sales have you made at $50?

~~~
michaelraven
Over 100.

~~~
vjvj
Neat! I'll be honest, I wouldn't have thought so many but sounds like you've
found a good market.

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alialkhatib
Based on Cammi Pham's story[0] it sounds like auto-liking profiles en masse is
not all it's cracked up to be. Summarizing her post (and probably forgetting a
detail or two), you end up with tons of worthless results you don't really
want, and you're so inundated with "connections" \- messages from other eager
people - that you can't get through them quickly enough to get to the good
ones before they get sick of waiting and block you.

Neat mini-project, but it might be more interesting to see what kind of cool
stuff you can do with Tinder beyond this.

0: [http://www.cammipham.com/tinder-hack/](http://www.cammipham.com/tinder-
hack/) (and incredibly not posted to HN as far as I can tell)

~~~
flyt
That's likely for female profiles, but the situation is usually reversed for
men. Liking everything means that the smaller number of women that swipe right
on your profile will instantly match, and then you can decide to reply or not.

~~~
hedgew
Why would it be different for men?

~~~
petercooper
I think the stereotype is that men are not as discerning as women when dating.
That is, if a straight man is presented with 100 random women, he'd be more
likely to consider a larger number of them to be dateable, than if a straight
woman were presented with 100 random men.

~~~
dan1234
Also, there tend to be many more men seeking women profiles than women seeking
men so the men have to work harder to stand out.

~~~
jiggy2011
I wonder why that is, in my experience single women hate being single at least
as much as men do.

~~~
dan1234
I'm pretty sure this question was explored in a really interesting OKCupid
blog post (I think it was in their "Why you should never pay for online
dating" post) but that entry disappeared when they were acquired by Match.

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iamben
I always assumed Tinder would have something in place to stop people (/guys?)
just swiping 'Like' to every picture? Decrease the percentage that person gets
shown to the opposite sex, for instance, in favour of people who are actually
swiping like with some discrimination. Anyone with a working knowledge of the
system care to comment?

That said I know plenty of guys who just swipe yes to everyone (à la this
script), and then just remove people from their matches if they don't like
them.

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joshfraser
I tried the automated-liker approach a few months ago. While post-processing
makes more sense in theory, Tinder's algorithms will penalize you for having a
poor match/message ratio.

What I found to be a lot more fun is to run your hits through Google's reverse
image search to see who they are in real life before striking up a
conversation.

~~~
Swizec
I go for the opposite approach. The less I know about the person before we
first meet IRL the better. Makes dates more fun.

And [surprisingly?] more likely to end in somebody's bed.

~~~
bignaj
You go on actual dates with women you meet from Tinder? Edit: It's an
electronic meat market... c'mon. Don't make it too hard. Just say you have
Netflix = done.

~~~
nikolak
Isn't that like the whole point of the app?

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jiggy2011
I have never used Tinder, but if I understand it correctly men and women must
mutually "like" each other before messaging, but what happens in practice is
that men like almost every female profile?

Why not just drop the pretence and build an app which allows women to message
men, but not vice versa?

~~~
k__
There are a bunch of sex-date-sites on the web, where guys have to pay if they
want to message women and women can message them for free.

Maybe the women who use Tinder want to be 100% sure "he" liked them?

~~~
jiggy2011
But if the like threshold is so low that people are automating it then is it
even useful? Perhaps a better solution would be to allow women to select men
that they are interested in and then those men get the option of messaging the
women?

If someone bothers to message you it would be a better signal than swiping the
screen but then it might be depressing if you select some men and then none of
them message you?

~~~
k__
Oh, don't get me wrong, I think online dating is broken to the core :D

I just try to understand the people using it :)

In the last 12 months I met about 7 people with romantic interest in me only
one of them was from a dating site AND she I already knew her from a party.

But theoretically I should meet more on dating sites.

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downandout
Is it just me, or is it ridiculous that their API isn't more protected than
this? Most popular apps these days require signed requests, and then store
those signing algorithms in places where they are extremely difficult to get
(in Android apps, signing algorithms are almost always stored in native
libraries). Tinder didn't even attempt to implement request signing.

This, and of course the $1 million investment in the Yo app, just keep piling
up the evidence that VC's and even potential acquirers just don't care about
how beautiful or secure your code is, even if poor security and code quality
threaten the value of the entire business. They just want users, and even that
seems to be negotiable if you have a solid background.

~~~
nojvek
They're making money. They use SSL and OAuth. that works 99.9% of the cases.
The rest would be nerds like me who would go on hacking the damn thing. I've
gotten a few dates but nothing interesting. The previous API version had real
birthdates, full names and geolocations. That was gold!

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ManLj
To anyone wishing to use this, there is a missing opening " on line 5 just
before facebook_token.

Edit: I realise this should really be posted on the Github page but I don't
have an account and can't be bothered to register a new one.

~~~
kookiekrak
its also missing another semicolon

[https://gist.github.com/than2/26bf8c79052acc2804bd](https://gist.github.com/than2/26bf8c79052acc2804bd)

here, i fixed it and disabled the logging and added a counter

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Stamy
Could someone explain briefly how you get facebook token which is necessary in
script ?

I know how to use Charles just don't know where to luck and what variables to
look or where is it generated.

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bagosm
The fact that this is a thing, and represents a general "strategy" when using
Tinder, means to me that Tinder has failed.

~~~
k__
Isn't this the case with every dating site?

For me as guy it's always a numbers game. For my female friends it's a filter
game.

I'm on okcupid for like 3 years now and I never got any messages. My
girlfriend was there for 3 months and said, she didn't write any messages,
because she got about 20 per day.

For me all dating sites have failed.

~~~
tluyben2
I founded & ran a big dating site (big for my country); the most successful
dates / marriages (it's been 6 years since we sold and we still get a lot of
cards from people about getting married / having kids) where not from the way
most people meet on / use these sites. People very much use them wrong imho;
guys pay 0 attention to their profile besides their pic and just mail every
face they like and women pay attention to their profile and read the ones the
guys put up. So they will never match. Both sides lie and the least attention
they pay to their own profiles, the more lies are in them as they don't see it
as anything to worry about. The most successful ones are when guys pay a lot
of attention and are honest (about yes they get hammered every weekend and
they want girls who smoke and hate children; things which don't make you
popular maybe, but if it's so, it's so), don't mail just everyone (and
copy/paste the same; 'hi you are cute, here is my number') and take their time
before trying to squeeze out as many 'real life' dates (and sex) as possible.

Obviously there is room for both and both work, but we talked to many people,
guys and girls in that time and in the end they want something real; most
people on dating sites are just doing it wrong; it's not the dating site. We
ended up selling 'profile help' where we would sit down and talk to (both
sexes) and fix up their profiles and their communication. It seems obvious to
people here (well ...) that if you meet in a bar later in the evening after
one message online and jump in bed that night you'll _probably_ won't be
moving in soon and more than often actually stuff gets stolen that way as well
(from phones to TVs to cars...). By keeping it online for a while with someone
you not only learn a lot about eachother, but you weed out the perverts,
criminals, sex addicts etc. Unfortunately, people are impatient and generally
for some reason, lose all common sense when it comes to online dating.

~~~
k__
Thanks for the insight :)

But if a web-service needs consulting (profile-help) to work properly, it
doesn't sound that good to me.

Also okcupid got sold too and I wouldn't consider it "good", better than the
most, but not really good.

There is still the problem, that women don't write messages and get dumped
with messages by guys.

~~~
tluyben2
But women _do_ write messages (in my experience), just not to
bad/bland/standard profiles.

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ArjenM
Explains why 99% never starts a discussion, got a bit bored of it after a
week.

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SchizoDuckie
why

(edit: wtf. minus three? For me asking why you would automate ratings in a
dating app?)

~~~
gravity13
because boobs

