

OKCupid: We Didn't Censor Our Match.com-Bashing Blog Post - hung
http://www.observer.com/2011/tech/okcupid-we-didnt-censor-our-matchcom-bashing-blog-post

======
dkarl
Yes, they censored it. It was censored by OkCupid, which is now owned by
Match. This just shows how quickly and completely people assimilate to a new
organization, and how thoroughly people identify their organization's
interests with their own interests, and their own interests with what is
right.

~~~
colinplamondon
The point isn't to change history and remove it from the internets, the point
is to not be a dick.

You can't delete things on the internet- content is mirrored, and popular
posts like that are quoted, copied, and scraped across the internet. There's
no risk of the post disappearing.

However, when they're in a meeting with the head of Match and their team, it'd
be pretty dickish to keep the post up. It's rude. Removing it removes friction
between the teams, is a nice peace offering, and in the end changes nothing-
the post is instantly mirrored.

~~~
martey
The post is from last April. If I click on any hyperlink to the post made
between last April and last week, I instead get redirected to OKCupid's blog
homepage, which _does not have the article_.

If removing the article "changed nothing", it would still be up. The idea was
to make it harder for people to find the article. Sure, someone who realizes
that the article was purposely removed and that there are a multitude of
copies hosted on other sites will be able to find it, but others (perhaps with
less technical acumen) will not.

------
giberson
The more in-character response from OkCupid would have been to make a new
OkTrends blog post that plainly analyzed the data underlying the removal of
the original article.

Data Points:

    
    
      Dollars Received From match.com | Articles removed
      $0.00 | 0
      $1.00 | 0
      .. | 0
      $50,000,000 | 1
    

Followed by a witty analysis of how statistically, 50,000,000 influences the
on goings of OkCupid.

~~~
nopassrecover
Definitely and it would have been hilarious + turned a "have they gone
evil?!?!" set of internet comments into a hilarious "ah that makes sense
aren't they funny!" pat on the back.

Then again, they probably did their research, realised they didn't want to
make a big deal about this, that the people who noticed probably aren't their
biggest customer base, that they don't want to bring this to the attention of
Match.com and that they don't want their customers freaking out about upcoming
payments.

------
beaumartinez
Surely it would have made more sense to at have, in big bold letters, "Update:
we've since realised the data we've used is bogus" at the top of the post
instead of flat-out _removing_ the article, which is highly suspicious.

~~~
tzs
The problem with that approach is that search engines won't necessarily show
that in their extract. A lot of times, a person searches for "X", and they get
a page full of results, and they skim the extracts to decide which to read.

So, say someone is looking for information on the success rate of match.com.
They see the OKCupid result, with an extract that says, say, you are 12 times
more likely to get married if you don't use match.com, or something like that.

If they do NOT click the link to the blog post, but instead chose another
result to read, they don't see the disclaimer at the top, but they do end up
having that extract reinforce the view they might be getting from other
results critical of match.com.

Overall, it is better to either delete the article, or to move it to a
different URL that you've excluded from search engines, and replace the
original page with an explanation and a link to that different URL for those
who want to see the original article.

------
monochromatic
We didn't censor it. We just removed it because it was "common sense" not to
have it available anymore. Don't you get the distinction?

~~~
kgrin
Well, to be fair, what he actually said is that _Match_ didn't tell them to
censor it - headline is misleading. So yeah, it was self-censorship rather
than new-owner-censorship... which may well be bad too, just a different sort
of bad.

------
weilawei
Simply saying that they were wrong doesn't make it so. The original post had
hard numbers. If you're going to say that those numbers were in error, I want
to see the numbers that back it up.

~~~
kenjackson
He may not be allowed to publicly disclose the numbers.

It would be like extrapolating how many Android phones had been sold. And then
Google buys you and says, "here's the real number, but its Google
confidential". You may be allowed to say, "I screwed up, my data was wrong",
but you may not be able to actually give the real data.

That's just the real world.

------
barrkel
"the data that OKCupid gathered from Match.com's public filings [..] were not
completely accurate, he said, which he realized once he saw the real data"

Is he saying that Match.com has fraudulent filings?

~~~
rudiger
No, he's saying that the data that OKCupid _inferred_ from Match.com's public
filings are not completely accurate.

------
paolomaffei
Law 36

Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best Revenge

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The
more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small
mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is
sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but
cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more
superior you seem.

------
younata
To me, the most interesting and exciting quote from the article is "When we
put our next blog post next week", which I interpret to mean that they'll keep
analyzing the data they have access to.

------
beefman
Oh, so you _voluntarily_ took it down. I feel so much better now!

