Spam is in the eye of the receiver. Someone with an empty OkCupid inbox would probably be glad to get a "I know someone you'd be perfect for!" message. Maybe that's still against OkCupid's ToS, I don't know, but if I was the recipient I wouldn't really care.
If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.
The problem with this is that every dating site out there looking to grow their user base might see that as a viable strategy.
If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that never netted out to anything.
There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.
I agree with your last paragraph. If I were OkCupid, I would try to prevent people from doing this. If I were Dating Ring, I would try to do this. And if I were an OkCupid user, I would feel gratitude towards anyone who arranged a date for me, Terms of Service be damned.
That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.
If it did amount to something, sure, users would be happy.
However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves.
OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case, has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring. Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP. If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as that would make it a pretty black and white situation.
Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.
> However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves.
Such situations are exactly the kind where Kant's categorical imperative applies. If something is clearly wrong when everyone does it, it should not be OK for a particular company to do.
Edge case 1: You're the first to send them a message!
Edge case 2: They just deleted everything in their inbox.
Edge case 3: They have a particularly polarizing outlier property (e.g.: a very intense fetish for something most people would find disgusting).
Edge case 4: Some quirk (or maybe even a bug!) of OKCupid's matching algorithm is pushing that user far far down in most people's priority / match % lists.
Edge case 5: OKCupid's matching algorithms are functioning well, but the person is just that peculiar of an outlier in that algorithm that there's just very few active users who are going to be matched well with them.
Just off the top of my head. And then consider that, by the context, they probably meant anyone who hasn't had a new message in a while. Yeah.
If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.