Anecdotes...
"Same thing happened to me about two weeks ago. I was a paid member for about a week. Banned with no explanation. Tech support person said it was for violating policies or terms of service, but didn’t list a specific cause. I hadn’t even gone on a date from there yet. Part of me wonders if there are people out there aware of this and are flagging/destroying profiles for enjoyment."
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"Part of me wonders if there are people out there aware of this and are flagging/destroying profiles for enjoyment."
I spoke to a girl on OkCupid where this is absolutely the case.
Rather than pay an employee to review reports, they get users to do it for free in exchange for a free full membership. The girl I was talking to told me she reviews bans regularly and half the time she doesnt even bother reading the report, she will just ban the person. She also told me that there have been a lot of cases where she read the report and the guy did absolutely nothing wrong but she banned him anyway because she "didnt like the look of him". She was of course boasting about all this and seemed to get so much enjoyment out of banning people and essentially playing god with their accounts.
It could be that Hinge have a similar thing going on."
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I, too, was banned from Hinge without the decency of an explanation. Worse, the peremptory arrogance of Terry, the employee informing me of the ban, suggested he/she took malicious pleasure in it. I excerpt Tinder's correspondence in response to my inquiry.
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Terry: "Your account has been removed due to the volume of violations you've received against your account by other members and/or our own independent determination. This decision is informed and final."
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Their decision is "informed". By whose measure, was it "informed"? Certainly not mine. Hinge never warned me that a supposed violation even had occurred. How do you punish someone without first notifying him he has caused offense? Leave aside the unfairness to the alleged culprit. By not informing him, Hinge connives in the repeated affront to his ostensible victims.
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To wit, I responded, "I can’t fathom what those violation could consist of. Nonetheless, you’d do your users a greater service by informing them of violations and/or by warning them in advance so they can curb their behavior accordingly"
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I expected the communication would end there, but evidently, Terry felt compelled to get the last word. "Please know that our decision has been carefully considered and is final. This will be our last correspondence." Gee and I thought we could share Christmas lists on Black Friday.
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Few companies would dare to dismiss its consumers with this kind of patronizing smugness-- to say nothing, of the utter disrespect for basic principles of fairness, accountability, and courtesy. But, alas, Big Tech regards its consumer as nothing more than than a data point to be sold to highest bidder. And it abhors all individuality, heterodoxy, transgression it neither can explain nor contort to accord with some proprietary algorithm.
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Long Live Tinder and the pursuit of sexual freedom!"
So please guys, give me a break. I'm doing nothing wrong on the apps.
