Okcupid dating site admitted to conduct experiments on users

One of the most popular in the United States of dating sites Okcupid misled users, giving them incorrect compatibility information, Reuters reports. The message about this appeared on the official blog of the site under the heading "We are experimenting on people!"

The author of the blog was one of the co -founders of Okcupid Christian Rudder. He recalled the scandal caused by the Facebook secret experiment , which has spent hundreds of thousands of users with news ribbons. However, from the point of view of Rudder, there was nothing terrible in it, since many sites are one way or another experimenting on users.

In total, Okcupid put three experiments. The first of them studied the influence of published photos on the site attendance and communication of users among themselves. In early 2013, all user photos disappeared from the site for several hours. During this time, the attendance of the portal has fallen sharply, but the number of dialogs and their duration has increased significantly, and in addition, users at this time were more actively sharing their contact data with their interlocutors.

During the second experiment, the influence of the data specified in the user profile on the general assessment put up by the guests of his pages was evaluated. It turned out that the removal of all information about the user almost does not affect the assessment, which is 90 percent dependent on the photograph and only 10 on the questionnaire.

The third experiment was to assess the correctness of the algorithms of the dating site, which are designed to determine the level of user compatibility. Users whose compatibility was about 30 percent reported 90 percent of the coincidence. This led to the fact that users more often started correspondence. At first glance, this meant that the Okcupid algorithm does not help people find a really suitable pair, but only inspires them with thoughts of similarity.

However, a closer analysis showed that the algorithm still works. When users whose compatibility was estimated at the level of 90 percent reported low compatibility, they talked more often than pairs with really low compatibility.

Rudder's revelations did not like the journalists too much. So, in the Forbes article on Okcupid experiments, it is noted that the user agreement of the site provides for the possibility of such user behavior studies, however, the self -digging position of Rudder does not look too beautiful.

Recall that the sensational Facebook experiment caused an extremely negative reaction among users and a number of professional psychologists, and the UK authorities decided to check it for compliance with the laws.