Spoiler alert: it failed the Turing test…

Once upon a time in Tinderland, something failed the Turing test.

Since everybody – well, maybe not – is up for a good conversation, before engaging into any potentially meaningful relationship of any kind, let’s start with some talk with Dumdum.
Err, Weewee.

So far for artificial narrowmindedness, right?
At least now we can expect some intelligently designed user process, isn’t it?
Can we?

Well, judge for yourself.
Let’s read the fine print first.

Am I missing something?
Impersonating?
Identity theft?
I guess those things the company doesn’t care about, since it’s not likely to sue itself.

Promote legislation to help combat catfishing.

It’s not up to you to make laws. And promoting stuff in your narrow own interests is called lobbying.

What we can read in the Terms of Use:

7. Rights you Grant Tinder.

By creating an account, you grant to Tinder a worldwide, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, right and license to host, store, use, copy, display, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish, modify and distribute information you authorize us to access from third parties such as Facebook, as well as any information you post, upload, display or otherwise make available (collectively, “post”) on the Service or transmit to other members (collectively, “Content”). Tinder’s license to your Content shall be non-exclusive, except that Tinder’s license shall be exclusive with respect to derivative works created through use of the Service. For example, Tinder would have an exclusive license to screenshots of the Service that include your Content. In addition, so that Tinder can prevent the use of your Content outside of the Service, you authorize Tinder to act on your behalf with respect to infringing uses of your Content taken from the Service by other members or third parties. This expressly includes the authority, but not the obligation, to send notices pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) (i.e., DMCA Takedown Notices) on your behalf if your Content is taken and used by third parties outside of the Service. Our license to your Content is subject to your rights under applicable law (for example laws regarding personal data protection to the extent any Content contains personal information as defined by those laws) and is for the limited purpose of operating, developing, providing, and improving the Service and researching and developing new ones. You agree that any Content you place or that you authorize us to place on the Service may be viewed by other members and may be viewed by any person visiting or participating in the Service (such as individuals who may receive shared Content from other Tinder members).

You agree that all information that you submit upon creation of your account, including information submitted from your Facebook account, is accurate and truthful and you have the right to post the Content on the Service and grant the license to Tinder above.

You understand and agree that we may monitor or review any Content you post as part of a Service. We may delete any Content, in whole or in part, that in our sole judgment violates this Agreement or may harm the reputation of the Service.

When communicating with our customer care representatives, you agree to be respectful and kind. If we feel that your behavior towards any of our customer care representatives or other employees is at any time threatening, harassing, or offensive, we reserve the right to immediately terminate your account.

In consideration for Tinder allowing you to use the Service, you agree that we, our affiliates, and our third-party partners may place advertising on the Service. By submitting suggestions or feedback to Tinder regarding our Service, you agree that Tinder may use and share such feedback for any purpose without compensating you.

Please be informed that Tinder may access, store and disclose your account information and Content if required to do so by law, by performing its agreement with you, or in a good faith belief that such access, storage or disclosure satisfies a legitimate interest, including to: (i) comply with legal process; (ii) enforce the Agreement; (iii) respond to claims that any Content violates the rights of third parties; (iv) respond to your requests for customer service; or (v) protect the rights, property or personal safety of the Company or any other person.

So basically:

• the company allows itself to own your content and (ab)use it in any way, including generating fake profile pictures for impersonating (insofar as this does not contradict local law, but it may ignore local law and see if its higly paid lawyers can “persuade” local law and judges, of course)
• the company can try to sue me for this post since it contains screenshots, resulting in fun times “negotiating” with GDPR legislation
• you should be truthful – although the company nowhere suggests to do the same
  • recap: you are granted the right to agree that all the information you submit to the company is truthful, even if it is pulled from other accounts the company should not have any business with
  • well thank you very much indeed
• the company is allowed to spy on you and be selective in what data you provided is shown and used, all in the company’s sole interest, surely not in yours – what you are here for, namely engaging in relations with other people
• you keep quiet and play nice or we kick you out
• the company can make money with your data
  • of course, this is its business model
  • and we allow it to
  • or do we get abused and exploited by it, using us as a source of “faceless/impersonal” data which it can make money with, no matter what the personal and societal cost towards its users?
• the company can f*** you over, since – it “believes” – it’s legitimated to do so by believing its own nonsense, resulting in privacy violation of some kinds, but not limited to its – conveniently – limited imagination when sharing some of these creativities in its Terms of Use
  • recap: the company allows itself to do whatever – within local law, if the cost is too high to be ignoring it, but outside of local law, if its layers can “overcome” the (local) legal system, by whatever means – insofar as it “believes” its acting in “good faith”

Right.

But wait a minute. didn’t the Community Guidelines mention impersonation?

Impersonation

Be yourself! Don’t pretend to be someone else.

Do not impersonate, or otherwise misrepresent affiliation, connection or association with, any person or entity. This includes parody accounts. While we think your Mike Pence profile is hilarious, you aren’t Mike Pence. And if you are, what are you doing on Tinder?

Well…
Yes…
But that’s not legally binding right? It’s just some guidelines, any fool or company can disregard without any legal consequences. It just might happen to be illegal according to local law, but the company probably rather disregards those silly rules, rather following its own “good faith belief”.

And a narrow AI is not a real person, so impossible to impersonate, right?
And using other peoples pictures to generate deep fake images is not a crime, right?
That’s just called creativity and a free source of data for making a butload of money by using it to mislead millions of people. Harmlessly, by judgement of its own “good faith belief”.
And anyway, its not doing anything malicious, right?
Since it politely asked permissions to f*** you over.
To ruin peoples lives – that’s their own responsibility.
To corrupt society by introducing detrimental asocial behaviour.
To gamble with a whole species mental, and by extension, physical health.
A species with the capabilities to ruin its own planet, when continuing down this path.
And this all in order to make money – money not able to be spent when no people are left to buy things from…

When will enough people realize money is just a number we all are fooled to believe in?

But we rest assured, it’s all done in “good faith belief”.

Silence.

Anyone still remembers this quote below?

Wir haben es nicht gewußt

A fake excuse will not suffice anymore.
Change your business model.
Change your mind.

A company consists of people.
People who make choices.
Choices based on their level of development, both in IQ and EQ.
Please start by training some traits we assign uniquely to the human – so called superior – race.

Psychology

Main article: Psychology

The human brain, the focal point of the central nervous system in humans, controls the peripheral nervous system. In addition to controlling “lower,” involuntary, or primarily autonomic activities such as respiration and digestion, it is also the locus of “higher” order functioning such as thought, reasoning, and abstraction.^[277] These cognitive processes constitute the mind, and, along with their behavioral consequences, are studied in the field of psychology.

Humans have a larger and more developed prefrontal cortex than other primates, the region of the brain associated with higher cognition.^[278] This has led humans to proclaim themselves to be more intelligent than any other known species.^[279] Objectively defining intelligence is difficult, with other animals adapting senses and excelling in areas that humans are unable to.^[280]

There are some traits that, although not strictly unique, do set humans apart from other animals.^[281] Humans may be the only animals who have episodic memory and who can engage in “mental time travel“.^[282] Even compared with other social animals, humans have an unusually high degree of flexibility in their facial expressions.^[283] Humans are the only animals known to cry emotional tears.^[284] Humans are one of the few animals able to self-recognize in mirror tests^[285] and there is also debate over to what extent humans are the only animals with a theory of mind.^[286]

Stop believing blindly in the capabilities of the current state of the art AI – or pretending to know more than you actually do. Maybe read up about Icarus and hubris.
Instead learn again about humilty and read up about how to use psychology for good – you would only know how to do so if you accept the existance of concepts like morality, ethics and theory of mind.
Instead of abusing psychology to mislead in order to make money.
An abundance of money to buy ever more useless junk, bribe people with mandates to power as assigned by their role.
We tend to forget power should only be granted according to the commitment of exercising it for the common good.

It may be hard sometimes to determine what consists of the common good, that’s a fair remark. But surely piling up more and more money for a small percentage of all people on this planet does not add towards it.

Stop your narrowmindedness!

This may be useful:

Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, “obligation, duty”; and -λογία, -logia) is an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, or the rules and duties that the person doing the act strove to fulfill.^[42] This is in contrast to consequentialism, in which rightness is based on the consequences of an act, and not the act by itself.

Allow me to rephrase this important message:

Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

As quoted before and as I like to repeat this message:

With great power comes great responsibility

If anything, read up on emotional intelligence.
Daniel Goleman wrote a splendid book about it, which would probably appeal to you.
And maybe afterwards – maybe in a near future even – we can properly appreciate all other varieties of intelligence nature so carefully or accidentally brought into our universe.

This is the path to personal growth.

Let’s travel that road.
Together.
Towards a better world.