Rules and Rule Breakers of OkCupid

The official rules and guidelines for OkCupid can be found under the FAQ section of the website. There is a privacy policy section that describes security, rules about sharing information with other parties, etc… Most of this covers an individual user’s privacy rights and the privacy of a profile, IP address, cookies, etc… The other main rules section of OkCupid is the “Terms and Conditions” section which covers copyright laws, terms of use and other rules and regulations for using the site.

okcupid privacy issues
okcupid terms of agreement

There are no actual state or federal laws mentioned on the site however it is written that users are subject to federal and local laws. Also, it mentions specifically that foreign users should obey internet rules and regulations as specified by their country.

Violations of OkCupid rules

Adult Users Only

This Website is not intended for children under 18 years of age. If you are under 18, you are not authorized to use this Website and will not be afforded access to any features of this Website that allow for you to provide information to us or to share information with other users of this Website.

The difficulty in finding people who violate the 18 and over age rule is that there’s no way for me to verify if someone is younger than 18. Madison describes in his article on Social Software and Governance some of the legal issues surrounding computer technology. He suggests that “Some of the difficult contemporary legal issues surrounding computer technology is best understood as problems of trying to identify informal groups and their patterns.” (Madison 157) Since people can easily lie about their age, post younger pictures of themselves, etc… It’s hard to identify the so called underage users. It’s also important to note that for OkCupid in particular underage users aren’t united per se. I believe groups of underage users (such as high school friends) might join the site at the suggestion of their other friends, but it’s not like these users necessarily seek out the company of other members who are under 18 years of age.

Underaged user?

Although I found several users who appeared to be underage, the one I was most sure of claimed that she was only 17 years old when she filled out her profile. Pepsi 637 wrote that she was 17 in her profile, but I believe that now she’s 18 years old since she’s been a member for almost 2 years. Here is a link to her profile: Pepsi637's profile.

I did not see any immediate reactions to her claim. It’s possible that she was lying and she was actually over 18 when she joined. Since she’s been a member since May of 2007, I’m guessing that the administrators didn’t notice or haven’t bothered to take any sort of action.

One Person Per Profile

You agree your profile will represent only you. If you are in a relationship: congratulations! You and your partner should maintain separate profiles and link to each other.

April and Chris

After reading that there can only be one person per profile, I tried to find examples of people that violated this rule. First I tried searching for keywords like “We” or “Our” but those were deemed to generic by the search engine. I thought to myself, “What keyword would help me to find people who would exploit this rule?” Then I came up with “threesome” which yielded several results. It didn’t take me long to find a couple using one profile, “aprilandchris21.” It was pretty obvious considering that both of their names were in the profile. There were other couples that advertised for “threesomes” however most of the couples had separate profiles.
April and Chris, a couple with only one profile

Unique and Bona Fide Profile

You agree to create only one unique profile and one person per profile. In addition, in order to maintain the integrity of the Website, by joining, you agree that your use of the Website shall be for bona fide relationship-seeking purposes (for example, you may not use the Website solely to compile a report of compatible singles in your area, or to write a school research paper). From time to time, we may create test profiles in order to monitor the operation of our services.

It's me

Ok, so one user who violates this rule is PillowEatsBear, ie. myself. I created a profile for my project in ICS691 class and not because I was seeking a bona fide relationship. Interestingly enough there’s an explicit rule that you should not use this site to write a school paper. There’s no way for me to prove that someone joined a site to write a paper so I only have myself as an example. Here’s a link to the profile of PillowEatsBear:

PillowEatsBear: Extreme Rulebreaker

Best Course of Action for the user that claimed to be 17

For pepsi637 who claimed she was 17 in her profile, I don’t think that OkCupid should take any course of action. It appears as though she violated the rule in the past by signing up as an 18 year old when she was actually 17. However, since time has passed I don’t think that she should be punished now because she is of legal age. One of the problems with age is that it’s very difficult to verify. For all we know she (if she is really a she) could be a 35 year old posing as a 17 year old posing as an 18 year old. OkCupid could take action against anyone who lies about their age, but then there’s a lot of people who do so. A quick search for the 85-99 year olds will show people who appear significantly younger in their profile pictures. I know of several people who post that they’re 99 years old because they don’t want to be targeted by people searching for a specific age bracket. If OkCupid started banning people who lied about their age, I think there would be an uproar.

Best Course of Action for One Person per Profile

Personally I don’t think this rule is a huge deal in practice, but I understand that OkCupid doesn’t want multiple people sharing a profile to be a widespread practice. I think the best course of action is to inform AprilandChris21 that Chris (I think that April is the one that operates the profile) needs to get his own profile. He can just sign up for a generic profile and problem solved. On the other hand there’s also no solid proof that two people have used that profile. It seems like April operates the profile on behalf of her husband since they’re interested in casual sex encounters with another woman.

Best Course of Action for the Horrible User that joined OkCupid to write a research paper

Assuming that somehow OkCupid finds out that I joined in order to write my final paper for ICS691 I would say that I deserved to be banned for life…. Or possibly no course of action should be taken. I think that if I was messaging people simply to gather data then maybe I should receive a warning because I’m not using the website to form relationships with other users. However I don’t think that OkCupid moderators have the right to ban a user simply because he uses the site in ways that aren’t intended. I think the only reason should be if my actions have harmful repercussions on others or if I cause other users to have a negative experience on OkCupid.

Just browsing the forums, I’ve seen several examples of users who create negative experiences with others by getting into flame wars. What’s worse about OkCupid as opposed to some other forum is that some of these people met in real life (for example they went on a date) and so they have some credibility when they attack or insult other users. For example Melody_Melody in the image below wrote a negative review about her experience with user AntonioE.

Melody_Melody

Curiously enough, the responses to her post were mixed. Some people offered sympathy while others said that she should've known better. I'm not defending the behavior of AntonioE, but I feel that it isn't in good taste to insult another person in a forum on a dating website after going on a few dates with that person.

There are also examples of users that post IM conversations or emails from other users. Most of them show other users in negative light.

Not so great conversation

When users make derogatory remarks and site the behavior of other users in a public forum I consider those comments to fall under Gazan’s category of interpersonally exploitive behavior as he mentions in his paper on Rogue Users. I think members can report malicious forum behavior to moderators, but I feel there should be some sort of repercussion when users slander other users on the forum.

I’ve noticed that in the forums there are rants about failed dates, but many don’t mention the names of other users. Although it’s not mentioned, I think maintaining user privacy is one of the unspoken rules of OkCupid. In most cases users don’t share names when ranting about failed dates even though I found a few examples of people who do.

However the article by Kollock and Smith mentioned that “In every successful community that they studied, the monitoring and sanctioning of people’s behavior was undertaken by community member’s themselves rather than external authorities.” So maybe reporting bad behavior of other members is a way of informal control that helps make OkCupid successful. I’ve noticed that sometimes people will start threads about banning a certain user. In this way they inform other users of bad behavior and discourage it.

Advocating a ban in the forum

However this is not to say that moderators don’t serve a function. It seems like some users have been banned as many highly controversial forum postings have Inactive Users who posted there. I’m guessing they were either removed by moderators or they deactivated their accounts. Kollock and Smith say that people will cooperate with the rules provided that they feel others are operating under the same rules as well and not getting away with any negative behavior. “That is, many people are contingent cooperators, willing to cooperate as long as most others do. Thus, monitoring and sanctioning serves the important function of providing information about other persons' actions.”

Overall I would say that OkCupid doesn’t seem to have a lot of regulation by moderators. Users tend to self moderate and users tend to make public any rude behavior on the part of other users. When a user posts a IM conversation it causes embarrassment to the other user and discourages him or her from derogatory comments. There’s also the possibility that people write fake IM conversations or emails, but I would think that this isn’t common. Many users violate OKCupid’s user policies (Including a certain paper writing delinquent) but those specific policies are difficult to enforce due to the difficulty of ascertaining user information in an online community. It’s clear that there’s also unwritten rules of conduct that aren’t to be found on the site including stealing people’s pictures, posting fake pictures/profiles, harassing other users, etc…