The Pirate Bay, formerly a site for pirated movies, music and software, is trying to recover from its recent legal woes by launching a dating site. It will rely on a system of “social trust,” allowing members to vouch for each other: “The information added by members is immediately visible to those who know them best – their friends – which makes it much more difficult to lie.” Members can even play matchmaker for friends. It will be interesting to see if the “social trust” concept actually solves the truth-bending that often plagues dating sites. (HT: Mike Gonzales)[%comments]
Dating, Pirate-Style
TAGS: online dating
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I think the spammers and scammers are already way ahead of them. On the Russian social-cum-dating site memba.ru, they’re quite happy to create entire networks of non-existent people, all recommending and reviewing “great” websites. Which are only great if you want malware on your computer.
However, a lot of people do seem to fall for the “ten strangers are vouching for this guy so he must be real” ploy, though!
awesome. anything is better than eHarmony. Absolutely horrendous. I quit it because it was so bad and they still spam me with 15 messages a day and I can’t get them to stop. So sketchy.
The site looks a lot like Meezoog.com, a site that the parent company (Tros) already launched back in 2008.
A much more interesting spinoff of the Pirate Bay is Flattr, a micropayment/donations system which seems to gain traction in Germany at the moment, and promises to solve part of the piracy dilemma.
Online identities and friendships are real, and I’d go out on a date with a guy vouched for by my long-time online friends.
In this case, there’s a significant problem with authenticating identity. You could go onto the Pirate Bay, create an account, and pretend you were someone else. Who’s to know that you’re not really CaptainCrunch? You’d appropriate his fame and his friends might well vouch for you. (Disclaimer: having met him, I would not recommend dating CaptainCrunch.)
Formerly?
There is no better commentary on Internet dating than “The Best of Craig’s List”
I love TPB. Great for leaks. Wolf Parade’s new album? Great! I have it pre-ordered on vinyl. Had it 6 weeks before it came out. Same goes for albums by The National, Spoon, etc. I own all those albums now. Thanks, TPB, for expanding my world of jams. I love you. Dating pirates? Great! Actually, can’t vouch for that yet.
I agree with #5. There is no formerly about it…. (not yet anyway)