Oh come on, COME ON, I'm all for research too, but 15 messages from women in the middle of the night who want to date a horse is not something that requires going deep undercover before you decide that it's fake. And he said that it would cost him $60 just to contact anyone or do anything on that site.

i agree that its most likely fake, but it seems like TC would be able to comp him for the $30 for a membership it would take to lend weight to the story.

are the messages fake? again, yeah, probably. but its also concievable that one or two are "lol a horse" type of messages. kind of depends on how the site itself works.

It's not just the messages from users, it's the whole concept of showing nothing unless you hand over your credit details, pretending hot women are dying to contact you even though you're obviously not date material (unless they're into horses), the unsolicited emails, the corny live chat box and pop-up message when you try to close it, and so on.

> it's the whole concept of showing nothing unless you hand over your credit details

this is how a lot of dating sites work. no contact unless you pay, no receiving messages unless you pay. its also how classmates.com works, not just dating sites. and one of the reasons they were sued recently is due to business practices similar to this.

> pretending hot women are dying to contact you even though you're obviously not date material (unless they're into horses), the unsolicited emails

again, this is probably true, but there's no proof of it unless the dude signed up and found out for sure. more data required.

> the corny live chat box and pop-up message when you try to close it

shady indeed, but they're not the only place who makes use of this.

There seems to be a notion that I shouldn't call out WooMe because other sites are doing it too. I don't know where that is coming from.

My notion is that you should call out WooMe. Go for it. However, as an author it is your responsibility to try to research as much as possible. It does seem, from the surface level that you described, that those messages are spam/automatically generated. However one could come up with a semi-plausible bordering on the edge of legitimacy rationale why you had received those messages. Maybe WooMe discovered a novel way of nudging users towards communication with each other, maybe they get Achievement Points for sending messages to new users? Likely? Not really, However, chatting with a very cleverly disguised CTA does not constitute thorough research.

call out woome. the situation looks bad. it probably is bad. but call out woome with facts, not speculation. that is the notion.

Your attempt to split the difference kind of reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/690/ . Sorry. What does it matter if only 18 of the 20 messages were fakes intended to make him sign up, and 2 were real? Not that I'd think for a second that any of them were.

i'm not splitting the difference. if any messages were fake, its shady and legally liable. my point is, how can he know this for sure? all he's doing is saying that it is probably true, and not investigating. $30 from TC to sign up for a month and verify his assumption is just good journalism.

Or paying scammers to "prove" the bleeding obvious. I'm not sure that getting no replies to private messages (happens all the time on legit sites) is any better a standard of proof than 16 hot girls sending generic messages of interest in dating a horse (doesn't happen).

For all I know, one of the Nigerians in my spam folder really is sitting on piles of cash, but I don't think it would be good investigative journalism to give them small sums of money to test how many of them aren't lying.

CC chargeback.

for the average consumer, obviously, you would want to avoid it. for TC doing some journalism on a company they once supported and gave praise, PR, traffic, and the buzz to get funding, i would've expected a bit more.

but maybe thats just me.

since i can't edit anymore: instead of giving them money, go create a few more dummy accounts and see if the same thing happens to them. that would also be sufficient proof, imo

You're the one who said it's "conceivable" that one or two of the messages are real, e.g. "LOL." So it's inconceivable that 18 or so are real. How is that not splitting the difference in a funny way? The journo's point is that new profiles get sent fake messages to convert them. This is obviously true, even if there are real messages too.

it is conceivable. it is possible. it is, however, not at all likely.

like i said in another response, they're almost definitely doing shady business. call them out on it. but call them out on it with facts, not speculation. TC is supposed to be tech journalism (sometimes, at least). do due diligence, get some proof and report on it.

I have to agree. I think it's odd that just natural curiosity didn't take over, and a real account made and paid for. I'd donate $5, as I'm sure others here would, just to see the results. I think someone else mentioned that looking at the messages and emails would certainly prove the point with zero doubt.

I realize that women responding instantly to a horse picture is obvious, but why not nail all the nails in the coffin? Seems like an easy step to pay for a month of an account to read the emails.

This has been done: http://maxkle.in/how-elite-dating-sites-scam-people/