There are a few universal truths in online dating: most photos are carefully staged, most profiles are slightly puffed-up, and most people on them (and this is clearly fast-changing) are actually human.Until some unlucky Tinder users spotted Ava.
A company promoting the movie Ex Machina created a fake account, Ava, with a photo of the star of the movie. Ava is an AI in the film and presumably she wants to get down. Unsuspecting men and women swiped to make a match and Ava, in a cross between cheesy AI and Eliza, asked a few pertinent questions including “Have you ever been in love?” and “What makes you human?”
Normal users assumed they were talking to a human but they were actually talking to a bot. In the end, like the chatbots that now linger on near dead chat systems like AIM, Ava sent her suitors to an Instagram page where they found out that she was all a sham....
This explains the deception involved with online dating networking very well. Users have no idea who they are talking to, and if they are real, living, breathing, human beings. It is scary entering online dating apps due to the insecurity of knowing who you are talking to. The role of deception, as mentioned in previous posts, is a major contributor to the lack of trust users experience when developing relationships online. Deception does not only happen on online dating sites, but also on social networking sites as well. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc are targeted platforms scammers use to obtain their goal at hand. Fake accounts are sometimes easy to come by and are easily identified, but there are people who overlook the common signs of identity fraud. Education and common sense are two tools users who are involved in online relationships should utilize when trying to asses accounts they deem as being fake.