Weekly Seeds | December 15, 2024 I Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Published by Noa Elan on
Psst… Plura+ Members, did you see my email last Monday?
If you are a Plura+ Member, you should have received an email from me last week. I’d love to make sure you saw my note, so please contact me if you didn’t see it.
Plura, Can you confirm this profile is legit?
Periodically, yet frequently enough, we get an email with the following request: “I matched with someone on Plura. Before I get excited about them, I would like to confirm they are not a scammer and that they are who they say they are. Can you help?”
I’ve received these emails enough times that I have developed some ideas about the phenomena and am here to share them. Note, although I will mostly discuss the technological, psychological, and societal aspects of this behavior, I will wrap up this email with some info on what Plura is doing to prioritize members’ safety on the app. Also, I want to be clear that Plura always declines requests for identity checks and does not and will not share information about one member with another member.
How will I know what’s real if I can’t trust my news feed, search results, eyes, and intuition?
ICYMI, we’re quickly losing grip of what’s True or Real. Our “public” information sources are biased echo chambers that are being fed misinformation by government and company leaders who prioritize power over truth. On top of this, our “internal” information sources, our eyes, ears, and intuition, are being challenged to decipher what’s true or real. What looks and feels “real” might be “fake,” and what looks and feels “fake” might be “real”.
Example photo that I believed was 100% fake:
Real-ness vs. Fake-ness on dating apps
Everything gets extra complicated when it comes to real-ness in the dating scene, where everyone feels fake and real simultaneously.
Dating scams are a huge issue. According to the FTC “romance scams” total $1.14 billion in loss, with median losses per person of $2,000. The rise of AI has enabled bad players to scam at scale, and scam more effectively.
However, not every bot-sounding person is a scammer. Good-intentioned people also use AI for their profile images, dating bios, and chat messages. Don’t miss last week’s Modern Love Podcast on AI-powered dating apps which covers stories on bots who go on dates for you and bots that edit your opening move.
This means that if it sounds like you’re chatting with a bot, it’s not as easy to understand the intentions of the human behind the profile.
Is love worth the pain and constant investigation?
So when everyone is half real and half made up, how do we figure out who and what to believe? Who to trust? And who to open up to? This task requires the constant monitoring and evaluation of the information in front of us. “Luckily” today’s digital world offers us unlimited tools to look up individuals, including but not limited to Google image searches, phone number logs, and Facebook groups such as “Are we dating the same guy?”.
Unfortunately, we can’t fully remove the risk associated with meeting people. Instead, we can choose what risk we want to take. I love Devon Price’s framework on Risk Admission. Devon claims “there is no safe life” and encourages us to focus on deciding how much and what risk we want to take on instead of trying to reduce the risk all together.
When it comes to dating apps, this framework invites us to be risk-aware and welcome risk at the level we are comfortable with. Are you willing to invest in a sketchy crypto wallet to deepen a hot connection? Maybe not. Are you willing to share some intimate stories about your life in order to deepen a hot connection, even if it might end with heartache? Maybe yes.
A note about safety on Plura
Dating and social apps are a fertile breeding ground for scammers. It’s also important to note that people might show up on the app with good intentions and still be assholes and break your heart.
Please don’t assume that people on the Plura app or Plura events are “vetted,” and use your critical judgment regarding how much risk you’re willing to take to follow the connection.
What do we do about scammers? Plura uses automated and manual systems to identify and block bad actors. This is a never-ending game of cat and mouse, and we’re always seeing how the scammers continue to learn our systems and innovate their tactics. Thank you for supporting this effort and reporting any concerning profile. Although we can’t tell you about the outcome of your reports, I can assure you that we look at every single one that comes through. I encourage you to read stories about dating app scams and build your understanding of how scammers use psychological manipulation to hook the most intelligent people. This will help you build safeguards into your financial systems.
The importance of building members’ skillsets. We believe that upfront education is key to reducing harm in the future and that there is a need to teach and onboard people to the social norms, language, and expectations associated with our community. Plura continues to invest in building our community’s consent skill set by offering a free skills workshop every month. If you want to geek out about risk admission and safe vs safer sex- you’re invited to our free workshop this month- Something Positive for Positive People, where Courtney Brame will cover herpes stigma and begin to see how sexual health is mental health.
Happy Holidays from Jeremy and Noa | Plura Team
Photo credit: Lydia Daniller
Note: This newsletter represents my (Noa's) personal opinions and thoughts. I understand I may have unexamined views and I appreciate when people point them out so that I am made aware and can start thinking about them. When I make mistakes I am committed to learning about my impact on others and repairing.
