Do Tinder Bots Dream of Electric Toys? How Tinder Bots are breaking hearts all over the world, and trashing Tinder’s reputation while they’re at it.

"Tinder. The Final Frontier. Pick gorgeous (or not so gorgeous) members of your desired sex with the tip of your finger, at the comfort of your sofa, your bed, and let’s admit it - your toilet seat...

Research shows that there are 50 million active users on Tinder, who check their accounts 11 times per day and spend an average of 90 minutes per day on the app. Even celebrities, it seems. [Marie Claire]

In the name of Science, I decided to sacrifice myself and delve into the world of Tinder Dating. At first, I was detecting patterns in photos, in poses, in language and in attitude, all over the world! But suddenly something else showed up on my radar: Bots. And not just one - I was being surrounded. Imagine the heartbreak of matching 7 gorgeous women in a Scandinavian capital, only to discover that not only were they in reality bots, but they actually had an agenda!

In this talk I’ll describe the research, how I came to discover that Bots were not an isolated case, and how I uncovered the pattern behind generating the profiles. I’ll also break down the infrastructure behind the operation, and show who’s behind a campaign that spawned over multiple countries and continents. I’ll give multiple examples, from Tinder as well as from other platforms, of how bots operate under the radar of the site owners and carry out their agenda."