Introducing M14 Industries’ copy-paste detector

On dating sites and apps some people (let’s be honest, usually guys) send the same opening line to literally hundreds of people. Sometimes they think up these ice-breakers by themselves, other times they get them from cheat-sheet “guides”. There are even fairly large communities of people out there crowd sourcing these messages. When they find one that seems to work, they run with it.

It’s a shot-gun approach to online dating which makes total sense from a numbers perspective. It’s like the folks who buy special apps and use special websites so they can swipe right as fast as possible on Tinder; it’s all about the numbers. They can decide if they actually want to meet up with the other people later.

Personally, I think it’s fine to do this. But, only if you’re open about what you’re up to. Otherwise, it’s kinda sleazy.  There’s some false assumptions going on.

Hence, Bristlr’s new feature: If you send the same message to multiple people, the message gets sent, and they’re told they aren’t the only person you sent the message to.

This forms part of our general approach to user protection; don’t be afraid to surface information about people’s potential dates. We run a website and app which lets strangers meet up who only know each other through the internet. It’s kind of up to us to make sure we all have as much information as we need to make smart decisions.

Update: So we’ve had two types of feedback on this feature. The vast majority has been super positive messages from people really happy to know what’s going on. And then there’s been a small minority of sometimes angry dudes (and it’s been 100% dudes) who feel hard done by because their methods aren’t as effective as before.