The author makes that point, but follows up with a more important one: this is what you can expect from "the algorithm", whether it's Tinder, Facebook, your email service, or your bank. A few false positives are acceptable collateral damage, and it can be a serious inconvenience or worse. Tinder, he's out 12 bucks, but we've all heard of people with thousands of dollars in Paypal limbo for years.
I bet he could get back that $12 and more for his time and effort if he went to small claims court in the US. Or tell their card’s issuer to do a chargeback.
That's probably a good idea. If you want social media, go to the local mom and pop social medium in town here. Their artisanal activity feed is the best!
More seriously, at this point the options are:
- ethically-challenged social media full of relatives and friends
- unintuitive federated platform with no family but plenty of otherkin furfriends
- being left out of conversation and events you care about
I can't say to most people that choice 1 is excluded without being written off as unrealistic.
