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True.com Wants Warnings On Personal Ads
An anonymous reader submits "News.com.com is reporting that personals company True.com is behind a push in several state legislatures to require everyone but them to include scary looking warnings above personals ads. I'm sure they're not the first, but this looks like a particularly slimy way to corner a market. And the unintended consequences look big, too: by my read of the proposed law, even Slashdot would need to include the warnings above user profile pages." In just a few weeks, this would sound like an April Fool's joke. I hope every legislator to whom this is being shopped is sent a copy of Declan's counter-example.
1. Create new laws and impose them on yourself.
2. Influence new legislation that will force your competition to abide by your bogus laws.
3. Create a new market by having the government eliminate your competition.
Sounds like the American way to me...
By stating that they *have* done a background check on a person, aren't they assuming liability (at least partially) if the person turns out to be a psycho?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I wrote to my state senator:
I read with tremendous dismay that True.com has managed to bribe at least one assemblymember into introducing their special interest legislation. I assume it will be crushed immediately, it's just so astonishingly moronic. My confidence in democracy would be somewhat improved if Fran Pavley is removed from office as expeditiously as possible. It's incomprehensible to me that anyone could be so naive and stupid as to believe that this legislation is in the public interest or anything but a bald-faced attempt to create legislative favor for a specific company. I would think that unless Fran Pavley has some plausible excuse, it would be appropriate to investigate him for ethics violations.
I disagree about them "not being the greatest idea". Back when I was single I used to use online dating services all the time. I met a fair number of people online, and went out on dates with 6 or 8 of them over the course of a couple of years. They were all nice people. Some of them were better matches than others. There was this one woman who forgot to mention that she was an ultra-conservative who was offended by everything the least bit progressive (and of course I'm an advertised ultra-liberal) but overall it wasn't too bad. No serial killers, no stalkers, no married women, and no psychopaths. We would usually go on a few dates and then decide that we weren't quite right, and then I'd meet someone else. Overall it was really much different than "normal" dating. The biggest difference with a service is that you're selecting from a pool of people who are looking to meet someone, whereas with normal life that woman at the coffee shop who's cute may have no interest in meeting someone.
While there's no guarantee that you won't meet some psycho using a dating service, there's also no guarantee that that you won't meet a psycho at the bar, grocery, laundromat, office, friend's house, church, or anywhere else you pick someone else up. As long as you are careful (don't give out too much personal info, take it slow, meet in public places until you get a good feel for the person, follow your gut instincts, etc) then there shouldn't be problems.