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Ashley Madison Says It Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack (cnn.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-shame dept.

New submitter fardindany writes with news that the months-old Ashley Madison hack seems to have had little impact on new users joining up. CNN reports: "Despite the infamous hack that exposed millions of cheaters online, infidelity dating site Ashley Madison says its ranks are growing. At the time of the hack, Ashley Madison said it had 39 million members. The website now says it has more than 43 million members, according to a rolling count on its homepage."

22 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Actually 4 new members.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And 3,999,996 bots.

    1. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      Correction: Lucy Liu bots.

    2. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Funny

      That would be 66 (liu shi liu) bots. Only makes sense if you speak Mandarin... ;)

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    3. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      NEW LEAK FROM ASHLEY MADISON DOT COM!!!11!!!!!!q11!!!ELEVEN!!!

      for (int i = 1; i < 3999995; i++) {
      adduser(randname(), randage(18,39), rand() < .90 ? female : male);
      }

    4. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, it's all there in the title:

      Ashley Madison Says _It_ Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack

  2. Obvious reason by ranton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Without some really strong evidence, why would anyone believe these 4 million new members aren't 99% AI-controlled bots? Or at least 99% of the new female users.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    1. Re:Obvious reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or just the masses re-joining this time under assumed/fake names?

    2. Re:Obvious reason by rudy_wayne · · Score: 2

      People are stupid.

      Go figure.

    3. Re:Obvious reason by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why would you bother to think they are AI-controlled bots? Someone probably just wrote a script to make 4 million accounts with pre-populated data.

    4. Re:Obvious reason by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      Without some really strong evidence, why would anyone believe these 4 million new members aren't 99% AI-controlled bots? Or at least 99% of the new female users.

      Well, a number of things.

      (1) The argument that 99+% of female users were bots never quite made a lot of sense. It's true that men cheat more than women, but by a factor of something like 2:1, not several orders of magnitude higher. Even internet porn use is nowhere near the claimed level of asymmetry by gender on AM.

      (2) The actual person who made the claim about the massive percentage of female bots actually admitted her data analysis was completely bogus and that she had no idea what she was doing in interpreting the database fields.

      (3) A number of reputable news sources after the story came out actually went out and interviewed real women who had used the site. I'm not going to bother looking for it now, but I remember a BBC story who even interviewed two lesbians from neighboring towns or something that met on AM. If the 99+% bots claim was anywhere near true, it would be nearly statistically impossible for two REAL women to even find each other on AM.

      (4) Even if the database analysis in the original (widely reported) story was based on a correct interpretation (which -- see point (2) above -- it wasn't), the data was also obtained from hackers who were intent on destroying the business model of AM. It would be to hackers' benefit to make things look bad for AM, and making it look all male AM users were doing was talking to a bunch of bots would be a really ingenious strategy.

      (5) Even if the database analysis was correct (which seems unlikely), there are plenty of reports of users who joined after the hack to find out if their spouses were on AM. That number alone could explain a significant portion of the 4 million increase -- and those women are likely to be real women... even if they have no intention of being active on AM, they would still be new accounts.

      Ultimately, I don't really care. I'm sure there may be some bots involved (at least tens of thousands existed before the hack), but I find it exceedingly unlikely that 99+% of new accounts are fake, since the original claim was bogus anyway.

      BTW -- I find the whole idea of the site revolting, but I found the bot story weird enough to follow for a couple days -- until it utterly blew up and turned out to be based on a faulty analysis (as I thought was likely anyway). Of course, that never got reported widely, because "there probably are quite a few women on AM anyway" isn't nearly as interesting or sensationalistic as news as "99% of AM female 'users' are fembots and all these guys who are being embarrassed by the account leak were even greater morons than we thought!"

    5. Re:Obvious reason by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      Perhaps, but the 'learned that the same site's database got completely raped, and its member lists got published in the open' might put a bit of a crimp into things...

      I mean seriously, there's a lot of idiots on this planet, but 4 million of them in a couple of months? I'm not seeing it, even as misanthropic as I am.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    6. Re:Obvious reason by quantaman · · Score: 2

      Or just the masses re-joining this time under assumed/fake names?

      Or even if they are legitimate new users how many of the 39 million previous users left?

      --
      I stole this Sig
  3. I believe them by rasmusbr · · Score: 4, Funny

    After all, what do bots care about reputation?

  4. This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> according to a rolling count on its homepage

    Has anyone NOT on SlashDot NOT written a visitor/user/customer counter that started at a fictitious number and automatically incremented as time went on? (This is, after all, the culture of "fake it until you make it.")

    1. Re:This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by KatchooNJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Also, what are the odds that the counter takes account cancellations into account? Accounts that have been removed since the hack likely aren't considered for that rolling counter.

      --
      "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
  5. The worst humanity has to offer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have to ask the question: In a world where something like this exists, why even bother with the pretense of 'marriage' at all anymore? In the U.S. the divorce rate is at least 50%, and it's as bad in many places all over the world; it's not far-fetched to assume that even in places where the rate is low, it just means people are cheating on their spouses and not bothering with divorce. Even ignoring that, what's the purpose of marriage in modern times, anyway? Bastardy used to carry a huge social stigma, but I don't see that being so in modern times. Beyond that it's just a civil contract, with all that implies, and when the people involved decide to split, it complicates things. Really, in the modern world, what's the point? It's not like anyone seems to be taking it seriously as a 'committment'.

    1. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by sjames · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's worth noting that while 50% of all marriages end in divorce, most people who get married stay married. The stat gets skewed by the fact that many who get divorced will marry and get divorced again.

    2. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      It's a great way for a hot woman to wind up with a legal claim on half the assets and future income of a rich man.

      Because rich men have such a hard time finding pootenanny that they have to resort to a lame website?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Imagine 12 men and 12 women. Eight couples get married and stay married. That's eight marriages that don't end in divorce. The other four men and four women all get married and divorced three times. That's 12 marriages that do end in divorce. Therefore the majority of marriages end in divorce (12 to 8), but the majority of people stay married (16 to 8).

  6. Re:Let me guess... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the internet! Where the men are men, women are bots and kids are FBI agents.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Crossover in 2045! by swm · · Score: 4, Funny

    The US population counter gives the US population as 323M + 1 person every 13 seconds.
    Ashley Madison claims 39M users + 4M users in 4 months.
    Doing the math gives crossover in 2045, at which time everyone in the country will be on Ashley Madison.

    1. Re:Crossover in 2045! by Z3n1th · · Score: 2

      http://xkcd.com/605/