It is surprising to me that this feels so negative to you. Every large social tech company - Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Groupon, LivingSocial (RIP), Tinder - have all used tactics similar to what you label &#x27;dark patterns&#x27; to bootstrap their businesses.<p>If I am building a network driven product like a dating app or social network, you better be damn sure that it is going to be using &#x27;growth hacking&#x27; (read:scraping) methods to increase the viral coefficient per user.<p>Would it also be news to you if I told you that 719 singles in your zip code did not, actually, want to see you tonight?