These 12 Dating Apps Closed Down After It Turned Out These Girls Were ‘Robots’

In dating apps, pictures speak a thousand words, unfortunately, but have you ever wondered to yourself, “am I being catfished?”

For the uninitiated and innocents, catfishing is when someone lures you into a relationship through their fake online account.

There is even a binge-worthy tv show, Catfish: The TV Show where they feature people being catfished.

It is hilarious as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Well, I don’t know if the topic at hand is considered catfishing or scamming?

What happened

BBC was quoted as saying that the dating apps run by 21 China companies have shut down after finding out that the messages sent through the app were by computer programmes and not women.

600 suspects have been arrested across 13 provinces, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Shanghai.

The South China Morning Post was quoted as saying that, some of the apps claimed customers could chat with “sexy girls” online, but clients found themselves messaging and receiving answers from artificial intelligence computer programs instead.

Why is it a crime, they are just chatting after all?

Well, money was involved.

Last year, August, the police discovered such cases where dating apps requested users to pay if they wanted to chat with “sexy girls”.

According to the department of public security in southern Guangdong province, the case involved hundreds of thousands of customers and the fraud amounted to more than 1 billion yuan (US$154 million).

Chinese dating apps shut down after it was revealed it used bots posing as women https://t.co/kgZtkc40hm pic.twitter.com/49Jn9GYBcO

— Boing Boing (@BoingBoing) January 8, 2018

One of the apps, Moucheng, defrauded over a million users who paid a total of 340 million yuan, as mentioned in the aforementioned article by The South China Morning Post.

Some were scammed to pay for sexual video but they were unable to load and view it.

Thoughts

Well, isn’t it amazing the lengths that people will go to for (cyber) sex?

I mean, with millennials willing to date robots, I am not even surprised.

But I do wonder, how the conversation would have gone—pretty smooth I suppose since people were willing to pay for more.

Artificial intelligence triumphs common sense, once again.

So is this catfishing or scamming?

Since you’re here, why not watch a video about a guy who lodged a Police report here in Singapore because he was friendzoned? Seriously. Here, watch it and do remember to share it (and also subscribe to Goody Feed YouTube channel)!

This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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Featured image: sg.news.yahoo.com