Is Regulating the Online Dating Scene Just a Love Fraud?
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When discussing social media law, it is often a mélange of existing legislation and speculation about interaction…the interaction of rapidly evolving social media platforms and the sometime bizarre fact patterns that they can lead to (e.g., the sad but true case of Meghan Meier.) Rare is the case where there is a law that actually speaks to social media, let alone to the unique situations that can occur. But such is the case in the typically all fair zone known as love and war, with NJ’s Internet Dating Safety Act - (S.B. 1977 / A. 4304).
This Act has already been signed in to law (Effective May 15, 2008) and it requires dating sites that are accessible in N.J. to disclose whether or not they conduct criminal background checks. Similar bills aimed at online dating have been proposed and died in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, and California.
The point is that there is an emerging state by state framework of laws targeting particular social media operations. While there have already been different state rules regarding taxation and online income/purchases, this law is a marked shift towards real hands on legislative treatment. Not everyone is pleased with the law and it set off an axis and allies style battle between the major online dating players, True.com, Match .com, and Yahoo Personals. In fact it was True.com that pushed the lawmakers’ buttons to move forward, presumably because they are the only one with criminal “screening” in place, while the others panned it.
Lovefraud.com is a web site devoted to arming the soon to be forlorned lovers of the world, chronicles all manner of love fraud, including on the net. (If there is a Yelp for restaurants, why not one for romance?) And this is their decidedly, take on True.com:
So what is the moral of the story here? Before targeted legislation of this nature begins to territorialize what has been a largely successful self regulatory approach to social media, it had better understand the technology in place. No one doubts that internet dating fraud can have dire and tragic consequences. But slapping product labels like “does/does not conduct criminal background checks,” without a rigorous testing process, is like having the FDA shoving pills out the door before a single lab coat gets to fire up a microscope.
This Act has already been signed in to law (Effective May 15, 2008) and it requires dating sites that are accessible in N.J. to disclose whether or not they conduct criminal background checks. Similar bills aimed at online dating have been proposed and died in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, and California.
The point is that there is an emerging state by state framework of laws targeting particular social media operations. While there have already been different state rules regarding taxation and online income/purchases, this law is a marked shift towards real hands on legislative treatment. Not everyone is pleased with the law and it set off an axis and allies style battle between the major online dating players, True.com, Match .com, and Yahoo Personals. In fact it was True.com that pushed the lawmakers’ buttons to move forward, presumably because they are the only one with criminal “screening” in place, while the others panned it.
Lovefraud.com is a web site devoted to arming the soon to be forlorned lovers of the world, chronicles all manner of love fraud, including on the net. (If there is a Yelp for restaurants, why not one for romance?) And this is their decidedly, take on True.com:
How does True.com screen for married people? It asks them to certify that they are not married.
And how does True.com run a background check? According to the Internet Alliance, True.com provides the names people give when they sign up—without attempting to verify any identities—to Rapsheets.com, which then runs the names through its database of criminal records. Rapsheets.com gets its information from various state governments that choose to participate—and many of them don’t. Plus, state records are notoriously incomplete—many counties do not even report crimes to a publicly accessible central database.
The bottom line is that True.com claims to screen for married people and criminals, but it reality, its screening is almost useless.
So what is the moral of the story here? Before targeted legislation of this nature begins to territorialize what has been a largely successful self regulatory approach to social media, it had better understand the technology in place. No one doubts that internet dating fraud can have dire and tragic consequences. But slapping product labels like “does/does not conduct criminal background checks,” without a rigorous testing process, is like having the FDA shoving pills out the door before a single lab coat gets to fire up a microscope.
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