Evolution of the online dating business

The NY Times and Consumer Reports bring us up to date on dating.  And (at the end of this long post) making dating great again in the new political environment..


Here's the NY Times:

For Online Dating Sites, a Bumpy Road to Love

"Not many people have heard of Spark Networks, but far more are familiar with what it owns: JDate, ChristianMingle and a host of other sites like SilverSingles.com and BlackSingles.com.
...
"according to Spark Networks’ 2015 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the number of paid subscribers to its Jewish networks declined to around 65,000 last year from a little over 85,000 in 2012. Its total for all networks dropped by more than 55,000 people, to under 204,000.

This comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are trying to find partners online. According to the Pew Research Center, 15 percent of Americans have used online dating sites or mobile apps, compared with 11 percent in 2013. Spark Network’s revenues fell nearly 22 percent from 2014 to 2015.

...

"There are about 4,500 online dating companies, according to a report by the market research company IBISWorld, but the majority are tiny. The largest player in the field is the Match Group, with 51 dating sites; over the last few years alone it acquired such high-profile companies as Tinder and Plenty of Fish.

“It’s never been cheaper to start a dating site and never been more expensive to grow one,” said Mark Brooks, a consultant for the internet dating industry who also runs Online Personals Watch. Part of the problem, he said, is that 70 percent of internet dating in the United States is now on mobile.

"Dating apps usually start by offering their services completely free to bring in new users. There are then two ways for the services to make money: advertising and turning free users into paying ones.

“It used to be 10 percent of those who registered converted to paid,” Mr. Brooks said. “Now it’s more like 2 to 3 percent.”

Advertising can be tough to get, said Tom Homer, editor of the website Dating Site Reviews, and on a mobile device it does not pay much because there is less real estate available than on regular websites.

...

"Some also see a move toward ever more niche sites like MouseMingle.com (Disney lovers) and GlutenFreeSingles.com (the name says it all). But, when you slice the pie ever thinner, “you’re also slicing your membership base,” Mr. Homer said."

******************
And from Consumer Reports: Online Dating: Match Me If You Can
"According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 15 percent of American adults have used online dating sites (web-based platforms like Match.com) and/or dating apps (location-based smartphone apps like Tinder).

Participation by those 18 to 24 has almost tripled since 2013, and boomer enrollment has doubled. In fact, people over 50 are one of the fastest growing segments. “It’s a product of the growing normalcy of using social media apps,” says Moira Weigel, author of “Labor of Love: The Invention of Online Dating” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016). “Our real-life and online identities are more and more interwoven.”
...
"Our survey included many people who at some point had used a dating website or an app, as well as a subset of 9,600 respondents who used them in the past two years. The more recently active group rated specific sites.

"Our findings tell an almost contradictory story. On the one hand, the numbers indicate that these sites are helping people find mates. A whopping 44 percent of respondents who tried online dating said the experience led to a serious long-term relationship or marriage. That kind of connection rate would shatter Hall of Fame records, at least in baseball.

But the responses from the more active group suggest they’re highly frustrated. They gave online dating sites the lowest satisfaction scores Consumer Reports has ever seen for services rendered—lower even than for tech-support providers, notoriously poor performers in our ratings.
...
"Michael Norton, Ph.D., a professor at the Harvard Business School who studies consumer behavior, thinks so. Online dating is different from shopping for, say, a sweater, he explains: “Once you decide on the sweater you want, you can get it. But with dating, the sweater has to agree, too.”

Another reason for the low satisfaction scores may be that “most dating sites have some misalignment between profit model and user experience because they are financed through subscription fees or advertising,” says Scott Kominers, Ph.D., a junior fellow in economics at Harvard University. In other words, there’s no incentive for them to make the experience speedy. If you find your life partner on your first date, the site doesn’t make much money off you. Our survey found that among respondents who stopped online dating, 20 percent of men and 40 percent of women said they did so because they didn’t like the quality of their matches. Perhaps that’s why, among those who said they had used multiple dating sites, 28 percent had tried four or more.

But our research also found that online dating, however painful and time-consuming, often does produce the intended result if you use it well—and persevere.
...
“You’re generally going to be best off starting your search on the ‘Big 3’: Match.com, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish,” says Scott Valdez, founder of Virtual Dating Assistants, which helps people write their profiles and then manages their accounts. “Those are among the most popular dating sites in the world, and when you’re fishing, it just makes sense to drop your line in the most crowded ponds.”

That’s generally true unless you have a particular guiding factor, such as religion, race, or politics, in which case you can go to a niche site like JDate or BlackPeopleMeet.
..

 

******************
Finally, Could you date someone whose politics you couldn't stand? Could your political views get you a date?  Have I got the dating site for you...
https://trumpsingles.com/  making dating great again...

Bestiality: legal in some states and illegal in others

Here's a repugnance story from the Guardian:
'A great victory for animals': bestiality may finally be outlawed in Ohio
A bill banning sexual abuse of animals passed the state legislature as a result of a campaign by an animal welfare charity is aiming to prohibit bestiality nationwide

"Ohio has moved one step closer to outlawing bestiality after a bill banning sexual abuse of animals passed the state legislature.
...
"The bill is the result of a lengthy campaign by the Humane Society of the United States, an animal welfare charity which is aiming to ban bestiality nationwide.

“The passage of animal sexual abuse legislation is a great victory for the animals of Ohio,” said Leighann Lassiter, animal cruelty policy director at the Humane Society.

"Lassiter and the bill’s sponsors, Ohio senators Jim Hughes and Jay Hottinger, have stated that animal abuse can often be a precursor to the abuse of children.
...
"The bill prohibits a person from “sexual conduct” with an animal, but also targets what Lassiter described as “organized sex rings”.

“There are people out there who train animals for sex,” she said. “You can give them your dog and they will train your dog to have sex with a human and send it back to you. And they get paid for it.
...
"States where bestiality is illegal do have animal cruelty laws, Lassiter said, but these are often inadequate when it comes to people sexually abusing animals. A person sexually abusing an animal might only be prosecuted if the animal is injured, while livestock or wild animals may be exempt from existing law.
...
"Lassiter said some states are lacking specific bestiality laws because animal sex abuse was covered under historic laws that also banned gay sex. In some cases when those laws were repealed bestiality was not reintroduced as an offense.

"Bestiality is currently legal in Vermont, Texas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Nevada, Hawaii, Wyoming, New Mexico and Ohio, and in Washington DC."
***************

Cash for places in college admissions

In England, The Telegraph is shocked to report
'Cash for places’: leading private schools accept six-figure sums from rich overseas parents desperate to get their child admitted

"One of Britain’s leading private schools is exposed for being prepared to accept vast donations to secure places for the children of overseas parents.

"David Fletcher, the registrar at Stowe until this week, was filmed saying a six-figure payment would be helpful when there was a “marginal decision” over whether a pupil should be admitted.

"Mr Fletcher, 60, told an undercover reporter that one overseas family had recently given £100,000 towards a project at the school, in order to help secure a place for their child.
...
"Anthony Wallersteiner, headmaster at Stowe, said he was “shocked” by the suggestion a donation would have any influence..."
****************

Perhaps they should read the 2006 book
 The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates  by Daniel Golden

Some interviews on (mostly) market design in Argentina and Brazil

In the magazine of UCEMA: Market design

In the Brazilian magazine Exame.com:
Um vencedor do prêmio Nobel defende a mão visível do mercado
Para Alvin E. Roth, vencedor do Prêmio Nobel de Economia em 2012, a ciência é a arma para corrigir as falhas de mercados que não funcionam livremente
[Google translate: A Nobel Prize winner defends the visible hand of the market
For Alvin E. Roth, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2012, science is the weapon to correct the failures of markets that do not work freely]

Here's one in which the questions focused less on what I know about:)
Roth, Nobel de Economía: "Los bonos de EE.UU. serán menos atractivos con Trump"
Distinguido en 2012, comenta el peso que pueden tener los matching markets para un mercado como el argentino. Además, su visión sobre un posible default estadounidense.
Por Santiago Lilo
[Google translate: Roth, Nobel laureate: "US bonds will be less attractive to Trump"
Distinguished in 2012, comments the weight that can have the matching markets for a market like the Argentine. In addition, his vision on a possible American default.]

Two minutes of advice for President Trump from Economics Nobel Laureates

One of the few occasions in which I get the last word (at least in this video):

Who Gets What and Why in Chinese, traditional characters

Chinese translations come in two versions, simplified characters (primarily for the mainland) and traditional characters, primarily for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The traditional character version of Who Gets What and Why has recently come out in Taiwan, here's a link and a picture:

創造金錢買不到的機會：諾貝爾經濟學獎突破市場經濟賽局的思維

Who Gets What-and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

 .

Google translate renders the top title as "Create money can not buy the opportunity: the Nobel Prize in economics to break through the thinking of the market economy game."


(You can compare it to the version in simplified characters, below, but this isn't a good way to learn the difference, since the two books have different translators, and the translation of the title into simplified characters apparently says something about the "sharing economy.") Who Gets What - and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design(chinese edition) Paperback – 2015

Trade secrets: obstetric forceps

The Atlantic has an interesting short article on the history of surgical forceps to aid in difficult births:

The Family of Surgeons That Got Famous by Secretly Using Forceps
The metal tools have saved many lives since the 1500s, but they’ve also come to reflect slow progress in women’s health care.

"Obstetric forceps were invented in the mid-1500s, when bloodletting was still a common medical practice. They predate the stethoscope and the germ theory of disease. They were also, for many years, a closely held trade secret. For more than three generations, as Randi Hutter Epstein writes in Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, they were used exclusively by a single family of indifferently educated surgeons, the Chamberlens, who hid the steely secret of their success.

Forceps were a vast improvement on previous emergency-childbirth practices, which were more or less limited to breaking the mother’s pubic bone, performing a Caesarian section (procedures that could save the fetus but often killed the mother), or stabbing or cutting the fetus in utero (which invariably killed the fetus but sometimes saved the mother).
The Chamberlens and their forceps ended this ongoing zero-sum tragedy, and became famous as the best “man-midwives” in England. To maintain their reputation and boost their business, however, they concealed their forceps in medical bags and under surgical draperies. Not until the 1700s did they release the design of their invention, and the original instruments remained within the family until 1813, when a pair of Chamberlen forceps was discovered under the floorboards of a country mansion where the family once lived."
...
"

The legal Alaskan market for walrus ivory

Unlike elephant ivory, there's a legal market in walrus ivory, which can be crafted and sold by "Alaska Natives (Indians, Aleuts, or Eskimos) who reside in Alaska and dwell on the coast of the North Pacific Ocean or the Arctic Ocean".

But the protections given to elephants limit the demand for walrus ivory.
Alaska Despatch News has the story:
Effort to save African elephants hurts Alaska Native ivory artists

"African elephants, targeted by poachers and trophy hunters, are listed as a threatened species. The United States this summer strengthened rules into a near-total ban on any trading in elephant ivory.

"The Pacific walrus is a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act, but climate change is the big threat to that species, not poaching. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Alaska Native hunters can target walrus, Native artists can harvest, buy and carve their ivory, and anyone can purchase the art.
...
"Yet some states concerned about decimated elephant populations have banned walrus ivory too, creating anxiety for Alaska artisans, uncertainty for buyers and an agenda item for politicians."

Market Design and Operations Research: an interview by the journal Mathematics of Operations Research

The journal Mathematics of Operations Research, where the main paper from my dissertation was published in 1976, has published an interview with me in their Author Spotlight section: In Conversation with...ALVIN E. ROTH.

Here's the first question and answer:

INFORMS:  Your first published paper, “Subsolutions and the Supercore of Cooperative Games,” [2]based on your doctoral thesis, appeared in MOR in 1976. The paper was handled by Nobel winner and MOR Founding Area Editor Robert Aumann. Can you share with us how your first experience with the peer review process went?

ROTH:  I recall that experience vividly. Aumann, in his editor’s letter, told me to ignore the referees, but to revise the paper along the lines he would describe. One revision he wanted had to do with the proof of my main theorem, for which I had used Zorn’s Lemma. He advised me to try to construct a proof which instead used transfinite induction. I didn’t know what transfinite induction was, so I was very skeptical, but I grimly trudged to the math library and got a copy of Hausdorff’s book Set Theory [3] to repair this gap in my education. I still remember how my hopes lifted when I opened the book and saw that it had been translated from the German by…Aumann. It turned out that he knew what he was talking about, and the proof that appears in my published MOR paper uses transfinite induction.

...

At the Author Spotlight page they also link to the several papers I published in MOR:

Roth AE (1976) Subsolutions and the Supercore of Cooperative Games. Math. Oper. Res. 1(1):43–49.  

Roth AE (1977) Individual rationality and Nash’s solution to the bargaining problem. Math. Oper. Res. 2(1): 64–65. 

Roth AE (1982) The economics of matching: Stability and incentives. Math. Oper. Res. 7(4):617–628. 

Roth AE (1985) Conflict and coincidence of interest in job matching: Some new results and open questions. Math. Oper. Res. 10(3):379–389.*  

Roth AE, Rothblum UG, Vande Vate, JH (1993) Stable matchings, optimal assignments, and linear programming. Math. Oper. Res. 18(4): 803–828. 

Since becoming a notorious economist, I've had a number of conversations with operations researchers that begin with a question like "Why did you switch from OR to Economics?"

My usual answer is that I got my Ph.D. in OR in 1974 with a dissertation in game theory, and it looked at that time as if OR would be a natural place for game theory to flourish, particularly since Bob Aumann was the founding game theory editor of MOR. But, as it turned out, game theory grew first and fastest in Economics. So I just stood my ground, while the disciplinary boundaries shifted around me. Today, market design has become the engineering part of game theory, and it's time for OR and Economics to reconnect around market design. And indeed at Stanford, many of the Ph.D. students in our market design classes in the econ department are OR students from our MS&E department or from our Business school, both of which in turn have market designers on their faculty.  So I'm optimistic that my dual identities as an economist and operations researcher may soon seem seamless.
****************



*Beware, my 1985 paper contains an error about the lattice structure of stable matchings, that was noted and corrected by
Charles Blair (1988), "The Lattice Structure of the Set of Stable Matchings with Multiple Partners,"  Mathematics of Operations Research 13(4):619-628. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/moor.13.4.619
and also by
Jianrong Li, (2013) A Note on Roth's Consensus Property of Many-to-One Matching. Mathematics of Operations Research 38(2):389-392. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/moor.1120.0576 

Invitation to celebrate Bob Wilson in Chicago: CME Group-MSRI Prize

Here's an invitation to a Wilson celebration in Chicago early next month...

Join us for the 11th annual CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovation Quantitative Applications honoring Stanford University Professor Robert Wilson CME Group Center for Innovation and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) cordially invite you to the 11th annual CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications seminar and award reception honoring: ROBERT B. WILSON Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus Stanford Graduate School of Business Register Today February 2, 2017 9:00 AM: Seminar 12:00 PM: Luncheon & Award Presentation  CME Group Headquarters 20 South Wacker Dr.  Chicago, IL 60606 Map

Seminar: Frontiers of Game-Theoretic Applications in Economics Featured Speakers: Drew Fudenberg Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology About Drew Srihari Govindan Professor, Department of Economics, University of Rochester About Srihari Bengt Holmström Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2016 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences Recipient 2013 Recipient of the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications About Bengt Paul Milgrom Shirley R. and Leonard W. Ely Jr. Professor of Humanities and Sciences, Economics Department, Stanford University About Paul Roger Myerson Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Recipient About Roger Philip Reny The Hugo F. Sonnenschein Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, University of Chicago About Philip Alvin Roth Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Stanford University 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Recipient About Alvin

Egypt arrests 'organ trafficking ring'

The BBC has the story: Egypt arrests 'organ trafficking ring'
Egyptian authorities have arrested doctors, nurses and professors suspected of being involved in an international organ trafficking ring.

(professors!)

"The arrests of at least 25 people on Tuesday also included organ buyers and middlemen, the country's Administrative Control Authority said.
Authorities also found "millions of dollars and gold bullion".
It is illegal to purchase organs in Egypt, but poverty drives some to sell their body parts.
The Administrative Control Authority, a powerful anti-corruption body, claimed the network targeted on Tuesday was "made up of Egyptians and Arabs taking advantage of some of the citizens' difficult economic conditions so that they buy their human organs and sell [them] for large sums of money".
The statement on the government website added that the group was "the largest international network for trading human organs".
...
"The arrests follow years of concern over the illegal organ trade in Egypt.
In 2010, it was named as one of the top five countries for illegal organ trade by the World Health Organization's co-ordinator at the time, Luc Noel.
Egypt passed laws to try to curb the trade, but according to the United Nations, hundreds of poor Egyptians still sell kidneys and livers each year to be able to buy food or pay off debts.
There have also been concerns over the fate of migrants who come into contact with the traffickers.
In 2012, then UN refugee agency chief, Antonio Guterres, said some migrants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula were being "killed for the traffic of organs", while earlier this year a people smuggler told Italian prosecutors that those who could not pay their debt were sold to the organ traffickers.
The allegations have not been proven, however."
*******************

Here is a related story from the Daily Mail:
45 doctors, nurses and 'middlemen' are arrested for HUMAN ORGAN trade in Egypt as migrants sell body parts to reach Europe 
The harvesting of human organs is being described as the biggest ever in Egypt
Reports those involved were targeting African migrants trying to get to Europe
As well as the arrests, health ministry recovered millions of dollars in a raid
Some arrested worked at medical faculties of Cairo and Ain Shams Universities

Black markets for kidney transplants--arrests in Israel

A late December story of black markets and law enforcement from the Times of Israel:
2 charged with running international organ traffic ring. Patients allegedly paid $180,000 for a kidney; illegal transplants carried out in Turkey, Bulgaria, Thailand, Philippines

"Roini Shimshilashvili and Albert Murdakhayev were charged with multiple counts of trafficking in organs, brokering organ trafficking and conspiracy, according to a court statement. A third man, identified as a doctor, Zachi Shapira, was charged with multiple counts of assisting in organ trafficking.
...
"The two men allegedly found prospective donors from the former Soviet Union who matched sick Israelis. The donors would be paid to donate their kidneys to the Israelis, “who paid sums of up to $180,000 in most cases,” the court heard. It was not clear how much the donors were paid.

...

"In the last two years, the ring reportedly arranged for 14 transplants in four countries; Turkey, Bulgaria, Thailand and Philippines"


HT: Robert Gutman

2016 Baby Markets 10th Anniversary International Congress in April

Here's the call for papers:

2016 Baby Markets 10th Anniversary International Congress

April 1-3, 2016 • University of California, Irvine School of Law

The Baby Markets International Congress celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the Baby Markets Roundtable series founded by the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy's Director, Chancellor’s Professor Michele Goodwin.

The Center welcomes abstracts engaging adoption, assisted reproduction, surrogacy trafficking, custodial parenting, care-giving, foster care, legal implications, and more through historical and contemporary lenses. View the full list of Congress themes »

Congress attendees will have the opportunity to submit papers to the Organizing Committee for publication in UC Irvine Law Review. The Organizing Committee will choose a select number of proceedings from the Congress for publication. Papers may also be accepted for the Second Edition of Professor Michele Goodwin’s Baby Markets volume.

All abstracts must be submitted by January 31, 2016. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words.

Genetic testing for heritable diseases

JScreen is a genetic testing service associated with Emory University that allows individuals and couples to learn what heritable diseases they may carry.  It also offers advising on Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), Use of donor sperm or egg, Adoption, Prenatal Diagnosis, and Preparation and Early Treatment (when expecting a child who may have a congenital disease).

A well established service of this kind, with a focus on Tay Sachs disease, is Dor Yeshorim (which translates roughly as "straight generation") about which I blogged last year with particular attention to the privacy protecting part of their protocol:

A privacy-preserving market design intervention to avoid Tay Sachs disease

Evolution of kidney exchange markets, and other short videos from the AEA Poster session

Below is the video interview that goes with my poster presentation at the just concluded American Economic Association/ASSA meetings in Chicago:

AEA POSTER PRESENTER VIDEO

Al Roth on the evolution of kidney exchange markets

Subtitle: Al Roth is the current president of the American Economic Association and the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He sat down with the AEA to talk about the market for a product (human kidneys) that can't legally be bought or sold, and the potential for huge savings in the U.S. health care system if we do a better job facilitating kidney exchanges across international borders.

You can also find the video here, on vimeo.

Al Roth on the evolution of kidney exchange markets from American Economic Association on Vimeo.

Here's the poster itself: The Ongoing Design of Kidney Exchange: Recent and Prospective Developments

You can videos related to other posters at the 2017 Annual Meeting Videos , and here you can see the whole poster session.

Backpage closes it's marketplace for sex

Yesterday I posted about the legal battle brewing over whether Backpage.com is in violation of the laws against pimping and prostitution, and today comes the news that it is shutting down those ads. Here's the Washington Post story:
Backpage.com shuts down adult services ads after relentless pressure from authorities

"Fighting accusations from members of Congress that it facilitated child sex trafficking, the classified advertising site Backpage.com abruptly closed its adult advertising section in the United States on Monday, saying years of government pressure left it no choice but to shutter its most popular and lucrative feature.

"The decision came shortly after a Senate panel released a report alleging Backpage concealed criminal activity by removing words from ads that would have exposed child sex trafficking and prostitution. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is scheduled to hold a hearing on the report Tuesday morning. Backpage’s founders and executives will appear in the hearing but do not plan to testify, according to their attorneys.

...

"The federal Communications Decency Act provides immunity to website operators that publish third-party content online, but multiple lawsuits have argued that the 1996 law does not protect Backpage because the site contributes to illegal activity — claims Backpage has vigorously denied.

"The Senate subcommittee raised similar concerns Monday. Its report alleged that Backpage knowingly hid child sex trafficking and prostitution by deleting incriminating terms from its ads before publication. The report found that the company used a feature that automatically scrubbed words such as “teenage,” “rape” and “young” from some ads, while manually removing terms from others."

European Network for Collaboration on Kidney Exchange Programmes

The European Network for Collaboration on Kidney Exchange Programmes will have its first meeting in January in Estonia, January 12 and 13 at the Estonian Business School (EBS). The aim of the network is to share information and coordinate practices among planned and existing kidney exchange programs throughout Europe.

DAY 1

8:30-9:00 registrations

Welcome
9:00-9:45 Introduction by Joris vd Klundert:
-    Welcome Introduction of the participants
-    Aim and structure of the project
9.45-10.00 Aim of the first meeting by Peter Biro

Session 1 (moderated by Lisa Burnapp/ Bernadette Haase)
10.00-10.20  Aline Hemke: updates on the Dutch KEP
10.20 -10.40 Rachel Johnson: updates on the UK KEP
10.40-11.00  Discussion and key points

11.00:-11:30 coffee break

Session 2 (moderated Lisa Burnapp/Bernadette Haase)
11:30-11:50 Maria Valentin: KEP in Spain
11:50-12:10 Catarina Bolotinha: KEP in Portugal
12:10-12:30 Marie-Alice Macher: KEP in France
12:30-12:50  Paola Di Ciaccio and Vito Sparacino: KEP in Italy
12.50-13.30  Discussion and key points

13:30-14:30 lunch break

Session 3 (moderated Peter Biro)
14:30-14:50 Jiri Fronek: KEP in Czech Republic
14:50-15:10 Gregor Bond: KEP in Austria
15:10-15:30 Rafal Kieszek: KEP in Poland
15:30-15:45 Katarina Cechlarova: plans in Slovakia
15:45-16:00 Karine Hadaya: plans in Switzerland

16.00 – 16.30 coffee break

Session 4  (moderated by Lisa Burnapp/Bernadette Haase)
16:30-18:00 Interactive discussion on key themes from the morning session

Day 2

Session 5 (moderated by Joris vd Klundert)
9:00-9.15   Discussing the issues identified at the meeting in relation with the COST Action plans
9.15-10.30  Identify the specialised areas (organisational, legal ,financial, mathematical etc) which need further investigations and concrete actions. Division of work among participants.

10.30-11:00 coffee break

Session 6 (open discussion, moderated by Peter Biro)
11:00-11:45 Handbook: structure, details of data collection
11:45-12:30 Organisation of further activities of WG1

Racial discrimination in Uber and Lyft

Here's an NBER paper that investigates, in connection with Uber and Lyft, some of the issues that crop up in other distributed decision making marketplaces:

Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies 
Yanbo Ge, Christopher R. Knittel, Don MacKenzie, and Stephen Zoepf
NBER Working Paper No. 22776 October 2016

ABSTRACT Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African Americansounding names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding names. Male passengers requesting a ride in low-density areas were more than three times as likely to have their trip canceled when they used a African American-sounding name than when they used a white-sounding name. We also find evidence that drivers took female passengers for longer, more expensive, rides in Boston. We observe that removing names from trip booking may alleviate the immediate problem but could introduce other pathways for unequal treatment of passengers.

Yanbo Ge University of Washington Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering yanboge@uw.edu
Christopher R. Knittel MIT Sloan School of Management 100 Main Street, E62-513 Cambridge, MA 02142 and NBER knittel@mit.edu
Don MacKenzie University of Washington Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering dwhm@uw.edu
Stephen Zoepf Stanford University Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) szoepf@stanford.edu
************

See these posts for a related problem of peer to peer discrimination faced by Airbnb:

Airbnb consider market design changes to reduce discrimination

Airbnb and racial discrimination by hosts

Classified ads as a marketplace for sex

Here's a story about a classified ad sex site whose publishers were recently arrested, in a case that pits freedom of the press against accusations of making a market for illegal prostitution, and very illegal trafficking in children. The case may extend the criminal definition of illegal pimping to the owners of a newspaper that no one seems to dispute is used to advertise prostitution, among consenting adults and possibly also by nonconsenting adults and children.

Digital Pimps or Fearless Publishers?
The owners of Village Voice Media gamed the online classified business with Backpage.com and made millions. But when it became a breeding ground for child rape, the publishers became something else: defendants.  by Kate Knibbs

"Backpage is the most prominent online destination for on-demand paid sex in the United States, and according to the arrest warrant for Ferrer and others, it made nearly 99 percent of its over $50 million revenue in California from January 2013 to March 2015 from charging for erotic classified ads. It is, in essence, an escort advertising network nestled in a Craigslist knockoff.
...
"“Backpage and its executives purposefully and unlawfully designed Backpage to be the world’s top online brothel,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement in October. Her office had brought the charges against the men in the middle of what would turn out to be her successful campaign for U.S. Senate.

"Backpage general counsel Liz McDougall called the arrests an “election year stunt.”

"Whether or not it was designed to be a brothel, and whether its owners are neutral web hosts attacked for political gain or nefarious pimps adept at skating the law, is what the court must decide.

...

"The executives at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) were also gratified.

The nonprofit views Backpage as so tightly tied to the sale of children for rape that the website is now the first place it searches for children reported missing. In a 2016 amicus brief, the organization outlined the ways in which it believes that Backpage has been deliberately optimized to keep the child trafficking industry going, including having relaxed posting rules for escort ads while requiring other sellers to provide valid telephone numbers. It also describes a case in which one child was “sold for sex more than 50 times on backpage.com beginning when she was 12 years old.” The organization has worked on more than 420 cases in which children were trafficked through Backpage.

“I don’t know that anyone really believes that there’s a way, with a website offering those services, to completely eliminate [the sex trade],” Staca Shehan, the executive director of the NCMEC’s Case Analysis Division, told me. “But there’s a lot to be done to reduce the likelihood, to reduce this website as a target to buy and sell children for sex.”

The relationship between Backpage and NCMEC was originally cooperative, but Shehan says it soured in 2013, when the center decided the site’s crackdown attempts were theater. She said that Backpage would voluntarily report that it took down one advertisement for a minor, but that her researchers would discover the same image of the child in many other posts that remained online and untouched. This infuriates Shehan. “Why would you report one, and not all the other ones that your website is hosting? Why wouldn’t you remove that ad if you suspect that a child is being sold for sex and block the individual user?” she said.

In March, the Senate voted unanimously to hold Ferrer in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for a separate investigation into Backpage’s activities — the first contempt authorization in more than 20 years. This investigation paints Backpage as a deliberately sinister operation, claiming that the company edits advertisements to make them look less like sex trafficking. “Our investigation showed that Backpage ‘edits’ advertisements before posting them, by removing certain words, phrases, or images. For instance, they might remove a word or image that makes clear that sexual services are being offered for money. And then they would post this ‘sanitized’ version of the ad,” Senator Rob Portman said in a statement. “In other words, Backpage’s editing procedures, far from being an effective anti-trafficking measure, only served to sanitize the ads of illegal content to an outside viewer.”

While lawmakers like Portman see Backpage as a demonic helpmate for rapists and abusive pimps, the website has a reputation as a valuable safety tool within some sex worker communities.

Consenting, adult sex workers often praise Backpage for helping minimize the risks of their job. Sex worker advocacy groups have condemned the prosecution of Ferrer, Lacey, and Larkin. In San Francisco, sex workers and supporters gathered to protest the Backpage arrests. “This culmination of a three-year investigation by the California government is a shocking waste of resources for a political stunt that leaves sex workers and trafficking victims stigmatized, isolated, and more vulnerable to violence,” the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project said in a statement condemning Ferrer’s arrest.

The phantoms of other shuttered and beleaguered sex ad sites worry sex workers who view digital classifieds as instrumental to their safety. RedBook, a long-running Bay Area hub for sex work ads, was shut down after an investigation by the IRS and FBI in 2014. “Authorities say the San Francisco–based website, which primarily served California and Nevada, facilitated prostitution and had to fall. Sex workers say the site provided a meager safeguard against predators, pimps, and cops,” the Sacramento News & Review wrote. “When it disappeared, the most at-risk workers — those of limited means and greatest need — were displaced to the streets.”

...

"While lurid and sad, the arrest report for Ferrer, Lacey, and Larkin has another striking feature: None of the incidents recounted involved the men arranging for or paying for sex, nor did they involve the participation of the men authorities describe as “pimps.” There is no mention of “pimping” in the traditional sense, the act of controlling sex workers, or arranging meet-ups, or taking a cut of their income. The men were arrested as pimps simply by dint of owning and operating a website where other people pimped, even though Backpage’s disclaimer instructs users to report underage trafficking and illegal activity.

The arrest warrant describes how a California Department of Justice agent personally called Ferrer to alert him of an illegal ad. Upending expectations, the warrant notes that the CEO promised to promptly remove this ad — and then kept his word and promptly removed it. So it isn’t that the website lacks moderation; the allegation is that Backpage’s moderation isn’t sufficient enough, and that insufficiency is tantamount to the act of pimping.

It is an unusual stretch of the definition of a very old crime. By arresting Backpage’s current and former executives, Harris was sending a message: If the definition of pimping hadn’t yet changed, she was trying to change it."

HT: Scott Cunningham