Source
r/SwipeHelper•
Bath

weird hinge glitch (shadowban?)

So I was banned on hinge over a year ago. Earlier this year I made a new account after many failures.

It seems like a classic sign of being shadowbanned is not being able to make in-app purchases. This happened to me when I failed trying to evade my ban. It happened right away though.

I usually "try" to buy boosts to test this.

I will say this, I likely was reported last night. Maybe hinge marked my account for review or something?

Anyways, when I try to buy boosts, I get the "woops try again later" error, but roses work fine. Last night it was the same deal.

I woke up to 5 new matches but none of the likes were sent after this started happening (granted I didn't send that many since, and it hasn't been that long)

Is it possible that hinge can shadowban an account that worked fine for 11 months? I literally have almost 1000 matches

The only logical explanation is that there's something down on Hinge's end.

Posted Oct 27, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC · edited

19
RosettaMedlock•

Nothing you can do. Just do a reinstall of app clears cache.

After that get a new phone number for Hinge verification, new email and photos.

It works just great.

14
BathOP•

UPDATE: I tried sending likes to a bunch of guys to see if it would work. No matches. I think I'm shadowbanned. Gonna try contacting support but I expect this to be the end of my account. Oh well, it was a good run. Time to buy a new burner phone

1
BathOP•

UPDATE 2: Got new burner phone. This one is a lot better tbh. Mirrored all my photos and fucked around with the "liquify" tool in photoshop, and added a few new photos/videos for variance.

No error when trying to purchase things. Will update on if I get matches

1
BathOP•

got my first match. so far so good

​

I'll update if I get banned

1
actual__literature•

there is a possibility they’ll detect your photos at some point. they hash them and mirroring/cropping doesn’t bypass it: https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-at-okcupid-e98a3e74aa3a

that explains why you can’t manipulate the photos to change the hash

i did similar as you. used the same pics, worked for about 1-2 days and then i was shadowbanned again. it’s probably due to them matching the hashes

1
BathOP•

they're not the exact same pics, I used at least 3 new pics (not edited, completely new)

anyhow I'm not even sure my original account was permanently fucked I kinda hastily deleted it so we'll see.

I should mention that I've never been properly banned with these photos.

I'm not convinced the ban system is as good as they say. I've seen so many catfish accounts with the same photos. If you're going to try to argue that those accounts don't last long, Hinge sends an email when they get banned if you matched, and I hardly received any of those emails.

Also, 90% of the people who claim to be shadowbanned actually just have mediocre/subpar pictures and aren't getting likes. Unless you got the "something went wrong" error.

1
actual__literature•

if you reuse the same device, wifi, date of birth, name, , number, any of the same photos (since they hash them), etc they can catch you. they may not necessarily ban you but they can drop your ELO so low you don’t have any activity. this i believe is to prevent spam. so, technically you aren’t banned but they matched your metadata to an old account and can drop your elo so low it makes hinge unusable. sometimes it seems to take a while as i had mine get around 60 matches in three hours and then suddenly i never got a single additional match on that account after a day

1
BathOP•

ELO is irrelevant for hinge, because most of the matches I get are from me sending out likes, most girls dont match with me by swiping on me. That's what makes hinge unique (and arguably what makes it better for me) versus the other apps

Even when I wasn't shadowbanned, I only got a small handful of likes, and most of the girls were very unattractive.

ELO doesn't matter for men on Hinge because the likes aren't ranked based on ELO. it's ranked on the order that they're sent (unless you use roses).

There is no such thing as a "half" shadow ban or whatever people are claiming, it's simply just low ELO as you mentioned. But even if Hinge was theoretically tanking my ELO, it doesn't matter because as I said, the likes queue is not based on that.

1
actual__literature•

ELO is relevant for Hinge because the people shown to join are within your ELO.

Once my ELO dropped it went from showing me and endless supply of attractive women to send likes to, to only morbidly obese women and no amount of left swipes got me back to any attractive women.

You can do a work around by setting distance to <1 mile but with a low ELO it will eventually saw after a few swipes no one is around (like it does for me in a large city). Increasing by 1 mile doesn’t really make a difference, they throttle what is shown to you.

Your entire perception is off. Once you are a low ELO on hinge you’ll ONLY be shown morbidly obese people / very unattractive people to swipe on

1