accounting
squints eyes not sure if typo or not
Also opened instead of operated, so likely autocorrect.
That and who can afford the apps nowadays? Not me.
I’ve paid for a few to see if it helps - It does and I feel like it was worth it up until 2 years ago when they changed how matching works. But you know what doesn’t work, people telling the truth on their profile.
Are they? All my friends in their 30s have more than one app. Or had it, when they were single.
What has really been dying for quite some time is "third spaces". That's what we need to get back really, beyond dating. Just plain socializing and enjoying togetherness.
Aldo, users (and bot operators masquerading a users) have gamed the algorithms to the point at which they're even more useless than they were when they started.
The more people use them, the less they work. That's kind of the whole model right?
They are inherently all flawed because they keep you away from the single only reliable way to date: growing your social circle.
Even if you match someone, that's a single date where you may or may not continue to see each other. Whereas if you spend all that time and effort hanging out with your friends, getting to know people that are in your and their orbits, you are growing your social circle exponentially and exposing yourself to far more dating opportunities while looking like you're not even trying. And even if it doesn't work, you are still making being single more fun for yourself by having a rich social life.
Just spend that time reconnecting with old friends, hanging out with people from work or joining some club or class. That's how to be successful dating. Specifically by not "dating". To me dating is something that just happens naturally, you don't need to go looking for it. Just be ready when the opportunity arises. Learn to spot them. Its a social skill like any.
But isnt that dangerous in that there are peoole who dont want to date but rather they simply want to make friends and spend time with friends but if you reveal your romantic relationship feelings for these people thatll potentially ruin that platonic relationship you two have?
Yep, so you don't do that. I've never seen anyone confess their feelings and not get met with rejection. What can you expect if you put someone on the spot?
Flirting is about ambiguity and plausible deniability, because you are giving yourself and them ways out of the situation if the vibes don't match.
But the problem with flirting is that you may be dealing with a complete idiot like me who cannot read signals and youll end ip leaving that oerson in the dark forever aboitbwhat you really feel, or you may send signals to anither party who doesnt want to spoin your friendship, and thirdly it can lead to people eventually shutting down away from all forms of reltionships bith platonic and romantic.
Like you can look up the dozens of stories of where a person , Person A was flirting with another person , Person B, and Person B was completely obliviois to what the hell Person A was doing.
One of my favorite stories was one where a lady would ALWAYS invite the same guy to her college dorm room so they could 'study' together. After few months of 'studying' tigether (he would always focus solely on studying when she was typically thinking about ither things... ) she said 'Lets play a game' . Basically the 'game' was that they both take off ALL ctheir clothes as fast as possiblr and hide under her blanket. They played this game for months and months ...and.... he still didnt pick up on the hint. It wasnt until long after they were both married and divorced to other people that she finally revealed to him what she felt about him. He said he felt the same way about her but he didnt have the coirage to say anything to her. See? Now they both lost out on a relstionship that may not have ended in divorce as their previous relationships had.... all because they both didnt have the courage to say anything to each other. And knowing myself? I would also be unable to pick up on a signal like this.
TTheres also a second problem with flirting is that men tend to be so lack of social and ohysical intimacy thst they see ALL positivity and vulnerability shown to them as flirting when in truth the person who is being kind and touchy towarrds them simoly wants to be a kind and huggy friend. ANd there is nothing wrong with being a kind and huggy friend. Humans NEED vulnerability . Humans NEED physical intimacy to relieve our touch starvations. Ive read like a dozen stories of both men and women, but mostly women, who have stopped showing their male friends physical intimacy and vulnerableness or who have stopped naking male friends completely because the males interpret it as flirting . And Im a male and I can agree that if someone showed me ANY kindness I would interpret it as flirting too.
And thirdly , people who have repeatedly misinterpreted kindness , physical intimacy and vulnerability as flirting also have a third problem where eventually they just start ignoring ALL signals because theyre so scared to misinterpret anything. People like this can become so lonely that its like theyre living in solitary confinement
In my opinion sending mixed signals is toxic and should be done away with forever
If yoy feel some type of way about a person ? You must tell them directly or NEVER give them any mixed signalsat all. And if you do tell them you you must do it with full with confidence BUT you have to have two parts to your plan before you tell them: First part of the plan is that you have to have an 'escape plan' to cut your relationship with that person or their associates if you feel thst your romantic feelings for this person will interfere with you platonic relationship with them or their associates , second aprt of the plan is ofcourse to tell them and be confident with wjo you are and with accepting rejection. Ive come to realization that mixed signals is a way of a person telling 'HELL NO' because if you arent confident enough in yourself to admit that you want to date me or you want to accept my request to date you?.... Why would I want to date you? A person who is confused about their love for me is confised about who they are as a person. That relationship also goes the other way . End of story. I was reading that article from 'No Nonsense Sel-Defence' and thy came to this conclusion... and theyre right!
"Capitalism is what ensures that monopolies have existed before and will continue to exist. And nobody wants to do a damned thing about it! News from 200 years ago."
it’s not because there isn’t a desperate need. it’s that they are predatory and make a hard thing fucking impossible, and have a vested interest in making it impossible and charging for the solution, but not a good enough solution to invalidate needing to keep using it.
I of of the opinion that these sites commoditize women. They take in profiles, they curate and hoard them. They know that men will pay to get access to them, so they put the best "opportunities" behind their paywall. If you don't pay, you can see them, but have low chances of getting their attention. I presume the same happens to both sides, but regardless of how they operate, they don't want you to find someone. They don't make money if you find someone and quit using the app.
They manipulate a population that is hooked on convenience and pretend to offer the same thing. Be a lazy turd and find a hot woman from your sofa. That isn't realistic, but that's the pitch. Nobody starts dating thinking "hmm, I want the chunky person who has no other hobbies than swiping on their phone while Netflix plays in the background". If these apps were at all helpful, they'd tell you to put on some pants, get off the sofa and develop some appealing interests (no, "hiking" isn't one of them because you don't actually do it).
Good fucking riddance if this is at all true.
There's also all the investment in making using the app addictive with all the little dopamine hits of finding something that might be good every so often at random. So when you do meet someone and you're bored during the commercials in the from you're watching, what app would give you a little dopamine hit, yes it's your favourite dating app, run by the same one company as all the other dating apps.
It's fascinating how different women's experiences with these stupid things are than men's...
How so?
I'm a man who originally met women on these apps, but after a certain point everybody seemed to be a bot and the app seemed to be completely gamified, even when I used paid apps. Other people might have different experiences.
From what I understand, women are deluged with mobs of low-effort fuck boys and men are mostly ignored, which creates a feedback loop where men swipe on anything just for the hope of a match, which only makes things worse.
It's really fascinating from a systems perspective. But it used to be better before enshittification, in my limited experience. The reality is that quickly finding a new partner you are ideally matched with is the very last thing these companies want you to do.
One of my friends, who is a woman, once showed me her dating app to show me why she found it so exhausting. I tell you, I'm ashamed of my fellow males. She got so many cheap messages from horny guys, to the point where she found the app useless.
For me, last time I used a dating app, I found it very hard to strike up a meaningful conversation with my matches. It was like I had to carry the whole conversation and they took forever to respond. So in that retrospect, it might be why some guys don't put in much effort when contacting women. But most of the massages my friend showed me, where absolutely just mouth breathing horny guys.
My last runthrough with the apps, I'd carefully read everyone's profile and craft an interesting introductory message. It took quite a bit of time and was rarely rewarded with a reply, much less a conversation, much less a first date. My messages got shorter and shorter until eventually I was just mass swiping. And, just as far as a use of time goes, if all that matters is a woman likes your profile, it's more efficient to roboswipe and filter the women who match back.
Also, the emotional toll of serially declaring "I like you" and asking "do you like me?" only to be greeted by rejection after rejection is pretty devastating.
Anyway, very happy with my current girlfriend whom I randomly ran into at a store while looking for an accordion.
Gay dating apps are bad too. It’s no better with only men involved. On sniffies, for example, you get on and start texting with a cock pic. Want to have a conversation, get to know them, figure out if they are worth your time, hell, even if they are safe to be around and it’s treated as heretical. It’s just perverted goons.
Guys on these apps lobotomize themselves. They shouldn’t be breeding.
it could be worse. she could have gone on a date with one and they say something really sad like "all the women on there just want sex. I want something meaningful"
oh honey....you have been hitting up all the bots.
there is a point where most people go "this might be a scam" but there is a special few that go so far to give it a whole backstory.
Well duh, they earn money when you use their app. And you stop using the app if it does what it's supposed to. Finding the love of your life is the worst possible thing to happen for the company since they lose you as a customer
quickly finding a new partner you are ideally matched with is the very last thing these companies want you to do.
Exactly. That's the gamification. They want to keep you grinding against bots and employees, otherwise they won't make money.
EDIT:
I'll add that men are probably the customer here, and that might make women seem like the product, the company can actually swap out real women for bots and employees, making real women obsolete to the business model of dating apps.
Oh, men are definitely the customers. There was a website with a pornstar backer... Madison something or other. It was billed as a place to meet horny married women looking to have an affair--just sex, no attachment. It got hacked and, surprise surprise, it was entirely men talking to bots.
Edit:
Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, analyzed the leaked data.[46] They initially found that only roughly 12,000 (0.22%) of the 5.5 million registered female accounts were used regularly.[47][48] The vast majority of accounts had been used only once — the day they were registered. Newitz also found that many women's accounts were created from the same IP address, suggesting there were many fake accounts. They found that women checked email messages very infrequently: every one time a woman checked her email, 13,585 men checked theirs. Only 9,700 of the 5.5 million female accounts had ever replied to a message, compared to the 5.9 million men who would do the same. They concluded, "The women's accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there."[47] In a subsequent article the following week Newitz acknowledged that they had "misunderstood the evidence" in their previous article and that their conclusion that there were few females active on the site had been based on data recording "bot" activities in contacting members. Newitz confirmed that Ashley Madison had created more than 70,000 female bots to send millions of fake messages to male users. Still, they note that "we have absolutely no data recording human activity at all in the Ashley Madison database dump from Impact Team. All we can see is when fake humans contacted real ones." They noted that the site seemed to keep track of human-to-human contact but that the Impact Team had not released this data.[49]
User name checks out.
I really never found bots to be a problem. Maybe 1 of 20 matches and one gal I actually met started the chat with me saying she knows her profile looks like a bot but she is real and then asks me to meet her later this week for coffee. 😂 im not hot by any means, but she was… sadly it didn’t work out but damn good 45 days.
Mine has always been truth of person. No one seems to be who they really are on their profile.
I mean, they suck for everyone - don't get me wrong.
But being able to see them as an ego boost, or having the frustration be that you get low quality matches, as opposed to the punishing experience of "80% of the matches you get at all are catfishing bots" is very different.
Yeah it's wild.
All of my female partners have about 20 likes for every 1 that I, a male get from females.
I think I prefer to be on this side of the fence to be honest. Having more than a handful of people to chat with at once would be overwhelming.
Have you tried being 6'7"
Point A) I've tried less frequent "yes" swipes and overall match rate was about the same.
Point B) calling people "low value" sounds like disgusting incel-speech and I think we should all avoid it and embrace the different qualities and virtues we all have.
Maybe if they weren't all about making money off loneliness they might be doing a bit better.
Grindr is the ultimate gamble, hahah I was telling me wife my blocklist grows every day. I had a guy solicit me for dirty socks, didn't even want to buy them just wanted to trade one dirty sock for three clean ones... I had another guy call me an asshole for not responding to them. Not to mention the people who don't read profiles.
They just throw quarters into the machine and hope one of their bets pays off.
Everything I've watched or read online seems to indicate that dating apps suck for an overwhelming majority of people so good riddance?
What I can't figure out is what comes next. Singles events (at a bar for ex)? Meet up type events where your doing something with other single people? Friends try to set you up with someone?
I've been married for 10 plus years so I have no skin in the game but it's an interesting topic to me.
I've been married for a long time too and we met on the greatest dating website of all time: Craigslist Personals.
You entered your gender, age, a written segment, and an optional photo. No algorithm, no matching. Everything written was searchable and published via RSS. All communication went through email. No app, no subscription, and the only ads were sex workers.
In the context of this article, it forced the user to engage by reading people's blurbs instead of just swiping for brain chemicals like Candy Crush. You felt like you were talking the other humans and the website was just where you went to meet them.
If such a site were recreated today, users would want to run the RSS feed through a slop rejection filter.
Craigslist casual encounters was wild. IYKYK
It was what Tinder always advertised itself as but never quite became 😂
lol I loved reading them, never replied to any.
Yeah Craigslist seem way more organic than any of today's apps.
Oof, approaching in public is stressssful. Interest based clubs/meetups seems like a solid strategy to me.
Absolutely agree! Unfortunately for myself, I live in a medium size city that doesn’t seem to have much of anything going on. About the only interest based activities available that I am not interested in is volunteering at the animal shelter. I don’t think my heart can handle that and I’d end up with 10 more cats lol
Well good luck!
Nah to many dicks
From my social circle at least college seems to be by far the most popular place where couples met eachother. Nearly every couple we knew in college is still together almost a decade later. It's followed by Hinge, but we only know two couples who met there. We also know two couples who met on discord, so that's also definitely a good option if you're already into some hobby which isn't heavily dominated by one gender.
I've personally had luck with dating subreddits like r4r.
I'm too introverted for irl dating so it was the only remaining option for me.
Found my current girlfriend there and I couldn't be any happier.
Nice!
My strategy is that I gave up on dating. I don't have time for it. Dating apps were the only thing that made sense for me and I haven't been on those in years. Years ago 90% of women's profiles were scammers or OF models. I can't imagine what it's like now. I've already been married, divorced, and have kids. I make decent money, but how am I even supposed to be able to afford to date with pricing for everything being insane? I wouldn't be surprised to find out a lot of people are just not bothering trying and focusing on the rest of life.
Yeah dating can be a hassle and if someone is ok with being single then why not? There's not as much social pressunre to be in relationships as in the past.
I did the same thing, moved to the other end of the country and just focused on myself for a while. Two jobs and a move to the south east and go figure I'm now married again despite swearing it off. I met her at a shitty job. Have a blast being single and doing all the things you forgot you liked.
I wonder why someone downvoted your comment.
Yeah, if I were suddenly single again, I'd be like, eh, I'm good. I know a few single women, so who knows there, but beyond that I'd just be like, yeaahhhhhh I'm just gonna keep living.
One of life's mysteries. Maybe not having an interest in continuing to date for time and financial reasons is controversial to some.
Dating apps never really served their purpose. They killed themselves.
Disagreed. OkCupid worked until Match Group destroyed it.
"Destruction of OkCupid as an attack against its liberal-skewed user base"
https://lemmy.world/post/24108120
Glad I finally am in a position where I'm not on the apps (knock on wood, etc). I was getting dates but I could always tell it was in spite of their best efforts.
And even the person I'm with now, I feel like the app algorithm thought we'd be like an 80%. On paper it doesn't seem like it'd be a long term fit- i have a cat, she has a dog. I like a lot of metal, she likes jam bands. Lot of room for the algorithm to predict we'd have a few dates and then it wouldn't work out.
And as someone else said, most of them are owned by Match group. Even the myths of capitalism require competition for products to be good. Match should be broken up.
This was Hinge, which is owned by Match Group (who own okcupid and many others). It's the least bad, I found, but that is extremely faint praise.
I used to use OKCupid way back. It used to be better. I'm pretty sure you could search. Like you could just type in "Star Trek" or "Dark Souls" and find people who had that on their profile. Nowadays you just take what the algorithm gives you.
Yes, there was search, and lots of other machinery to benefit users.
"Destruction of OkCupid as an attack against its liberal-skewed user base"
https://lemmy.world/post/24108120
I married my wife the year before tinder was first created. I've watched other friends struggle with the apps. I personally experienced it after we briefly experimented with an open relationship. It's a fucking nightmare out there.
briefly experimented with an open relationship.
Was it a mutual idea or did one of you suggest it? What were the reasons for stopping it?
Was it a mutual idea or did one of you suggest it?
Mutual
What were the reasons for stopping it?
Jealousy.
That's nice to hear, thank you. I got married right before Tinder and was jealous of how much easier it seemed. Now reading these comments/article, the easy was the problem.
On paper it doesn’t seem like it’d be a long term fit- i have a cat, she has a dog. I like a lot of metal, she likes jam bands. Lot of room for the algorithm to predict we’d have a few dates and then it wouldn’t work out.
It's almost as if those preferences are not really significant in long-term relationship outcomes.
My wife and I differ on a large number of preferences, but we align in a few that are the most important to us. If were were a 100% match on superficial characteristics, that'd be boring. We've been married a very long time.
Dating algorithms are fundamentally unsound because many (most?) preferences are non-commensurate, so weighted scores are impossible to derive from pairs of them. There is no tradeoff of dog vs cat relative to metal vs shoegaze, and people and (and often do) enjoy both dogs and cats or metal and shoegaze. There's no useful information to be found in how people self-report their scores on unrelated false dichotomies. It's just shit experimental design.
I don't know. I think some things are important. Someone who loves live music and goes to see something a few nights a week would probably be happier with someone else who, all other things equal, had a similar interest. If you're looking to pair people up in ways that won't work long term, because you're a company of ghouls looking to make money, then matching the music lover with the music disliker is better for your business. With enough data points, you can probably make some confident predictions.
Hinge also isn't making you pick from dichotomies. You enter free text for most of it, and pick as many from a list as you like for others.
HOW is this Possible? All dating Apps do is make it IMPOSSIBLE to Find a Real Person! How is that NOT a Winning Strategy in the "Find a Real Person" Industry?
I used dating apps on and off for the best part of 10 years when I was single I never got a single meaningful match. They simply do not work.
The system only works with competition, but as we stopped enforcing anti trust and anti competitive laws in any meaningful way, the same company owns most of the sites, and is in a shittrust with the rest to all maximize revenue instead of competing.
they've lost a customer data source
You do have to use them correctly. I know a lot of people who use them irresponsibly, who don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand how the experience is going to be different(and therefore manage their emotional expectations*), and who match with way too many people for basically nothing while denying others over trivial things.
*You should be very into people and they should be into you, but how crushes develop from online dates is simply fundamentally different. You will likely not get the same “oh my god who is that?!” moment from someone you’ve already spoken to and who you know already wanted to go on a date with you.
You have to follow rules 1 and 2.
It's so uncommon to see good news these days.
I’ve paid for a few to see if it helps - It does and I feel like it was worth it up until 2 years ago when they changed how matching works. But you know what doesn’t work, people telling the truth on their profile. So great, I had better matches or in my case on bumble, better choice for matches based on who liked me. But damn if Jeni from the town next door loved “hiking” when really she just loved watching tv and one day wanted to “be more active”. She also told me she wanted to move to Spain one day… guess who also wanted to move to Europe ( Spain, wherever) - me! But I got the job and she’s pulling the “well not yet!!!” and in the end just wanted to visit and knew I have money to do this. P.s. I live in Spain now.
Each profile is a crafted (and truth bending) aspect of your life for others to review and I hate how it doesn’t capture the truth of who you really are in person. I went in being honest and found women who liked the same, but yet they were never really who they were on the app. I found my best matches when I wasn’t truthful or bent the truth a tad but yet I never stayed together long.
Best girlfriend so far, met her organically on the beach because my dog went over to say hi by licking her face. She’s a bit over the top, has tattoos everywhere including a funny phrase on her ass, but she’s the most compatible woman I’ve met so far.
Is the phrase
Live, Laugh, Love
Written in comic sans
Nah.. Papyrus
So uh…this funny phrase tatoo…pics or it ain't real, internet rules 😂🤣.
Heh, I’ll ask for a pic but I expect her to dump me for it. But hey, internet points!! 😂
Good
why? didnt find anyone? Ive had great success tbh - married, 2 kids not sure if its just luck or incidental or what
They've gotten worse by the year. If you're married and have 2 kids, you probably were on them long enough ago that it was quite different. You might also be conventionally attractive.
I've been single a couple of times in my life and some of those times I created a Tinder (and/or Bumble, OKCupid) account.
First time must've been about 8-9 years ago now after I got broken up with. Got an okay amount of matches, tons of interesting conversations. Met a few people IRL. Found a girlfriend after about half a year, ended up not being very compatible, broke up, made another Tinder account. 3-4 years on Tinder, getting fewer matches by the year. Increasingly few interesting conversations, met maybe 4-5 people IRL over that time (some of whom I'm still friends with). Ended up meeting the person who would become my baby mama and ex-wife. After I divorced her, created a new Tinder account and... near-zero matches. I saw TONS of bots. Like super obvious bots, all the same-ish profile archetypes (my favourite one being random letters for name with a weird blurry photo of a red building, saw hundreds of those). Half a year and two dates with one woman later, I just... deleted it and embraced being single. An average looking woman makes an account and in a few hours they have 99+ likes (where it stops showing the exact amount). Not quite happening for me or any men I know.
I'm not super attractive, kinda average looking face and a bit overweight, but I'm quite strongly built and masculine which some women seem to find, I dare say, irresistible, but many do not. But I've never (in my adult life - middle school was different) had problems holding a conversation with a woman, I've always had creative bios and decent photos compared to many I've been shown from other guys' profiles. My ability to get matches on Tinder, Bumble, whatever, has gone down over the years, whereas I feel off those apps I'm better than ever? I've joked that I have the exact same thing with jobs and women: Once I get to the interview, I'm in, but getting there rarely happens.
And like... it's not just the quantity of matches that went down. Quality too. By match quality I don't mean "I matched shit people", that would be quite arrogant of me to say. I mean I used to match more people with whom I felt I had things in general. People with whom a conversation would just flow until 5 AM. That just stopped happening over time.
Oh and you get fewer swipes than ever, no longer get any free superlikes on a free plan (you get 5 a week on gold I think, used to get few on free...), etc. The gold plan is like 20€ a month which I got as a bonus through my Revolut plan and... they still keep upselling you on both a more expensive sub, and consumable boosts.
Most other apps belong to the same company and seem to have degraded similarly - but none of them are used much here anyway, there's 100x fewer people on Bumble and OKCupid would just show me people from other countries only.
TL;DR: Used to get more matches. Used to match people who I'd actually enjoy talking to (and vice versa). App itself is trying to upsell you more and more while you get about as much on paid plans now as you did on free plans back in the day.
They were a silly concept to begin with. If they worked well, they'd kill their own business model. To stay economically viable they therefore have to use all kinds of tricks and produce mixed-at-best results, and cognitive manipulation to keep their user base entertained. Glad to see them finally collapse
I never really believed that montra of if they were successful they lose a customer. I met my wife on a dating site over 13 years ago and told everyone I knew about it and how good it was. Many of the people that I told tried the site. It's a great way to spread your business if anything then through natural word of.mouth you actually kinda weed out people who are looking for the wrong things. Unfortunately the one I used ok cupid was bought by the big conglomerate and they change it so it was just like all the others. The other place I see it working is if governments offered the service because they want people to be matched up. I get people might not trust the government to match them up but why would you trust a company to do it then.
That's BS, the population is literally aging into a new market evey year, but they want to nickel and dime to the point of exploitation their existing base ruining the reputation of the entire industry in the process.
I think, it's a myth that matchmaking has to be bad to survive. We see that in gaming all the time. The problem is just that physical world matchmaking is optimized to get recurrent customers instead of finding good matches. And that inevitably tanks the reputation. The first dating platform with good matchmaking will be the last one standing because it will suck the competition dry.
There is a market for good matchmaking. It's just not as big as the imagined market for bad matchmaking (which we see now isn't actually that big once people realize that the service sucks).
Also there are still “for real” matchmaking services — for marriage — in plenty of cultures. This is a pretty normal way for folks to get married in many countries. If these apps had gone for being “the digital version of that” instead of algorithmic enshittification, maybe it would be a different story
Or arguably it's the issue with running then as an unregulated business to begin with. It'd almost be better if it was just run as a public/non-profit database service: here's an anonymised, clinical, filterable list of other people who are looking for a relationship, and a safe way to connect with them. Like all other online services it'd be killed off by bots, trolls, and creeps, but still... If it's in the public's general interest for people to be in relationships?
Let me filter the bots, trolls, and creeps myself. I don't need a rent-seeking middleman for that.
(My wife's pickup line was trolling the shower curtains in my photo)
I am currently developing one and what I can see is the following:
- people get treated like cash cows. It is almost not possible to successfully date without spending money
- people are burned out. The low quality swiping, matching, just to get ghosted, is hurting the motivation.
- people have other problems nowadays. COVID reshaped us completely. We don’t want to spend 2h a day on a dating app. 2h a week max and then they want to continue in real life.
Those are pain points introduced by big corpos (e.g. Match.com) and the fact, that they have launched their apps before COVID.
I have addressed those pain points.
I worked customer service for match for almost a decade, so I can give you a few pointers.
People leave when they're the only ones in an area. So giving them something to do is important to retain people. The best idea I've ever saw was having a forum where people can discuss any topic. I think Match also tested public chatrooms and streams, but i didn't really dealt with those. You'll have to deal with forum drama and moderation, but some people will be very engaged.
Speaking of, moderation will take lots of time and effort. People sick. Make sure that moderation tools are as robust as the matching ones.
I think those are the general ones. Best of luck!
Thanks a lot for sharing. I have a Community Manager background and also was a moderator at Jaumo. Having a place to engage can be fun, but I am not fully sure yet if people really want to do that, when they just want to date. I have to think about it and maybe I will add something as an optional feature.
One of the things I am doing is launching with a wait list, so that an area can populate first, before opening the gates. This avoids the problem of feeling alone.
Dating apps are scams. Either a scammer in Hyderabad is conning you or a scammer in a boardroom is selling your data and forcing invasive ads on you. Did you discover some other way of funding your project aside from the ads or making people pay for sex but pretending it’s classier when an app does it?
Good point. Men usually get contacted by a lot of “gold diggers” and content creators. Women often are targets from scammers or crypto bros.
Scammers can be avoided by using a mandated verification process. But here I don’t rely on a third party service, as privacy is a really important topic for me. I wouldn’t want users to be forced to upload sensitive data to Persona for example. This is why I have developed a small verification service, that applies some algorithms that have been working quite well according to the research papers. It will not be impossible to catch all scammers, but if 95% are cought, that’s already a big win. As for the other problem with people just trying to sell content, a working reporting system should help. The reporting systems of the current apps are majorly flawed, punishing legit people while protecting scammers. The reason is also gender based. The more women a dating app has, the more men are attracted, so women tend to get extra protection. That hurts the whole community.
As for the funding, this is such a difficult topic. The system costs money, so I need to get a bit of money back. I didn’t want any of the “pay to win” features. I also don’t want ads, not even sponsored content. As a video gamer, I tried then to figure out why free games such as Warframe or Path of Exile were earning so much money. It comes down to two things people are willing to pay for: Cosmetics and time-savers. So that’s what I now implemented. Decorate your profile with paid cosmetics. I don’t know how to implement the time-savers yet, so for now it is just cosmetics and an optional “buy me a beer” donation I offer.
It’s not just women being targeted. My roommate got conned for dick pics. He’s not very intelligent so he believed the scammer was going to send his nudes to friends and family. I had to explain to him it’s a scam and if he wants the guy to go away, take the power away. Let him send whatever he wants.
This situation isn’t uncommon. There are plenty of other people being conned on these things. It’s such a problem that most people who contact you on these apps are scammers so you are just wasting time feeding them. It’s more depressing than just staying single.
As long as the data is centralized it will be abusable too, especially in 2026. You could go decentralized to reduce costs and lighten the load, but that has its own risks for abuse and criminal activity.
The web is retracting.
Oh that scam happened to me personally, too. It is not just annoying, it is damaging people.
There is no option to go decentralized, as I have no incentive for others to spend computing power. Decentralized services are ideal for communication and I have also developed a fully peer-to-peer, end to end encrypted Discord alternative. I just didn’t want to release it yet, until someone verified the security layer. Other than that, I kinda need to have everything centralized to foster the community and to set the rules for that community.
As I am not investor backed and also don’t want to be, I focus on releasing in very specific locations at first to create revenue with small investments. It takes a bit longer, but the growth is more stable and more organic.
Not sure if you’re open to collaboration on the app: I was thinking of making one with a few novel takes.
Fun fact: I worked with a guy at IBM who wrote some of the original algorithms for Match.com back in the day.
I was thinking about how I’d like to work on projects like these. Collaboration can be very fun and engaging. For this app, I am basically done already, so the next step is to verify if the features work with real people. If it turns out to be a success, I will come back to you and will open the doors happily, as two brains are always better than one.
Wicked. If you need a tester let me know. I’m familiar with TestFlight, too.
I’ve started planning a mobile OS and a handful of other apps, FOSS primarily. Worked in the industry for about 12 years doing devops/sys eng/ and some software dev. Collaboration can be the secret sauce sometimes.
GL regardless. I love seeing fresh takes on an otherwise saturated and greedy industry.
I recommend you take a look at Breeze. It is a dating app in the Netherlands (and expanding).
When you match, you get a date planner (after paying for the date). No chatting allowed. A real date or nothing. That is the premise. You pay per date, and you get your money back if the date is cancelled or they don't show up. So the app earns money from sending people on real dates. People that don't show up or cancel dates are penalized by the algorithn and they loose badges on their profile. This is good for Breeze, who wants people to go on dates, and good for the users, who want to go on dates.
Chatting is allowed a couple of hours before the date, but this is not intended for conversations, only for practical purposes.
As a result, profiles also matter much more. For both sides. You litterally need to sell yourself, because if someone swippes on you, they may need to pay 10 euro for the date if you also swipe on them.
You also get only a handful of profiles each day. Which makes sense, because you can limit the number of concurrent matches/dates, hence the app is better off distributing the matches, rather than piling them onto the 10% hotest accounts.
This also means you can't spend more than 15 to 30 minutes a day going over 5 tot 10 profiles.
Meanwhile, the app can provide free accounts, where people only need to pay for actual dates, hence the entry barier is lower than Tinder, where men won't get seen without paying. Meaning it is easy to get a userbase going.
I suspect the hard part is the logistics of setting up the dates. A spot in a bar or coffee place needs to be organized for each date. If that is no option, the users are asked to choose a meeting spot (talking to eachother via an intermediate person.
You've missed the big one. Those aren't people.
They are AI fronts for orgs of various size that will scam you for whatever opportunity they may discover.
You can't fix that. Try developing something that helps people instead of another platform to use them.
You want to help people meet? Open a bar.
US bars suck too as a way of meeting people. Too ritualized, too fake, often too noisy to have a conversation or the whole thing is set up to be a meat market.
Pubs in the UK are better, but it's a slower game.
I suspect you'll have one big pain point to address that most apps other than the few big ones struggle with: The network effect. How do you get enough people on your app that it's worth it for people to get on your app?
Suspect you need either a really visible feature you can advertise ("we're not enshittified" alone isn't necessarily enough to sway people), or a ton of advertising budget.
I toyed with the idea of building an app myself, wanted to build something similar to what OKCupid used to be, where you could optionally answer questions about yourself and calculate compatibility based on those. Building an actually good algorithm to find you people you'd most likely truly like seemed interesting. Then I realized I don't have the time to see it through as a project to the point I'd get a truly active userbase and I'd have to run it at a loss for at least a few years so I can't quit my other work. Hope you do better, match.com truly needs some competition.
I met my wife on a dating app, but it was over 20 years ago now. I suspect that like everything they all have evolved to capture your eyeballs as much as possible. Back when I used them, they were about meeting people, they hadn’t yet gamified them with the swipes and so forth.
So, not surprised, a little sad to hear it even, since I can’t imagine being a young person and trying to meet new people these days. Then again, as an aspiring Luddite these days, I hope people find a way to connect in real life.
20 years ago internet was a whole different place anyway. You'd set up a useful website as a hobby, it'd be monetized with either ads or a subscription if it was truly game changing, but it wouldn't be invasive, if it makes you a living that's great, if it doesn't then you still have a day job. They were hobby projects. Now all the easy niches are filled already, you need to put a lot more effort into building something that people would want to use. That costs money. You start off by amassing costs, meaning you either sink a ton of your own money or investor funds into it. Now you truly do have to 'acquire users at any cost' and then monetize the shit out of them.
I met my spouse over 10 years ago on a dating site, but now I believe they’ve all been bought up by one or two companies and have become completely enshittified. Dating sites would work if there were a Craigslist of dating sites.
Agreed, this is pretty much what they were back when I used them. This was well before tinder or whatever the big one that disrupted the industry is/was.
Funny enough, despite me being extremely happily married for over 18 years now, I still cannot get my damned email off their spam lists. I’ve abandoned that address so I don’t much care, but they really don’t seem confident in their matches apparently :)
Some ~8-9 years ago when I first used Tinder, that was already quite gamified, much worse than what you describe. They had a subscription for infinite swiping and no ads, clearly aimed at men because there are fewer women and they find matches more easily.
A year ago, it was much, much worse already. You'd see as many bots as real women, and that's in a small country - go to NYC and bots probably outweigh real women tenfold. Fewer and fewer swipes. You don't get shown to women outside of your "elo" range (which isn't a number you actually see, but everyone has an assigned "value" it seems), even though they get shown to you - no real point in swiping much of the time.
I hope people find a way to connect in real life.
If you have access to third places where people are open to meeting new people, that's indeed the best way. I'm lucky enough not to live in a super car-centric city in the US or anything like that. Some people don't have that going for them :/
in essence its just to get men to keep swiping, and become the "product/data" to be sold. thats why its dying.
Hard to argue this isn't a good thing, given how they've driven young people apart on purpose for profit.
Good. Dating apps have never worked for me, and maybe this is because I'm demisexual, but I'm just never able to feel a connection online and I end up swiping left on everyone, and I'm pan so that's a lot of people.
website has a persistent AI chatbot overlay, btw
easy avoid, for me
As they should for good!
From my own experience: dating apps all suck. Everything is staged, way too focused on visuals instead of inner values, etc. People get so lost in their and other peoples' appearance. Furthermore, the profit incentive makes the platform milk desperate users. Don't ever pay for otherwise free apps. They use you. Give you hope just as your subscription runs out, etc.
What I can personally recommend: dating subreddits like r4r. Reddit, I know, but the community on Lemmy is too small. You can meet people at your own speed and there is no profit incentive that ruins the platform for users. The algorithm treats all users more or less fairly, too.
Lemmy is too small? Can't know til you try, we got any dating communities here?
No idea how to link communities here but l4l is basically a direct r4r port. Unfortunately it basically doesn't have active users
I remember using MyYearBook back when it was called that (I think it was changed to something like MeetMe or whatever, last I heard), and had a fair bit of fun on that site when I was younger. It was chaotic, super broken, was kind of like a really bloated MySpace, and what really made it fun is that they incorporated a whole plethora of mini-games to match with people in fun ways.
It kind of seems like a lot of platforms now days, both for dating, as well as games want to restrict communications, if that makes any sense? Like in a lot of online games, you might not even be able to open a text chat, and can only communicate through pre-defined gestures. And dating sites seem to want to put abstractions like swiping and questionnaires before any dialogues take place. And maybe for good reason.
There's just a kind of fun in things like the classic chatrooms that I miss I guess. Just make your profile, do some shitposting until people start dropping ASL's into your DM's, and go from there.
Chatroom style ones like Discord can still work okay except for the part where you gotta use Discord.
Even the gay ones?!
Grindr is exclusively ads and bots in most places and has been for a long time. Sniffies is okay but the ads are getting overwhelming so I don’t even bother anymore.
can we stop sharing this same demonstrably false shite 🤦♀️ it's been thoroughly debunked at this point
Ain't just a river in Egypt, honey.
And yet people are in denial about it being a hoax.
It's always "oh Grindr went down in the city where the RNC held an event". Why do people think Grindr has servers for each city and not a proper load balancing setup agnostic of the users locations?
Much more likely that cell towers get overwhelmed in that area. Or that they pull Grindr down in general. But the claim that always gets made is that they bring it down in the exact city where the convention happens lol
I met my now ex and best friend on tinder as it was starting to go to shit. I'm not exactly ready to start dating again but when I do briefly browse on the apps I can't find anyone who meets my values and I find a lot of people who I can tell are completely fake accounts. As soon as I turned 18 I signed up for all the big dating apps and they weren't great back then but I was able to make some genuine connections with people. now it feels mostly like a dead internet with majority of users not being real people.
Honestly, I hope the birth rates go down with them too.
Why make children you will never love?
Demons.
How does any of this impact the likelihood of loving their kids?
The Boomers shit on their own kids futures. So the less people date, the less likely to make children, the less likely those children are to be victims of their bad choices.
Boomers?
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All of them being opened by a single money grubbing company, which has enshitified them to an accounting degree has not helped
save