“Likes” have always been anonymized for non-paying users. You’re right that this shift will cause more notifications, but they made other changes to messaging

“Likes” have always been anonymized for non-paying users. You’re right that this shift will cause more notifications, but they made other changes to messaging that I think make the service better for its popular users (mostly women). The way it works now is that a message you send to someone who hasn’t liked you back appears on your profile page (if they they view it) instead of their inbox. In addition, I believe once you’ve sent a message, that user’s profile is hidden from you unless they choose to respond. So for the receiving user, they don’t have to take any action to pass on a mountain of “sup girl”s, and their inbox will only contain the people they’re actively messaging. I don’t know if there’s an indicator that someone has sent you a message which you can see from the profile thumbnails, but if there is it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s for paying users only. They could have skipped the “like” requirement and just implemented the other messaging changes, but I think it’s a pretty good balance of free vs paid features overall.