19 ms·

The dating app paradox

• wappieslurkz 3y ago
  More emphasis on breaking the taboo around open relationships and polyamory would benefit dating platforms immensely.
• pgsandstrom 3y ago
  I have a somewhat unrealistic dream that someday dating apps will be viewed the same way as roads: Essential infrastructure that needs to be handled by the public. A government developed dating app whose only goal is to help people find healthy relationships. All my american friends balk at this. But as a swede, I dont think it is completely impossible. The completely impossible dream would be that we as a society stopped using dating apps and just met away from the keyboard instead.
  • quickslowdown 3y ago
    I think it's less insane to trust the Swedish government to implement something like this responsibily than the US government. As a US citizen, absolutely no thank you to a government dating app, it's too ripe with temptation for them to be overreaching and irresponsible with the data they collect.
    • dylan604 3y ago
      Where's the conspiracy theories that it would be pairing families and connections more than personalities?
      • runamuck 3y ago
        See my comment above.
    • dotcoma 3y ago
      I own NSAdates.com — any takers? ;)
      • suoduandao3 3y ago
        no such agency or no strings attached? ;)
        • dotcoma 3y ago
          Good one(s)!
      • qup 3y ago
        This is the ultimate business. You don't have to even host profiles, these guys can "background check" each other. It'll just be a just of names. Err...aliases.
  • maxsilver 3y ago
    > All my american friends balk at this. But as a swede, I dont think it is completely impossible. (as an American, balking at this): The American government is too irresponsible and corrupt to ever handle something like this -- it would get abused so quickly, and thus, no regular person would trust it. Having a single dating app/profile as a free public service is a good idea in theory, but the pre-requisite of having a "functioning, selfless, responsible government, invested only in the public good" is just not a thing we're gonna get here.
    • alistairSH 3y ago
      And yet the government mostly does what we ask of it. USPS gets mail to the most remote locations for the price of a stamp. State and the military both protect our interests overseas (for better or worse). Healthcare.gov works pretty well (after that rocky rollout). It's far from perfect, but I don't feel like it's any more dysfunctional than any other western democracy.
      • mattmaroon 3y ago
        It’s less dysfunctional than most organizations 1/10th its size.
        • red-iron-pine 3y ago
          having worked at, or consulted at, several F500 orgs... I believe it. most could be politely described as "basket cases" or "cluster hugs" (hugs being the operative word). but they had so much inertia and so many assets that were effective on ground they couldn't be stopped. anything outside of core business drivers were a mess, but they could still make in rain in their core competencies. the level of corruption was also shocking. CTOs packing the PMO and Procurement teams to approve contracts, including 400k consulting fees to a company, only a few months old, and owned 100% by the CTOs wife. Sales Engineers offering "acquisition fees" for going with their SaaS offering. People fighting to get to be the gatekeepers for new RFPs so they could milk the baksheesh.
  • adrianN 3y ago
    China might implement something like this. The opportunities for subtle eugenics with such an app…
  • runamuck 3y ago
    The Government could also match people based on a political agenda. I don't know why they would do that, but the idea fascinates me. Any creative types want to spin this into a "Black Mirror" script?
    • Yizahi 3y ago
      Match the similar view or opposite views? :)
      • runamuck 3y ago
        Good point. So, if the "Team Edward" party wants to dilute the "Team Jacob" party, they could match "Team Jacob" with attractive "Team Edward" companions who will raise their kids "Team Edward."
    • commandlinefan 3y ago
      And every pretty girl _somehow_ ends up matching with an employee of governmentdatingservice.com.
  • essenddotnet 3y ago
    Given their precipitous fall in TFR, certain Japanese prefectures have actually started taking this approach, most notably Tokyo [1]. I don't think your dream is _all that_ unrealistic [1] https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/tokyo-government-to-release-official-dating-app https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/tokyo-gov...
  • wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    Haha this sounds like the plot for a dystopian futuristic government where based on data they automatically select the right mate for you. But joking aside. Not everything should be solved by the government, dating is supposed to be messy, unpredictable and a bit dangerous. We are humans not machines.
  • tivert 3y ago
    > I have a somewhat unrealistic dream that someday dating apps will be viewed the same way as roads: Essential infrastructure that needs to be handled by the public. Honestly, if the government gets involved, I hope it just kills the whole category with fire and bans them all, so we can stop with this atomized, app-mediated bullshit. Match Group's shareholders will be very sad, and I will be happy to play them a tune on the world's smallest violin. But capitalism doesn't optimize for good outcomes, it optimizes for the shittiest thing that can be monetized that people will just barely tolerate. It also will use the power of propaganda to drown out and destroy any non-market competitors, so we feel we have to use that shitty thing.
  • sevagh 3y ago
    Government arranged marriages.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • carlosjobim 3y ago
    > A government developed dating app And there it is! I think I have never ever seen an article posted on HN without somebody in the comment advocating for a government takeover. Even for dating apps now! If you examine official policy of the Soviet Union, not even Lenin was _that_ communist. Tomorrow's article on HN: "How to make my three year old eat his vegetables?" In the comments: "The government should mandate that he eats his vegetables!"
    • quickslowdown 3y ago
      Calm down there, friendo, nobody's saying the government should take over dating. What everyone here is talking about is an alternative to the current match.com-owned, for-profit state of affairs. A public option without a profit motive. It doesn't hurt to have that alongside competition, for those who would want to use it. I personally would not use a service like that, but some governments could be sane enough to implement it as a service to the public.
  • randomdata 3y ago
    The government here maintains a job database, which is basically the same thing. In practice, people still go to the for-profit job sites. Unless other dating apps are outlawed, it's unlikely the government brings a value proposition to see users use it over the alternatives. > whose only goal is to help people find healthy relationships. Especially if this is what is designed around. I expect you will find that most people using dating apps aren't looking for healthy relationships – they could have found hundreds of those just walking down the street – but are trying to find something else.
  • sumuyuda 3y ago
    There are other options to private capitalism than the government. Could be a non-profit/NGO/worker owned collective. Maybe these types on organizations could provide a better product/experience, as they aren’t orientated around maximizing the profit.
    • aidenn0 3y ago
      I've seriously considered starting a non-profit that runs a site that works like one of the pre- match.com acquisition dating sites. I suspect 99% of costs will be combating spam profiles, which really isn't how I want to spend my time though.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • almatabata 3y ago
    Before we go this route I would like to see what real competition looks like. They should break up the Match group and force those dating apps to actually really compete for users. I would love to know if new apps would maintain these tactics if they remain outside the Match group.
  • komadori 3y ago
    Singapore has something akin to a state-run dating agency since 1984: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Development_Network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Development_Network
• lionheart997 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • lbotos 3y ago
    I mean, you know you are gonna get downvoted here which is why you clearly chose a throwaway. Your main thrust that dating does require courage is true, but that courage could be as straight forward as asking someone you met on an online dating app: I'm scared of getting herpes, would you mind taking a test before we had sex/kissed? I've done this many times. No herpes yet. Some people have said no. Their loss. So -- hopefully you can read this comment and reflect on your jadedness. Courage yes. Jadedness, no.
    • throwstds 3y ago
      I took prep once. I'm so scared of STDs and HIV. Yes I am even gonna ask my partner for health report. Hope VR comes to rescue us soon. LoL
    • pc86 3y ago
      1. I love it when people reply to these types of comments earnestly, in part because I think the rest of us well-adjusted people can have good conversations here. 2. I can't imagine the mindset of being with someone who wants to have sex with you and all you have to do is take a test, but not being willing to do that.
  • runamuck 3y ago
    You can get an STI from anyone.
    • Madmallard 3y ago
      My worst STI experience was with someone who was in a friend group that I became a part of. They were also quite attractive to me, so it felt like a complete homerun. That was a tough lesson to my early 20s self.
      • 3y ago
• jitl 3y ago
  Quote from the article: > Call it the dating app paradox: dating apps are supposed to be matching lovebirds together, but once they do, the lovebirds fly away — and take their money with them. I wonder if Feeld, Bloom, etc in the ethical non monogamy / polyamorous dating landscape will escape “enshittification” because their happiest users (who find good matches) stick around looking for more friends.
  • bigjimmyjohnson 3y ago
    The idea is solid. I meet most of my partners in real life just out and about, and only used online apps for very specific kinky stuff (which has caused me to get banned from regular dating apps lol). I still lament the loss of craigslist, so I installed Feeld. However, Feeld is fucking terrible. One of the worst apps I've ever used in my life. The design is good in theory, you can swipe through profiles without having to make a decision, then go back and say yes or no to partners at your leisure. You can list pretty much whatever you want in your profile as long as you keep the public pictures PG13 to keep the app store gods happy. You can pay for more matches or to send pings (extra notifications that people can see without matching you), or pay a fee to see everyone who has ever matched with you. The business model is super straightforward, no deception there. But it is honestly the buggiest app I have ever used in my life. I would get a message notification and I would have to restart the app each time to view a message. I thought maybe it was just my cheap-ish Android phone, but I confirmed with my friend who uses a more expensive iPhone that the same thing happens for him. He could barely get it to work as well. We are both tech professionals. They also never seem to address key complaints in design. To keep it hacker news safe, let's say you are interested in spanking. You can list "spanking" in your interests area, but there is nothing to indicate if you want to spank someone else, be spanked, or both. I think they are clearly coasting on the lack of competition in the space, and after a major update it got even worse. I decided I would no longer use it because I don't want to meet people with such low quality standards for software, because what else might they have low standards for in life?
  • derbOac 3y ago
    That was sort of my reaction to the article too, like the assumption that "your users want to pair up such as to stop using your app" is an obviously incorrect assumption in many cases. It also occurred to me that there's also an obvious expansion, which is into couples relationship and sex coaching/therapy/tools. I did some data analysis work with an app company with a lot of parallels to dating apps, and they kind of went that way: they figured out the needs of their users after their initial app was "done" and then offered another app, or expanded app to cover their subsequent needs. They actually did this twice very successfully, by branching out after a major stage of user need, that was the focus of the existing app, had been reached. These dating companies could easily turn into relationship coaching or therapy or relationship tool apps. There's plenty of possibilities.
• throwstds 3y ago
  [flagged]
• thereddaikon 3y ago
  Yes dating apps have a fundamental contradiction and enshitification is inevitable. But what struck me the most was how amateurish this article was. Citing tiktok users. Overusing phrases. Poor pacing. Its another example of the enshitification of journalism.
  • Michelangelo11 3y ago
    I agree -- plus, the author used a smiley as part of a sentence at one point. And this is NPR, no less.
    • PedroBatista 3y ago
      Where do you think some of those colleague kids end up? But also let's no get too hung up on this. I'm sure your grandparents/parents generation cannot understand why don't you wear a suit to work.
      • kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        It used to be normal to have experienced editors enforce professional standards.
• ronald_raygun 3y ago
  Two points on this. 1. I'd say about half my romantic partners have come from apps, and the other half from in person (meeting at parties, through friends, etc). TBH I'm not sure one has been consistently better than another. Sure meeting someone in person for five minutes tells you a lot about potential compatibility in ways that texting via app doesn't. However, how someone constructs their data profile tells you a lot about how they see themselves, which you might not get from meeting someone casually. Empirically, I wouldn't say the outcomes from one source have been consistently better. 2. I really don't think 'enshittification' is unique to dating apps. Look at the internet. Like, recipe sites now all tell you about how special this soup was to the author's grandma and how treasured her childhood memories are of it ... because you spend more time on the site and they can show you more ads. More search results are just low quality SEOd blogs and what not. Tons of software is moving to a service model, because they can get sweet MRR from you, and make more money in the long run. Food, social media, games, etc are all getting engineered to become more addicting. Like this is neo-liberalism.
• lawlessone 3y ago
  Algos deciding what i read. Algos deciding what i watch Algos deciding what i buy what news i see. What jobs i apply to. If i get hired. Who i date.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• _fat_santa 3y ago
  The "enshitification" of dating apps is long overdue, in fact I'd say it's one of the easiest to predict. "Enshitification" almost follows a formula: take any app that does not have a direct path to revenue, add investor cash, watch the enshitification as the apps founders try to please investors. Dating apps here have an additional issue which is you are guaranteed to have users "fall off", either a user finds someone and drops off or the user get frustrated and drops off, one of these outcomes is basically guaranteed for a dating app. And this is just my opinion but I feel like unlike other apps, users are more resistant to paying for dating apps because it makes you look like a looser and dating is is inherently viewed as something that should be "free" (at least the meeting aspect) I guess my question is what did investors really expect?
• Madmallard 3y ago
  Dating apps for most people seem like a complete waste of time and actually detrimental to your life. There are exceptions, of course, like people much too busy. As a male, it seems guaranteed (probably due to supply vs demand disparity?) that you will only have matches that are significantly less attractive than you. I think most people will consider me average in looks. I don't think I've ever matched with a girl that was average on online dating in the 5 years I tried it. I also got professional photo help and put a lot of effort into it etc. As another commenter mentioned, more than half the women I met up with also had an STI. There has been some research done on the attraction thing, and it has been shown that if women don't know you, they are exceedingly likely to rate men as mostly ugly. If they do know you, however, their ratings are more of a bell curve. So if you want the most attractive possible match (for you), and have the best chance at someone you have the most chemistry with, I think you have to just meet a lot of women in person and get to know them first. It is unfortunate because people are seemingly less social nowadays? So it is kind of a problem that makes itself worse.
  • badcppdev 3y ago
    You matched with and met multiple women so the apps seem to be working as designed. You seem to have an idea of your attractiveness which doesn't match the measurably evidence and yet you discard that evidence. Why? I get the impression that attractiveness is very important to you. Ironically I think that might be a very unattractive trait.
    • Madmallard 3y ago
      Your reply is not particularly astute nor is it charitable. (1) Perhaps I have also dated not through online dating, where it completely aligns with what I'm saying? (2) Caring that someone is sexually appealing to you... a red flag? (3) Yes I would agree that shallowness is unattractive, as anyone would. However, bringing up a point specifically relevant to online dating apps and implying that it may be specifically relevant to online dating apps does not necessarily mean that is my entire mentality. If I met up with multiple women knowing I said what I said, perhaps it would not be such a logical leap to assume maybe that attractiveness does not matter to me as much as you seem to think it does?
• garciasn 3y ago
  Originally responding to a flagged comment that stated you were weak for not talking to people in person: You’re not wrong, but the in-person dating pool is small and the stakes are high. I am very recently divorced, dating single for the first time in nearly 25 years after finding my wife stole $300K from the family and had been carrying on an affair for 18 months while I thought our finances and love were at an all time high. Dating apps at 45 are a literal fucking cesspool. Like any online community, there are norms and nuances which are incredibly difficult to come up to speed on and, frankly, are miserable to navigate. That said, finding those who are open to in-person dating interactions is almost impossible these days. We’re missing The Third Place and folks have been trained to use apps to date and thus are unlikely to engage in person. That said, I was super fortunate to find a beautiful single woman in my apartment building who was not only receptive but has been a really great friend and person to “date” in the traditional sense as I knew it 25 years ago. But, I was incredibly fortunate and I’m not sure it’ll work long term; putting me right back into the dating apps potentially. Where not wanting to parent additional kids (my own or someone else’s), eventual marriage, or even something super serious or super casual is attractive to me. I am not in a place where sex after 1 to 3 dates is something I desire. Nor am I interested in having super deep emotional conversations or thoughts about some sort of future together before I meet someone. That said, to poo poo dating apps is a Luddite view of the world. They do work and people are using them. We have regressed as a social society in the last 25 years and these apps offer a wide dating pool for people to explore without The Third Place or the uncomfortable experience of navigating these waters in person and potentially the offensive and negative experiences in-person interactions can create. Best of luck to everyone out there. I hope you find what you’re looking for and the pains and anxiety that come from either method.
  • circlefavshape 3y ago
    > after finding my wife stole $300K from the family and had been carrying on an affair for 18 months while I thought our finances and love were at an all time high Yikes. Were there, in retrospect, signs that you missed?
    • garciasn 3y ago
• michaelt 3y ago
  If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend creating an account on your dating app of choice with the opposite gender. The experiences are as different as night and day - and the different user groups have completely different requirements of the product. The article is interesting, but IMHO they've really missed the key asymmetries that make good dating apps so hard to build.
  • ravenstine 3y ago
    Better yet, do some experiments outside of just gender. Make an account for a dog. Or be a guy who's a total douchebag. You may not like what you find. EDIT: Seems people here don't like what I have to say or think I'm kidding. I haven't done the dog experiment myself, though I've seen it done a few times by others. It's quite the realization when a dog gets more attention than you do as a human on a dating app. Yeah, it's different, but it may not feel that way if all you want is for just one person to not dismiss you that day. However, I have done the experiment of pretending to be a stereotypical douchebag on dating apps, and that was especially enlightening. By douchebag, I mean that type of guy who shows his abs in mirror shots, wears a baseball cap sideways, and sends dick pics (I didn't actually do that part, but I'm illustrating a character here). Turns out that if all you want to do is get laid by attractive young women, then this is the guy you want to be. Many women in my locality are looking specifically for a good time with him. Just show pics of you in front of a white pickup truck, type in all lowercase, say you've spent time in jail, and that all you care about is sex.
    • renjimen 3y ago
      > Many women in my locality are looking specifically for a good time with him. Attention != success.
      • ravenstine 3y ago
        For some men, such an experience would be the closest thing to success they've seen in quite some time.
• hnthrowaway6543 3y ago
  > And that creates a problem for the sellers of used cars that are actually good. These sellers are like, "What the heck?! I KNOW my car isn't a lemon! It's worth way more than what you're willing to pay!" And so they refuse to sell their used car and exit the market. The result is a market where lemons become more prevalent. Lots of truth to this. These days, dating apps seem to be exclusively for the desperate, horny, and desperately horny; as the article says, the younger generation doesn't even use them. Even if you're just a "normal" person not in that top ~20% of attractiveness/desirability, and have no chance of matching with those top 20%, that top 20% still needs to use your app. Otherwise, everyone else using it starts thinking that the app is made for the undesirable. Nobody wants to think of themselves as undesirable! And everyone wants to swipe right on a 10/10 girl or guy and hope they somehow get lucky. When the only attractive people left on your platform are OnlyFans advertisement bots, your dating app is pretty much fucked, no matter how many genuine 6/10 romance-seekers you have.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• solatic 3y ago
  It's only a paradox until you realize that dating apps would shoot themselves in the foot with such a user-hostile model, trashing their brand. Hanlon's Razor directs us to the simpler explanation, which is that 90% of people on dating markets stay on dating markets; for which there are many, many highly personalized reasons. No dating app can fix its users' mindsets. There are three rules on dating apps, and they haven't changed in the last couple of decades: be attractive, don't be unattractive, and inject humor. The fourth rule is to remember that if you want to be treated like a customer then make sure you pay for the product rather than being the product; the fifth rule is to have patience over things outside of your control.
  • pc86 3y ago
    I found my wife on Hinge in a suburban-bordering-rural part of the country (so not a lot of people on the apps in absolute terms) right before its acquisition and actually had better success broadly speaking on Bumble. The trick was, unfortunately, to pay for it. Have super likes or whatever they're called. Pay for the membership to see people who like me without having to swipe. Pay to boost my profile so more people see it and potentially like it. The worst part (for me), actually spend time curating photos and writing thoughtful answers to things - the former being much more important than the latter. Even with all of this I'd hit nights where I had seemingly swiped one way or the other on every eligible bachelorette within 100 miles. Maybe I had. Unfortunately I don't have any reproducible or generalizable advice from meeting my wife. She was my only match on Hinge, neither of us paid for it, and we moved to phone conversation and dates within 48 hours.
  • 015a 3y ago
    I really like this take, and I think it becomes extremely self-evident once you think about it for a bit, and talk with people who use dating apps IRL. "Dating apps are incentivized to keep people going on mediocre first dates" is such a tired take that would require such incredible sophistication and secrecy to pull off, "we can't make the matches too shitty, but we also can't make them too good, damn it Jim that match was too high quality! now they'll stop paying!" its comic book villain stuff that cannot possibly explain why all of these apps suck. "For which there are many highly personalized reasons" -> Look, yes people are responsible for their own mindsets. But in the words of a recent tweet (I wish I could cite but I can't find it) concerning learning comprehension tanking in K-12 students: Its Phones! Its just phones. Its obviously phones! You hear this crap like "well, its a highly complicated situation with many variables and possible explanations" Nope! Its literally just phones! Dating is hard, weird, and scary. Its one of the most vulnerable things humans do. We're putting kids on a dopamine treadmill from childhood, and we're surprised that, at best, we've got cohorts of individuals growing up who love the matching but stop when it gets any more difficult than a swipe?
• trashface 3y ago
  A couple years ago, post pandemic, I tried these apps for the first time in my life (mid forties), and I had the what is apparently the typical hetero male experience of no matches. It wasn't bad dates or ghosting or catfishing all that stuff you read about. Just no dates, no chats even. Gave up after a few months and deleted them, I doubt I'll ever go back on there. Its perhaps controversial, but I definitely didn't "lead with my wallet" on my profile. And maybe for an average guy that is the only viable strategy, but of course that is selecting for a particular type of relationship.
  • nvarsj 3y ago
    The way these apps work, you pretty much have to pay as a guy. It's like a club where women get in free. The algorithms will derank you very fast unless you're a 10/10 male, and you will basically get no matches from then on. Most guys who are successful on dating apps are paying for it.
    • baobabKoodaa 3y ago
      If you're not paying for the product, you...
    • shiroiushi 3y ago
      That hasn't been my experience at all, and I definitely don't think I'm a 10/10. I've had absolutely no trouble getting dates. (This does not mean that all the dates were great, or led anywhere BTW; the vast majority were nice enough people but there was no interest on one side or the other.) When I see posts like this, I really wonder if men like you just don't know how to write a decent profile intro/bio and post some good photos. I think there are definitely certain things that make a dating profile more attractive, and many people aren't good at it. You might want to ask some female friends to evaluate your profile.
      • arvinsim 3y ago
        > hen I see posts like this, I really wonder if men like you just don't know how to write a decent profile intro/bio and post some good photos. I think there are definitely certain things that make a dating profile more attractive, and many people aren't good at it. But that itself is a filter, no? Not everyone have interesting lives to fill a good bio nor attractive enough to have some attractive photos.
• blendo 3y ago
  For a straight male, you’ll see a surprisingly large number of fake profiles. Anecdotally, women seem to report this too. (Reddit has MANY such posts!) So identity verification is a real problem. As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, in the belief that it’s the “best” way to ensure a real human is behind the sign-in, more-so than email/pwd, or even Facebook or Google sign-ins. Except maybe ID.me as used by the IRS and the VA?
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, This way you can also avoid the poor Android users and clear them off the gene pool. /s
    • rwoerz 3y ago
      No, with other dating apps around you just spawn a speciation.
    • Rebelgecko 3y ago
      If I had a dollar for every "green bubble" comment I got when I started texting someone from a dating app, I'd almost be able to to buy an iPhone
      • Meekro 3y ago
        Wait, so this is a thing in the real world? I thought it was just people on Twitter being dumb. Like, prospective dates are judging you on your brand of phone? Maybe I'm just too old now (mid-30's) but I don't even know what kind of phone most of my friends and acquaintances have.
        • Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
          YES. It is ABSOLUTELY A THING. I personally haven't dealt with it, but I personally know people who have. They tend to skew younger, and it's a big deal in middle/high schools. Kids will actually bully other kids just because they have an Android. It's pathetic that Apple marketing has worked so well at convincing people that they're the luxury product.
• leach 3y ago
  Dating apps by and far are quite useless. If you ever want to know how insidious they are, just download one, finish your profile, and swipe for 10 minutes a week. Since you are not an "active user" they will give you the most attractive people to swipe on. Every couple of days they will give you a "limited time" discount on gold or platinum or whatever. The push notifications are my favorite part, "you could be missing out on the love of your life!!!". Not to mention the interactions with the UI are littered with casino like visuals. The whole purpose of the app is to get you addicted and spending time and money on it. It's much easier to naturally meet people in real life through work/school. If you can't there, go hang out at coffee shops or bookstores or something and just hang. Strike up conversation with people, just live. You'll get rejected and some people will be rude but it's all real. You could also always pick up hobbies and meet people there. Just be social, don't spend time and money on these machines of misery.
  • Qem 3y ago
    > It's much easier to naturally meet people in real life through work/school. It was. Nowadays people including the office in their dating pool face a high risk of harassment claims.
    • itronitron 3y ago
      I think the mindset should be that whoever you initially meet, or hang out with, won't be a match but may potentially introduce you to a person with whom you could match. So all coworkers then are excluded from the dating pool, but are potential matchmakers.
    • jstarfish 3y ago
      I investigate these complaints for a living. Please don't date anybody you work with. We'll both be happier for it. The fun always starts after a breakup and the other party doesn't want to see you at work anymore. There is usually no penalty for falsely reporting anyone to HR for harassment "in good faith," and there are likely anti-retaliation policies protecting malicious claimants from punishment for "misrepresentation" of any situation. Your side of the story will be recorded for the sake of appearance, and ignored. The system is completely broken. If you're sure they're your soul mate, changing departments is not enough, leave now, on your own terms. You do not want a common HR department acting as a mediator for your domestic disputes. You're asking to be made unemployed and homeless.
• janalsncm 3y ago
  An actually good date is worth potentially hundreds of dollars. I’m surprised there isn’t an app which meets this need. Yes there is “The League” but even that is just a more exclusive Tinder. No, make a matchmaker app for high paying customers that uses human curation. $500 for 3 dates.
  • glimshe 3y ago
    eHarmony, where I met my spouse, used to be like this in the 2000s. $249 for 3 months of access, they chose the dates for you (after filling out an extensive, 1-hour questionnaire) and you could NOT search. It was a digital version of a very old school, professional matchmaker. I remember getting an average of 1 match per week (no date guaranteed from a match, it just afforded you the possibility of communication, both sides had to agree to it after reviewing the traditional writeup and pics).
    • unsignedint 3y ago
      After dedicating an hour to completing eHarmony's extensive questionnaire, I was unexpectedly informed that there were no matches available for me, resulting in my inability to join their service. While initially disheartening, I appreciate eHarmony's honesty and their decision not to charge me the $249 membership fee given the lack of potential matches. This transparency is commendable, although the experience ultimately led me to discontinue my pursuit of online dating altogether.
      • sctb 3y ago
        I'm sorry to hear that; of course it would've been be disheartening! If you're interested in sharing, I'm curious if you speculated at the time why that might have been the case (e.g. where you live, unique interests, etc.), and how you went about things after that experience.
        • unsignedint 3y ago
          My ethnic background, despite not imposing significant restrictions on my preferences, may have influenced the outcome. Additionally, my friend pointed out that my atheistic/agnostic stance could have further narrowed my potential pool of matches, possibly eliminating up to half of the available candidates.
• 65 3y ago
  I bet if you made dating apps paid upfront at a lower price than premium subscriptions (e.g. $10/month rather than $20/month on other apps), you'd still get a ton of users as people are willing to pay for a way to find love, and you'd get your much desired revenue. And you wouldn't have to deal as much with enshittification. The only other problem to solve is the 90/10 rule - where 90% of the women are only interested in 10% of the men.
  • dhosek 3y ago
    I worked at eHarmony in 2009 and we had a monitor in the office which showed user complaints. Apparently, the business people had A/B tested and determined that the additional revenue from ads outweighed the annoyance that users experienced (I actually asked directly about this). The other thing was the large number of people who were frustrated by the low density of users in their geographical region. Spending a lot of time with user data as a developer was kind of depressing as a significant part of their user base was divorced people who were recovering from alcoholism or drug addiction.
    • throwaway2037 3y ago
      > who were recovering from alcoholism or drug addiction How did you know this? Did people really put this in their public profile???
      • dhosek 3y ago
        People really put this in their public profiles.
  • Night_Thastus 3y ago
    Dating apps already have this problem, but a subscription really incentivizes the app to never let you find the right person. Because if you do, they lose a subscriber.
  • Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    I think you've missed the point entirely. Charging a subscription at all creates a perverse incentive to never give you a good match. As soon as you find a good match, you cancel your sub and stop paying.
• shimonabi 3y ago
  I'll never install Tinder again. 6 years ago you could actually match with real local people that you even met before, now you just get matched with Asian crypto scammers and Thai women. They scammed me out of 60€. Don't waste your money or mental health on this.
  • hombre_fatal 3y ago
    I had a wake up call with Craigslist. 15 years ago I found every apartment or sublet or room for rent through Craigslist, no problem, never had an issue. After moving back to the states last year after a decade abroad, I tried Craigslist to find an apartment and literally every single one was a scam. Times change.
• charliebwrites 3y ago
  Until dating apps explicitly measure success in terms of matches made and users deleting the app at all levels of their business, the quality of their products will suffer If a product team is incentivized to bring in revenue over creating long term relationships, then it will always make decisions that sacrifice the latter for the former Investors need to understand and accept that these business measure success in that way or find a different stock Otherwise the apps will have a slow trickle of users leaving after a slew of mediocre first dates or little to no high quality matches
  • fireflash38 3y ago
    I've kind of wondered how you would structure something to have incentives line up. Sign a contract saying you pay nothing for as long as you are actively swiping/matching/communicating, but if you stop for 1-2 months you have to pay? Rather feels bad... but maybe the 'lucky' users would be more willing to pay since they found someone? As it currently is & the article describes, current dating app revenue feels super scummy from top to bottom. Maybe even a discount/refund if you come back to the app after a month or two off :D
    • lazide 3y ago
      You might as well ask how you could make whiskey healthy. It’s not. That’s the point.
    • potatochup 3y ago
      Fine if you can assume honest users... But otherwise people would just keep the app around to not pay despite finding someone.
• sakawa 3y ago
  I'd like to bring back an article, more analytical on this paratox (the title, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating, speaks a lot), from the old and now dead OkCupid blog. Funnily, this post was deleted just after the acquisition from the Match Group in 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20100821041938/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100821041938/http://blog.okcup... Latest discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163930
  • carabiner 3y ago
    Oh man my comment on how Match group is a gambling app company is up there. I've been online dating for 20 years with pretty decent experiences as a short, ugly man, but now indeed the app/online dating situation is the worst ever. Some of this is probably due to me being older though.
    • phlipski 3y ago
      With all due respect here - "20 years of successful online dating" sounds like an oxymoron! Unless you're choosing to date and to not enter into a long term relationship?
      • carabiner 3y ago
        Yes? You can be successful (or a failure) at being single, dating, or married. There's not one universally valid approach to relationships.
      • fluidcruft 3y ago
        With all due respect, this seems like a Rorschach test? He didn't say "20 years continuously dating online"? People can date online a bit, get into a relationship for a quite a while, relationship ends, go back to online dating, etc.
        • remram 3y ago
• devit 3y ago
  Committed relationships found by judging other people's personality and looks are completely unnatural for human beings, and a result of conditioning by society. The natural state is living immersed in a place where other beings are and spontaneously interacting with them without a developed ego/personality filtering the interaction, as the closest relatives to human (chimpanzees and bonobos) do. This makes the socially-conditioned relationship model very unstable, since such a relationship will only work if, as long as and to the extent that the conditioned beliefs happen to match the other person and their beliefs. Since the conditioned beliefs are fundamentally false (because they are of the form "you will be happy if X" but happiness is actually the absence of any such belief) they are unstable and they will mutate once their falsehood is partially realized, and this process, along with viral cultural propagation, also creates many different conditioned mindsets that make matching and intimacy very challenging. So the problems with dating apps are just a very specific effect of what is the fundamental nature of human beings and reality.
  • seydor 3y ago
    the natural state is not the civilized one.
    • mensetmanusman 3y ago
      Humans are the universe, everything humans do is natural.
      • echoangle 3y ago
        Only if you assume a useless definition of natural. By your definition, everything would be natural, right? Can you give an example for something thats not natural?
        • alickz 3y ago
          Non-natural numbers?
      • BadHumans 3y ago
• not2b 3y ago
  The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to make money than actually being good would be.
  • Exoristos 3y ago
    As well as regulating them, Western governments might want to actually fund high-quality, not-for-profit dating systems of some kind. Improved health for citizens, lessened extremism, not to mention possibly boosted population growth could result.
    • drstewart 3y ago
      I'd certainly be interested in the literature you have showing nonprofit dating apps reduce extremism, whatever that means.
      • tompagenet2 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure the point being made is that people having partners helps reduce isolation which can lead to extremism in some
      • autoexec 3y ago
        I haven't looked but I suspect that people in happy loving relationships are less likely to be extremists/terrorists than unhappy people without close ties or people in their lives to check in on their mental well-being.
        • GMoromisato 3y ago
          I haven't looked either, but I think the correlation runs the other way: people likely to be extremists/terrorists have trouble forming happy, loving relationships. I guess the fact that we disagree reaffirms the parent's point that we should look to studies/research instead of assuming.
• presentation 3y ago
  My theory of dating apps is that the hurdles in front of them will largely define your experience with them. For instance Tinder in China is behind the Great Firewall and requires you knowing it exists despite it not being marketed whatsoever there, both of which create a strong selective effect on who is on the app, making it a very different experience than Tinder elsewhere despite the app itself being the same (hint: I had a great experience with it, largely well-educated global-minded people with an anti-authoritarian bent and high motivation to take dates seriously, at least when I was using it many years ago). In trying to make a dating app “easy” you create a new selective effect for who it will appeal to, which may be (but usually is not) positive.
• navane 3y ago
  What if the bad performance of the song apps, is the cause for the population decline? The natural urge for reproduction is tapped by the dating apps?
• bawolff 3y ago
  It seems like the business model is misaligned. I wonder if there could be some alternative model that aligns incentives. Maybe something like group-on where they give coupons on things to take your date to, then get kickbacks from that (more dates= more money for them)
• Biologist123 3y ago
  A doctor friend refers to them as the chlamydia apps. But still uses them frequently.
  • jstarfish 3y ago
    Lmao. My doctor has zero availability and the lines at CVS triple during spring break for the same reason.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  The inevitable consequences of that optimization. All these apps just accelerated "change" and the pool is more Pareto than ever.
• Beijinger 3y ago
  I am in discussion to start our own dating site/app with some people. Probably Non profit. But there are many arguments not to do this. If anyone interested who think he could bring value...
  • retwertett 3y ago
    I'd be interested.
• spullara 3y ago
  I always assumed that this is because dating apps are fads.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > Basically, a new app starts up, and hopeless romantics looking for real love begin flocking to it. But so do sleazy types who lie on their dating profiles. That pretty much sums up every social media site. Hasn't seemed to happen here, but I'm sure it's because of damn good moderation. A quick shufti through New, shows a lot of spammers and hypers, pushing their wares, just like they do, in LinkedIn, and StackOverflow.
• sweetro17 3y ago
  Former dating app founder here - lots of thoughts on the space - feel free to AMA High level though, there's a lot of human behavior which makes dating frustrating with or without apps. At it's core, even in the best case, dating has A LOT of rejection. Dating apps introduce more opportunity for incremental validation (you got liked!) but also incremental rejection (you got ghosted!) and the sheer number of interactions that lead to nothing is much higher and more quantifiable than IRL (you've all seen the r/tinder sankey diagrams) Two "solutions" I believe would generally benefit dating 1. Apps are more transparent and equitable with how they expose profiles to other users. Don't bias toward highly liked people to increase perceived "quality" and shadow-hide show profiles that aren't liked often (and then ask them to pay lol). Show people more randomly, to better represent the true cross section of people on the app. 2. Daters set some type of routine that works for them - say "I'll try to go on ~1 date per month". Being intentional about this helps minimize the feeling that each date is so fatalistic / it's the end of the world if the person who seemed awesome when messaging is actually a jerk. It'd be nice if an app facilitated this type of routine and figured out a feedback mechanism to reward users who were generally pleasant / respectful on their dates.
  • gnicholas 3y ago
    Why do you think apps don't do (1), if it would benefit dating? Because people would just choose to use different apps because of the perceived quality issue you mentioned? To what extent do you think the core issues are driven by the different goals of men/women, and the dynamics they create?
    • Fr0styMatt88 3y ago
      Not the OP but I think they don’t because it’s more profitable and makes a more addictive experience for the user. Think about it - an app can directly influence the amount of matches you get. Show your profile to everyone at the beginning, a fair number of matches. Not paid yet? Show their profile to fewer people, then when you think the user is about to leave, ramp up the visibility for just enough matches to keep them hooked. User just paid for the Gold tier? Increase their profile visibility… Not too much though, you want to create that dry spell so you can repeat the cycle and get them onto the Gold Plus tier. For-profit dating apps are essentially gambling apps.
• hondo77 3y ago
  > It's possible that dating apps could try to find similar solutions. Think like a Carfax for daters! Or a rating system, which is Airbnb's solution to this kind of information problem. Amazon Women on the Moon figured this out over 35 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0GFaGjKqh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0GFaGjKqh8
• carabiner 3y ago
  Chris Coyne or Christian Rudder if you're reading this, please bring back okcupid. It was the best.
• orasis 3y ago
  The problem with dating apps is that most people on there are looking for validation and dopamine hits, not actual dates. The value of the dating app for most people is the dopamine hit they receive upon getting a new connection and the expectation that when they open it again they might see someone new and interesting. Once they’ve gotten the validation of the match there is very little reason to move forward with an actual date.
  • TruthSeeking 3y ago
    I imagine that's way more true for women than men. And that's not exclusive to dating apps. Nightclubs for example are filled with scantily clad women looking for nothing more than validation, while most men in there are looking for action.
  • xyzelement 3y ago
    // Once they’ve gotten the validation of the match there is very little reason to move forward with an actual date You gotta give'em a reason!
• gumby 3y ago
  > "one-in-ten partnered adults ... met their current significant other through a dating site or app." This seems unlikely, though I suppose there's a long tail of people who met before apps were available (computer dating goes back to the 1970s at least, but I don't believe it was that common). These days I'd think the ratio would be closer to a half. I even notice it's common in the NYT wedding announcements.
• deadbabe 3y ago
  I never had a problem getting matches on dating apps, but it’s hard to not let that go to your head. Often times I feel like I’m just swiping through a catalog looking for a quick fix. For real relationships, having a strong network of friends who can introduce you to new people organically is key. Without that, you have nothing and basically must rely on dating apps. If you go out and do stuff just because you want to meet people and not actually do the activity, it is real easy to pick up on and puts people off.
• droptablemain 3y ago
  The article doesn't mention this at all but there seems to be an abundance of "content creators" on dating sites targeting men. They will chat with you for a day or so and then try to sell you their "product." It's anecdotal but this happened to me several times. You also hit a bunch of profiles that are clearly promoting similar services. I'm sure it's not great for women either, but dating apps in modern times are pretty awful for men.
  • ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    I never understood sites like onlyfans... i mean, I understand the sites and creators, but I don't understand men who pay for that. On one hand, you have normal porn... with some google-fu (well... bing-fu) and disregard for copyrights, you can find anything you want for free, but you have to jerk off by yourself. On the other side, you have prostitution, where you pay, and you get actual sex (bj, hj, pegging, whatever you're into and pay for). And then you have onlyfans... you pay... and then you have to do the deed yourself? why?!
    • hnthroaway992 3y ago
      Prostitutes are people. With their own preferences and standards. Is it truly that unbelievable to you that there's people that don't even meet hooker's standards for a client? Or that people believe that they don't meet even that standard? Then there's those that live in countries where prostitution is illegal. How does someone that's socially awkward and has no network to speak of, look for and hire someone working in a profession that's outside the law? On the other hand there's a degree of protection for both sides when the only insights to the other is just a small block of text that flashes on a screen. It's hard to be a disappointment when you're just a box that's garnered 15 seconds of paid for attention.
    • shiroiushi 3y ago
      Yeah, it's a mystery. You don't even have to disregard copyrights if you don't want to: pornhub.com and others are all free, though you have to pay for access to certain videos. But there's so much stuff on there for free, so why bother?
• TruthSeeking 3y ago
  Dating apps are a world of abundance, a buffet of sausages for women. For men they are a pit of hell, unless you're either (1) in the top 10% (2) have low standards. Here are some Tinder stats [1] - a man of average attractiveness is “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder. - the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men. Anecdotally I have never had anything remotely resembling "success" on a dating app. I almost never get matches, my messages almost never get replies, and even when I get to the point of scheduling a date, they virtually always drop off. And then even when they agree to a date, they often cancel on the day of, and on multiple occasions even block me. In real life meeting women in person, I've ever had any issues with dating. It annoys me that people speak of "dating apps" collectively without addressing the enormous discrepancy between the male and female experience on them. It's analogous to speaking about the pros and cons of something like monarchy without considering that your experience of monarchy is going to drastically depend on whether you're the king or his subjects. I don't really see a solution either. Men need to get off the apps and meet women in person, because otherwise they're fighting for the bottom of the barrel (I don't say this to put anyone down - the point is that you're going to have access to way better quality as a man if you meet people in real life). [1] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
  • shadowbanned4 3y ago
    [dead]
• napierzaza 3y ago
  [dead]
• lakomen 3y ago
  FWIW, my dating app, no ads no cost is ready to be added to Google play. I have not figured out monetization yet. Likely with ads or a "thank you donation". And I know the next step in its evolution, but I won't tell you ;) It will however try to assure it's long-term use.
• nsagent 3y ago
  Tbh, I'm surprised there aren't any federated dating sites. Not sure that will magically fix all the issues with current dating platforms, but removing the profit motive while making hosting sustainable seems like a win.
• gverrilla 3y ago
  Dating apps should be a public, free service.
• wnc3141 3y ago
  I always flirted with the idea of making a dating app that charges users a ridiculous amount like $10,000 a year, as a cynical form of manufacturing exclusivity.
• tuatoru 3y ago
  If dating apps really wanted to help people pair up, they would teach each user his or her attachment style[1]. And how to communicate across styles. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory#Attachment_styles_in_adults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory#Attachment_s...
• fennecbutt 3y ago
  Well yeah, if the app works then they don't get any money anymore. And they've gotten crazy expensive too. I find it quite frustrating because I've tried to use these apps to find people similar to myself, but it's just impossible. Now they're all going to a "slim" approach where you don't even get to have a profile, just witty quotes and pics, no likes/dislikes etc. They're clearly designed for the superficial class of people/not to find you a relationship. It's irritating as a gay furry who's not a heyyy type gay that I get a wall of tanned abs that only want to endlessly talk about Ru Paul's drag race, travelling and well...that's it. I mean damn I like travelling too, it's why I moved to Europe, but these apps would work a hell of a lot better if you can provide as much data about your interests, likes/dislikes etc as you can and have the machine match up with similar + slightly similar. Bumble is especially bad, at least gay guys don't grt their stupid "women talk first" behaviour, but we do get their idiotic design of having no real profile, just pics + "funi quote" and that's it. The market is so ready for someone to come in with something that actually works and refuses to sell out. Whoever does that would make a mint (as long as they have the willpower to stick to it/not be bought).
• lemonwaterlime 3y ago
  Not everything needs a “tech” solution. The issue is that we need more third spaces, not that we need better dating apps. People know how to pair up if they naturally see each other often in real life.
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  We are being way too generous to dating app companies here. They invented their own problems, and applied those problems to our social lives in order to turn a profit. Dating apps aren't optimized for connection. They are optimized for engagement. The most engaging dating behavior is rejection. The only utility that a dating app can provide its users is to maximize the number of interactions. Tinder explicitly limits the number of interactions (swipes) a user can perform each day. It also limits the diversity of the group that each user interacts with. By doing this, Tinder has explicitly removed all of its utility! The only thing it has left is its walled garden; so it's no surprise how anticompetitive Match has become.
• bdd8f1df777b 3y ago
  It’s strange that the dating spps company are sitting on a gold mine of user data and has done little on it. Aside from the usual way of monetizing by ads, they may sell courses on how to improve attractiveness and improve profile. Their data is more reliable than most people’s experiences or hunches, but they seldom share with the world these knowledge. I sorely needed them when I was a user of dating apps.
• Throwthrowbob 3y ago
  I found an application called Alovoa through F-Droid, but I see you don't need an phone application to use it: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.alovoa.expo/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.alovoa.expo/ https://app.alovoa.com/ https://app.alovoa.com/ https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa Apparently data privacy and open-source is a feature, and it doesn't ask for a phone number. Those I'm interested in are far away apparently, but I at least started a couple of conversations.
• MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  The monopoly needs to be broken up. You can’t be allowed to just buy up the entire market.
• naveen99 3y ago
  well you have a 100 million new people turning 18 every year.