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I've been thinking a lot of this too and my plan is completely different. The main problem is profit. We need to eliminate the for-profit dating apps. In a perf

I've been thinking a lot of this too and my plan is completely different. The main problem is profit. We need to eliminate the for-profit dating apps. In a perfect world there would be a state run dating platform that would focus on equity. But in lieu of that I figure we should make it selfhosted. - Publicly ran platform reminiscent of fediverse - External profile verification so each node admin can host their own, I'm from Europe so the idea here is to use eID. - Money should only be in the form of donations to the node admin, just like fediverse. - Node admins can decide whether to invite only or let everyone in, users can decide whether to filter certain nodes, or verified profiles for example. The goal would be that everyone real has a verified profile and a node admin that keeps bots out with their CoC and sign-up rules. Optimally this should be done ontop of the existing fediverse, to save on runtime costs and leverage the existing profiles. But seriously, online dating needs to be completely refactored. I've personally given up on it completely and decided to just talk to people IRL. In spite of having had 2 fairly good relationships started through "the apps".

hkt 2y ago
Self hosting and federation might be a poor substitute for a cooperative approach: daters are natural stakeholders in the platform, so should be allowed to run it democratically, as per other dating apps. This removes the technological barriers to both use and implementation and allows for a pretty simple service that can focus on what it will inevitably need instead of being bogged down with voluntarism and distributed protocols, namely, growth of user base. From a software perspective, this does already exist, somewhat: https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa
- INTPenis 2y ago
  But how are end users stakeholders? It's a nice thought but at the end of the day the platform will use a lot of resources. Regardless of where the resources are, compute, storage, bandwidth. Who's paying for it? Do you mean end users being stakeholders in the style of IPFS? It just becomes too complicated to make all end users such stakeholders tied to the operation of the service. That's why I look towards the fediverse model where competent end users can host nodes that hundreds of other end users can use. End users still become stakeholders by donating to the node admin. And yes I know all about the pitfalls of this method, I hosted a fediverse node since 2017. For better and for worse I think it's the best model with the lowest barrier of entry and most realistic chance of being implemented today.
  - hkt 2y ago
    When referring to a stakeholder in a cooperative, customarily one means anyone who qualifies for membership. Users would simply have votes for board members and be able to propose and vote on motions at regular meetings. Board members choose a chief exec, and below that level it operates like a regular company. In cooperative businesses, the members own the enterprise and control it via representative democratic practices. They pay to become and remain members, not unlike today's subscription models. If you consider the federated social media model, there is still centralisation in the development of the reference implementation which is pretty hard to remove. This remains the case in mastodon, for instance. In a cooperative model, you lean in to the centralisation and what you gain is democratic oversight.

hkt 2y ago

Self hosting and federation might be a poor substitute for a cooperative approach: daters are natural stakeholders in the platform, so should be allowed to run it democratically, as per other dating apps. This removes the technological barriers to both use and implementation and allows for a pretty simple service that can focus on what it will inevitably need instead of being bogged down with voluntarism and distributed protocols, namely, growth of user base. From a software perspective, this does already exist, somewhat: https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa

INTPenis 2y ago
But how are end users stakeholders? It's a nice thought but at the end of the day the platform will use a lot of resources. Regardless of where the resources are, compute, storage, bandwidth. Who's paying for it? Do you mean end users being stakeholders in the style of IPFS? It just becomes too complicated to make all end users such stakeholders tied to the operation of the service. That's why I look towards the fediverse model where competent end users can host nodes that hundreds of other end users can use. End users still become stakeholders by donating to the node admin. And yes I know all about the pitfalls of this method, I hosted a fediverse node since 2017. For better and for worse I think it's the best model with the lowest barrier of entry and most realistic chance of being implemented today.
- hkt 2y ago
  When referring to a stakeholder in a cooperative, customarily one means anyone who qualifies for membership. Users would simply have votes for board members and be able to propose and vote on motions at regular meetings. Board members choose a chief exec, and below that level it operates like a regular company. In cooperative businesses, the members own the enterprise and control it via representative democratic practices. They pay to become and remain members, not unlike today's subscription models. If you consider the federated social media model, there is still centralisation in the development of the reference implementation which is pretty hard to remove. This remains the case in mastodon, for instance. In a cooperative model, you lean in to the centralisation and what you gain is democratic oversight.