This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
What they mean is that dating apps have been enshitified to the point that most of them no longer function.
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.
I am currently developing one and what I can see is the following:
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!
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.
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.
Do they have to be scams though? Why or why not?
What is the potential of a dating app that isn't a scam?
Dating apps never really served their purpose. They killed themselves.
I'm blessed to have experienced pre-algorithm tinder back in the day.
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.
Anyway, very happy with my current girlfriend whom I randomly ran into at a store while looking for an accordion.
This could be good for at least a Hallmark movie.
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.
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
I turn my profile visible for about 24 hours. As a late 30's woman, that gets me about 300 likes in a medium sized European city. (I pay for it, it's impossible to use otherwise.)
I then go into my list of likes and use filters to start left swiping based on hard cutoff criteria (wants kids, Christian, etc). That drops it down to ~100 people. I use an app that has good filters.
I then go through reading profiles and looking at who is attractive for me (pictures and bio). That leaves about 25 people. I then match with all of them at once. Usually leads to 5 or so good conversations, and a few dates. Give it a shot, repeat if necessary.
If I leave mt profile visible for more than a few days I have thousands of likes. I match with most people I see swiping. It's just not a feasible way to do it. And I'm not even attractive.
It's just a flood and it's nearly impossible to manage. It's such a broken, asymmetrical system. I hate it so much.
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.
Yeah it's wild.
All of my female partners have at 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.
Hard to argue this isn't a good thing, given how they've driven young people apart on purpose for profit.
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.
Back when I used them, they were about meeting people,
back then they didn't suck (as much) because they were still in the 'acquire users at any cost' phase.
People who find people don't pay. It's that simple. They are more about sustainable profit than actual match making.
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.
Thank God
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 point of the app isn't to get you dates, it's to get you to use the app so they can sell your data.
If you get into a relationship and delete the app, they've lost a customer.
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.
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.
