Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps
Get hardly anyone to notice me on okcupid, so I cancel my subscription, and within a day or two after it lapsed, I get 25 people interested in me, but I can’t see their profile unless I pay, so I resubscribe only to see they’re all in the Philippines and Africa. Then it’s back to getting nothing. It seems to me that okcupid baited me into buying a subscription and I fell for it. The whole service is a scam.
Had it happen to me too. They’ll refund you for this. Just be polite when asking for it.
My review on the Play Store: “Premium is a scam. Hides likes which come from all over the world (clickfarms?) even though I set my radius to 5 km. But of course they only show you the fake likes (all of them) after one pays for premium.”
Wtf was your radius set to???
OkCupid only checks the swiper’s radius, not the swipee’s. So you can set your radius to 1 mile, but you’re still going to get swiped on by the scam accounts in Singapore, and OkCupid will use that fact to lure you into buying a subscription.
An already shit thing that has been massively enshittified, “NOBODY WANTS TO DATE ANYMORE???”
As a guy, these apps suck. I’ve met a few people on them, but it’s very obvious that they are deliberately hiding matches and people that are your type behind a paywall. It’s not in their best interest to show you people that have the same interests as you, it’s better if they bundle them all up and slap a big fat price tag on the front.
People are starting to realize these apps aren’t about hooking up or making connections, they’re about squeezing desperate people looking for love into giving money for the promise of finding it.
People don’t even use these apps to actually meet people. There are much better ways to actually meet people and we all know it. They all involve getting out and interacting with human beings in meatspace. We use these apps for parasocial stimulation. We look at the faces scroll by, gaze into their eyes, and it tricks our stupid brains into thinking we are having social interactions. That’s the actual product they are selling.
I know anecdote doesn’t mean data, but I met my wife on OKCupid. We’re both asexual trans women, and the notion of finding someone so compatible like that would have been terrible had we done it in real life, locally only. She was in Boston, I was in Portland. And asexual trans women are a minority of a minority, so it would have taken forever in real life.
Then again, OK Cupid has since enshittified.
you could still find each other online and get to know each other there, and then IRL. It just wouldnt be over a dating app.
The internet is basically free, so i don’t see why we’re skipping over that one here.
Too late, already married!
I don’t think these are for parasocial interaction at all. Maybe for social media as a whole yes. But dating apps are pretty much intentionally trying to meet people. Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok sure, those are just interaction simulators. But those aren’t what we are talking about here.
I know what I said. People come up with all kinds of reasons to tell themselves why they smoke, but it’s because if the nicotine and that’s it.
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. They sell hope.
Some people do use apps successfully, but from the Sankey charts I saw on reddit, the vast majority of interactions go nowhere. On the other hand, most interactions I’ve had IRL usually lead to at least a few dates.
Wrong, I went on them to get laid. I would not use a method that didn’t work
Another thing MBAs have destroyed as they try to slightly increase profits.
Bumble is stupid. The core design of the app forces you to check it every 24 hours or less or you’ll lost people you matched with.
Seems like a feature
Yes, it’s designed to make it more addictive.
And also to help with engagement. It pushes people to communicate with people they’re interested in
I always have great conversations with girls on apps. Then when we set up a date I get ghosted the day of. The one time the date actually would have happened the girl was a LOT larger than her pics. And I have no problem with dating a bigger girl but I do have a problem with liars. Never again.
Are you sure about being ghosted? Or is the app just cutting your connection?
Same thing you described happened to me so many times I’ve lost count. Furthermore, I’ve compared profiles with some women I did met IRL and wouldn’t you know, what you see in your “profile preview” or whatever is not necessarily how anybody else gets to see you. We’ve seen profile pictures being removed or entire profile texts being wiped out, sometimes just before the first date.
Some people became aware of the enshittifaction/ gamification many years ago and resorted to putting their IG handles or phone numbers into their profiles “in case we get interrupted.” When some dating sites starting cracking down on that, too, they started putting this info into their pictures instead.
And that’s not even mentioning the bots and “controllers,” as they used to be called, whose only purpose is to extract private information from you. At least in the EU, dating apps have had to disclose their existence in the TOS for some years. They all do.
TLDR; The game is rigged beyond belief.Similar situation here. Lots of ghosting, or unmatching the day of a scheduled date. Had two dates in the last few months of using the apps. First woman was about 15 years older than her pics. Not unattractive by any means, but felt lied to from the get go. The other, let’s just say she had some work done after most recent pics, and the surgeon shouldn’t be practicing.
Maybe he was practicing on her
My wife and I met through eHarmony about 15 years ago now, and have been happily married over 10 now. Prior to meeting her I’d tried a handful of other dating apps but never had any luck. I had very similar stories about ghosting, unmatching, etc.
I have no idea if eHarmony still works the way it used to, but back when I met my wife it was fairly different from the likes of Match.com, Tinder, etc. When setting up your profile you had to answer a bunch of fairly specific questions that covered everything from if you were looking for casual dates, long term, marriage, if you have/want kid, etc. to things like activities you enjoy to how important things like family, religion, career, etc. are to you.
When they show you a potential match you get to see how they answered those questions along with a more open profile. If both of you indicate interest in communicating with each other then you’re first led through some rounds of guided communication to begin with. As I recall you would both pick 3 or 4 multiple choice questions from a list of 30 or so to ask the other person, and they would do the same. After you both answered those questions then you would do the same with more open-ended questions and so on. Only after a few rounds of that would you be able to chat/email with the other person.
What I realized while using eHarmony is that it kind of forced you to invest time & some conscious effort to communicate with potential matches. That resulted in more of them being open to proceed further. I went on dates with a few women I met on eHarmony before I met my wife.
As I said before I have no idea if eHarmony still operates this way or not. That’s how they did things 15 years ago and it could have changed a lot since then.
From what I hear 15 years ago online dating is wildly different than today.
OKCupid was a serious service 15 years ago. Now it’s borderline scam.
15 years ago the first iPhone came out. Probably related.
I had an iPhone 15 years ago so let me apply what i remember from that to solving a problem with your current phone. lol
You have to build in a nearly 10:1 cost. For every ten tentative contacts, only one is going to pan out. That’s just the cost of playing. If you don’t like it, there are better ways to meet people.
Put “NO FAT CHICKS” in your profile, I’m sure she was more disappointed to get you and would have appreciated the heads up. In fact, wear a shirt that says that and save everyone from wasting their time.
I would prefer if we treated others with respect and honesty. She lied, so there is nothing to be done
In fact, wear a shirt that says that and save everyone from wasting their time.
The chick could have just…not lied and saved everyone from wasting their time as well.
You’re are an idiot. I do date bigger girls, I do not date liars.
I don’t mind the concept of dating apps, but nearly all of the useful features are paywalled. I also wouldn’t mind paying a few bucks for a service I find useful, but the prices are outrageous.
That’s really key. They might have 10 times the subscribers if they charged a quarter as much.
Right? There’s no way it costs more money to run Tinder than Netflix, and Netflix is profitable at like $15 per month.
I would like to make my own dating app cause i apparently dont know how to date, but these apps are obviously incentivised to keep you on the app, constantly spending money to have the hope someone you like actually messages you back.
But the amount of apps that spam you going, "this person just signed up, message them right away!”
Tells you all you need to know about how they companies work.
But all that being said, i would rather buy the match group, and just fix all the existing apps they have
Unless it’s on sale, Grindr is $480 usd/y
I’ve only used is a couple of times and now I can’t remember my log in. What features are there that you can pay for? Are they actually good/necessary?
The ability to disappear from the grid, but still use the app was pretty nice. (Incognito mode)
These apps all monetize emotions. Of course they’re going to be terrible. Modern SAAS business models suck.
EaaS. Emotions as a service.
You ever hear the conspiracy theory that says the reason Cosmo gives out such shitty dating advice to women is that if they gave out good dating advice, women would be more successful in their relationships and thus not need “advice” and so would stop reading Cosmo?
Just like that. Every successful match is two fewer users, so just make sure they can’t stay away.
Good, maybe politely* asking people out in public spaces other than “the fucking bar” will become acceptable again rather than creepy.
*To clarify, I mean stuff like “I think you look cool, wanna grab some coffee?” not like “Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl.”
Aww man, throwing shade on my best lines, bruh
Lmao it seems 5 people agree with you. Sorry butthole tasters, I didn’t mean to say I don’t count myself amongst your ranks, as I most assuredly do. I only mean to say that leading with it is probably not the least creepy move one could pull in a grocery store.
probably not the least creepy move one could pull in a grocery store
So you’re saying it’s definitely not the worst, right?
Yeah it’s only pepper spray bad, and if you play your cards right security won’t put you in a leglock.
“Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl.”
🥵 I think I need a cold shower now
I’m old enough to remember life before the apps. I could never figure out how to make that work. Approaching girls was stressful and hard and there was a lot of ambiguity because you’d need like some ulterior motive for talking to them and then would have to shift to dating which I never had the confidence to do. Like I’d offer to send her some class notes or something and I’d get her email. But then what?
Just walking up to a random girl and saying:
I think you look cool, wanna grab some coffee?
Would have an extremely low success rate I’m sure. Girls need to feel comfortable first, after all strangers who approach you in a public place tend to be people you’d rather not talk to. Now if you’re at a bar and a friend introduces you and you have a conversation first, well that could work and it’s kinda how my parents and older cousins met in the pre-app days. But if you’re me in college and you’re an engineering nerd and have only a handful of equally nerdy friends, those conversations are hard to come by. And that’s the role the apps filled for me - the introduction.
No, it won’t, because it has never not been creepy. People should be allowed to go into public without constantly being approached. The part you don’t get is that being asked out for coffee once is novel, twice is fun, but after that it gets old really fucking quick. I do not want to have to deal with that every time I just want to do some fucking laundry.
And 90% of the people who do/did this are legitimately creeps.
Maybe women like not having men randomly coming up to them trying to express interest and pursue a date, and not having to deal with the fear of what they may do if rejected?
IDK I’m not a woman.
Sure, then women should start approaching men. The apps are not the answer, social media is doodoo.
Women like not being approached by men they don’t find attractive, but women also like being appreciated and approached by men they find attractive. And you can never know in which group you fall. And if you just always do what other people desire, you will never get anywhere in life.
Some people legitimately just want to be left alone.
I don’t think women really feel any differently about it than men do.
You can still do that, but as rsuri says, you cannot be so direct. It’s too confrontational and girls don’t really appreciate that. You have to invent some plausibly deniable reason to start a conversation. This also gives the girl an out if she is not really interested. Then you just allude to your interest in her, which don’t worry she will pick up on immediately. At some point you will either hear, “… and my bf and I” or you hear nothing of that genre. At the end you can ask for a number. That’s not exactly the end of the story. Most of the time, the conversation continues through text only for her to drop you before a date is planned. But it’s in any case a way better experience than Tinder, unless you’re some hunk who can write “6’4” on Tinder and get 100+ matches.
I agree, I’ll be honest that’s why I use these apps. Because when I’d try to just talk to a girl in person and be friendly I get the sense they think I’m either being creepy or want to get in their pants. When I’m just an introvert just trying to start up a conversation lol
The solution is obviously more AI!
I mean… maybe in this case? I feel like profile/picture based matchmaking is something an ML model could be pretty good at in theory. Match people based on physical preferences and attractiveness (get head scans and frontal & profile full body shots), basic demographic/location/financial info, fill out a questionnaire with hobbies, political views, sexual preferences, etc.
Do that for groups of satisfied pre-existing couples first to train the model on, then continue training the model on the successful matches from the app. Have it spit out X number of matches that have the highest ratings for all users, limit it to X matches per time period to limit “swiping” behaviors, then let users talk/date and provide feedback to the app about what they did/didn’t like.
Obviously, it would need major privacy protections given how sensitive the info is, but that’d be a way better system than Tinder and the like. Like a super powered robo matchmaker serving up the highest probability matches.
we should make an entirely AI based dating platform, that does everything for the individual. Such that the only way you truly meet is in person. Surely there would be no problems with this.
Nah. Obviously, you’d talk beforehand, and no one would be forced to use it. It’s no different than arranged dates through a matchmaker. Now, there’d be valid privacy and ethics concerns - especially if your ML model is racist. But that’s a whole different thing. People are often quite bad at picking good matches for themselves, and computers are great at pattern ID and so potentially good at finding matches.
yeah, it’s definitely an interesting idea. But someone will inevitably satirize it to the fullest extent so.
Met my fiance on a dating app, but I think they really peaked in the pandemic for the reasons the article stated that nobody had anywhere else to go.
Now it’s likely just filters for people who spend the time cultivating a social presence elsewhere.
There should be something like non-profit dating platforms. Just like Lemmy.
i think that one might be called going outside, but as an avid inside enjoyer, i wouldn’t know anything about it.
There is one it sucks
Ok, keep your secrets
Alovoa (Open-source online dating application) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.alovoa.expo/
Ok I just tried it and I must say:
- it has few users. Here in austria there were practically none.
- The interface is ok and polished, but some choices are questionable: I cannot multi-select whether I’m looking for a romantic relationship or friendship and also I can’t change that setting after account creation.
- otherwise it’s nice, very clean and usable, also very intuitive.
These apps are a service, and as such - in theory - it’s not out of the question to ask for some sort of payment.
HOWEVER, the price they ask is so damned high it’s not worth it.
I think Tinder wants $35/m to let you “see your likes” (the people who have swiped right on you), and as far as I know that’s basically the only way to ever see them because just using the app regularly they never seem to show up. I think I’ve had 40 Likes in a queue for about a year because they just never show up in day to day usage. I assume it’s all bot profiles from other countries at this point.
It’s all people outside of your search parameters that’s why they never show up. So basically it’s people you’re not interested in anyways and it’s not worth paying them money to find that out.
Can we fix dating already and stop trying to make it a business?
No, you must pay to find your soulmate. If you’re too poor to pay, you’re too poor to date. /s
Why don’t you work on your side-gig instead. That we will also find a way to take a massive cut of.
The issue is that services cost money inherently. No matter what app, the user base has to have the infrastructure behind it to support all the users.
Guys, maybe you don’t know this but Twitter and tinder DONT FUCKING RUN ON YOUR PHONE! THEY ALL RUN SERVER SIDE.
So there is some kind of cluster, probably aws or azure or Google web services on the back end.
So who is paying for it to run if customers aren’t? Ads? Jesus? Someone has to pay for that service run. Not to mention the people salaries to support and maintain that system.
Interesting. Maybe you should try the Fediverse sometime.
The fediverse also costs someone money to run. If you want to set up a fediverse dating app and have everyone’s likes and kinks mirrored to dozens of servers run by people with almost no obligation to keep it private, good luck
There are ways to fix the issue, but it wouldn’t be ‘profitable’. It probably could not be run as a for-profit company. It would also necessarily be deeply intrusive; there’s no way to beat some of the problems that make dating apps such a pain in the ass without also giving up a lot of privacy to the company running the app.
You’ve got a couple of issues going on. First, women–and some men–end up getting harassed on these platforms. Related to that, you have people using them that simply aren’t safe, such as people convicted of violent crimes and sexual assaults. Second, you have a number of people using them to cheat on existing partners. Third, catfishing and scams. Fourth, the profit motive of the company means that they aren’t really interested in seeing you finding a partner at all.
For starters, you’d need to have a system that required your real name, and would require verification on the order of opening a bank account built into it. (Yes, that means that you’d need really strong security.) They would need to run background checks, and look for things like criminal history, and searching tax records to make sure that you weren’t filing taxes jointly. It would also forcibly populate fields about e.g. how many children you have. You’d likely need to set it up with geolocation (both GPS and WiFi); trying to use a VPN or any other privacy-centric processes running would prevent the app from functioning.
Rather than subscriptions, you pay a single fee up-front, and activate/de-activate your account as desired.
For harassment/catfishing/scams/paid sex work, etc., you could create a reporting system that would result in permanent bans for anyone found to be engaging in those behaviors. You’d likely need to also have systems in place and warnings against moving conversations to other platforms (e-mail, texting, etc.), so that harassing and scammy messages could get reported easily. Catfishing would be much more difficult if accounts were linked to your real identity.
This is just kind of brainstorming. As I said, there are ways around all of the issues that people have with apps, if they’re serious about meeting people. You can’t fix hook-up culture per se; someone can lie to you just as easily IRL as they can on an app. But you can at least remove the worst trash from apps.
you have people using them that simply aren’t safe
i feel like it would be better to describe them as potentially dangerous or violate, rather than “not safe” as that’s a little weird IMO. Maybe you’re talking about how people convicted of violent sexual crimes get violently criminalized on dating apps though lol.
Second, you have a number of people using them to cheat on existing partners.
i feel like this isn’t really a problem, seems like it would be at least somewhat expected to me lmao. I’m also not really sure why it would matter, other than the dating base is probably shitty, but i hear it doesn’t exist anyway so.
(Yes, that means that you’d need really strong security.)
actually it doesn’t it just means you need to pretend that you have strong security, until your database gets hacked and leaked, and then you actually improve the security before the government bonks you on the head. (this one was just a shitpost)
You’d likely need to also have systems in place and warnings against moving conversations to other platforms (e-mail, texting, etc.), so that harassing and scammy messages could get reported easily.
a good solution for this one is to make the on platform chat not fucking awful. I can’t imagine any of these dating apps have good chat platforms built in. That or maybe partner with something more universal?
i feel like it would be better to describe them as potentially dangerous or violate, rather than “not safe” as that’s a little weird IMO.
Either/or. The language isn’t important, but I think that excluding people with convictions and/or arrests for violent crimes and domestic violence–or at the very least putting red flag warnings in their profile that they can’t remove–would be helpful. There was a website that purported to do similar, but it was based on first-hand accounts rather than public records, and ended up getting sued into oblivion. But if you’re using public records, then as long as it’s factual, there’s no reasonable claim of defamation.
i feel like this isn’t really a problem, seems like it would be at least somewhat expected to me lmao.
If you’re actually looking for a serious relationship–and not the hookup culture that people are supposedly fleeing–then knowing that a potential partner isn’t legally married is pretty much the low end of the bar. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s something you can use that’s a matter of public record that can exclude people.
actually it doesn’t it just means you need to pretend that you have strong security, until your database gets hacked and leaked,
Well, if you don’t have very strong and effective security, then you need very deep pockets to pay out the damages when it does get hacked.
That or maybe partner with something more universal?
That’s a pretty good idea.
I think that, for me, an ideal system would be one that was end-to-end encrypted unless one of the two participants forwarded the message chain to a safety team at the company, and only then would it be visible to the safety team. So no one could just peek at your chats, but as soon as you sent a message to a safety team about harassment, the entire chat up to that point would be visible.
You’d need to have very clear guidelines set up so that it was clear what constituted a “no”, so that there wasn’t a lot of room for interpretation; there are plenty of people (all genders) that will take anything up to a hard ‘no’ as a ‘try harder’, and there are a bunch that will even take that ‘no’ as a ‘try harder’.
As I said, I think that the problems with apps can all be solved, but I don’t think that they can be solved if you’re trying to monetize the whole thing. It only works if the goal is matching people up rather than making boatloads of cash.
Either/or. The language isn’t important, but I think that excluding people with convictions and/or arrests for violent crimes and domestic violence–or at the very least putting red flag warnings in their profile that they can’t remove–would be helpful. There was a website that purported to do similar, but it was based on first-hand accounts rather than public records, and ended up getting sued into oblivion. But if you’re using public records, then as long as it’s factual, there’s no reasonable claim of defamation.
idk i feel like that phrasing is rather ambiguous, but maybe that’s supposed to cover both sides of people? Regardless, something like that pulling public records or making public records would be pretty much cleared from the get go. That would definitely work.
If you’re actually looking for a serious relationship–and not the hookup culture that people are supposedly fleeing–then knowing that a potential partner isn’t legally married is pretty much the low end of the bar. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s something you can use that’s a matter of public record that can exclude people.
yeah, maybe we need more broad relationships status capabilities in general. Regardless dating someone cheating on someone else is not a fun prospect, but i’m also not sure how likely you are to be aware of it either. Depends on the person probably.
Well, if you don’t have very strong and effective security, then you need very deep pockets to pay out the damages when it does get hacked.
and historically that seems to be exactly what happens, a similar thing happened to target recently.
That’s a pretty good idea.
I could see having a integration between things like whatsapp, or signal being a nice alternative, giving you a relatively flexible and vetted set of alternatives to the integrated platform.
I think that, for me, an ideal system would be one that was end-to-end encrypted unless one of the two participants forwarded the message chain to a safety team at the company, and only then would it be visible to the safety team. So no one could just peek at your chats, but as soon as you sent a message to a safety team about harassment, the entire chat up to that point would be visible.
yeah i could see this working, although i would prefer it to be E2E the entire time, with the ability to bring in a third party for review, which would likely close that conversation permanently and then make it clearly visible, otherwise it might be a little sus.
You’d need to have very clear guidelines set up so that it was clear what constituted a “no”, so that there wasn’t a lot of room for interpretation; there are plenty of people (all genders) that will take anything up to a hard ‘no’ as a ‘try harder’, and there are a bunch that will even take that ‘no’ as a ‘try harder’.
a pretty good functional alternative is just killing the message chain entirely. Platform account blocking maybe? There are certainly some options available.
As I said, I think that the problems with apps can all be solved, but I don’t think that they can be solved if you’re trying to monetize the whole thing. It only works if the goal is matching people up rather than making boatloads of cash.
yeah anything with VC money in it from the get go is going to be a heaping pile of shit once > 50% market share is achieved.
yeah, maybe we need more broad relationships status capabilities in general.
While I wish that were possible, I can’t think of a great way to ensure that. Best I can think of is ensuring that they aren’t married and/or lying about having children. (At one time you could have used Facebook statuses as a stand-in for that, but I don’t think that’s accurate anymore.)
a pretty good functional alternative is just killing the message chain entirely. Platform account blocking maybe?
What I’m thinking is that you will need a set of clear guidelines so that you can remove people from the platform entirely if they exhibit a pattern of misconduct. One, maybe two instances where someone violates guidelines, okay, blocking them from contact with that specific person is sufficient, as long as they know exactly what conduct was out of bounds and learn from it. But multiple instances of harassing behaviour means that someone needs to be pruned from the system. I’m on the fence as to whether it should be a permaban kind of thing, or whether it should be graduated time-outs (a week ban, a month ban, three month ban, a year ban, etc.), with red flag warnings for harassment in their profile. I could go either way right now.
Regardless, you’d need a general block feature, so that you could block people that you found distasteful, but weren’t engaging in overtly harassing behaviour.
yeah anything with VC money in it from the get go is going to be a heaping pile of shit once > 50% market share is achieved.
I think you could shorten that to “anything with VC money in it is going to be a heaping pile of shit”. As long as there’s a profit motive, there’s no way to avoid it. But I’m not sure how you could possibly make it work without VC-type money.
