Completely random, I know.
My main experience is with Tinder, and I find it interesting how it clearly recognises the shortcomings of the “Match” model, but uses it as a way to get money from users.
Want to signal to somebody that you are really into them? Pay for superlikes. Want to see people who liked you so you can see if it’s worth giving them a chance? Pay for Tinder Gold. Are you not having much luck with matches? Pay to be shown more at the top of the queue. It’s even worse if you are aware of the internal mechanics of how the queue prioritises people through likes that lead to matches, so you’re incentivised to “economise” in your likes and constantly consider if handing out a like to somebody you’re unsure about could reduce the amount of people you’re shown to. And I’m not even getting into the whole gender imbalance issues or moderation.
I’m also wondering how one could develop an open source alternative, more so for reducing/removing the profit motive from the system design, than necessarily free software values. I think it would make a lot of sense to let people see who liked them as it’s an effective self-selection tool, but also keep the shuffled queue as a “discovery” feature. A search feature based on self-assigned traits could be cool too, I guess. I also think a more radically different feature involving mutual friends would be cool, but I don’t have anything concrete on that front yet.
Though it’s a common excuse by corporations, I don’t think giving more power to the users present any significant privacy concern. Everything in a Tinder profile is already public in some way, and security by obfuscation is never a good tactic.
And finally, I think the system should normalise unmatching. In real life, it’s very common to find somebody, talk for a bit and lose interest before any dates. Tinder makes unmatching feel like a failure rather than just a normal part of the dating experience.
Edit: elaborating a bit on the open source bit, since it’s more technical. Making the client open source but maintaining the exact same design and network architecture does not necessarily change either the maintenance costs (requiring some form of cash influx) nor the control (as the server API defines the available features). Originally I thought about making it self-hostable, but I’m now wondering if it’d be possible to connect users over a p2p protocol. One benefit is that inactive users would be filtered out automatically, but it’d be too dependent on either people being online, really good distributed caching, or a lot of background battery and network usage. I’m not well versed in mobile development or less mainstream networking to even provide an educated guess on the feasibility of this.
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Bring back old school matchmaking. People don’t know who they’re supposed to like, and they often make poor decisions. Maybe you could crowdsource matchmaking somehow, turn it into a game/hobby for busybodies. Can’t be any worse than what people are already doing.
Apps are banned, you are conscripted to mandatory service in the sex mines, where teams of horny young twonks will have to pull thicc railroad cars full of lube.
You’d probably need a matchmaker that helps you find a date, for long term relationships. Such a design is not profitable, however.
People are too conditioned to hide their true selves right now, if you don’t you’re seen as weak, flawed. Such a society is bad at forming relationships at the core. I would try to help them, by teaching healthy habits give out exercises for real self-improvement, develop their interpersonal skills.
Right now this is how people function:
- This is what I’m good at, this is what I want to do.
- This is how much stuff I have.
- This is how I plan to avoid failure.
- This is what I want from you.
How I’d like to see people function:
- This is what I’m good at, here’s the goals I’m heading towards.
- This is what I’ve worked towards before.
- This is where I’ve failed, what I’m bad at, here’s how I plan to address my shortcomings.
- Here’s how we compliment each other.
Maybe in a few hundred years someone is going to realize this, a world where people are treated more than livestock for breeding. It make me really sad when I see, especially when it’s socialist, state officials pass anarchic laws of anti-gay relationships, because oh no my birth rates. oh no my soldiers screwing each other in combat!
Right now I think just introducing a dialectically trained matchmaker would go a long way and I see it as a feasible first step, in the short term. Also remodeling the algorithm and how people match, but that’s a given.
but uses it as a way to get money from users.
That is the true purpose of those apps. Of mostly of the apps, really.
I feel like matchmaking through shared interests would be a better system, you could also drop image support so it’s entirely on shared interests and not on looks and reduces the required space server side. Doesn’t have to be dating either, it could be also for just meeting new like-minded people.
There are already Open Source dating apps. You might be interested in checking out their implementations and how they address the questions you’re asking.
The most-used one appears to be, of all things, the 4chan dating app Duolicious. Here’s a link to a “KnowYourMeme” article describing what it is. It had a lot of discussion around it and seemingly a lot of active users.
The other is Alovoa which has been around for a long time, and is the one that usually comes up when you search for Open Source dating apps. I’m not sure if it actually has an active user-base though.
I think this actually highlights an important point, which is that attempts at creating generic alternatives are a lot less likely to succeed compared to targeted ones. Even the big companies realise this. You see more and more dating apps popping up in different countries targetted at muslims, lesbians, vegans, black people, and so on.
People tired of Tinder & Co. are more likely to find and try your app if it’s the one that comes up when they search “flat-earther dating app” (if that’s what appeals to them) as opposed to randomly choosing one of the dozens of generic dating apps.
4chan’s conditions are especially unique in that it has a specific site culture, a very large user-base, and it’s a forum/imageboard which means that the app already had a place to market itself to all 4chan users. This is probably why it became successful.
Ultimately, I think that’s more important than the specific discovery mechanics of the apps. They become less relevant anyway as you’re already filtering a lot of people by using a more niche app.
In a lot of countries and cities you might find only a handful of people in your region to begin with, and it’s more likely that you’d meet them and talk since you already have a common ground, as opposed to endlessly swiping through hundreds of profile.
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Couldn’t china use ai + survalince to recommend matches based on personality, interests, and behavior (as in what places you tend to visit). If they have that level of survalince already then why not make this a voluntary program.
