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> Nobody wants to see their friend of friends on a dating site. Tinder tried this already and it bombed. The current meta for dating apps is to exclude anyone in your contacts or friendlists.

If you exclude your contacts and friend lists and exclude friend of friends, who does that leave? Friends of friends of friends? Complete strangers? I wonder what proportion of couples knew each other directly or indirectly before they got together: "Oh, you know Jack! Yeah, he's by father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate!"

Obviously I have no hard data, but it's not too difficult to imagine that couples come together with all sorts of varying prior knowledge of each other's existence.

That the current meta is this, doesn't mean that is the most successful strategy for all people at all times.

I think dating apps suffer from the public health policy vs. individualised medicine paradox: what might be good policy for people en masse might be terrible advice for any particular individual.

> I wonder what proportion of couples knew each other directly or indirectly before they go together:

A good proportion I bet, but they didn't meet on a dating app.

Dating apps are used by people trying to "catch other fish in the sea". They want to expand their selection to social groups outside their immediate one, and date in a way that doesn't impact their status within their current group. If all your friends know Jack, and you dump him, word will get around for better or worse.

Oh, I see now a thought-filter I was applying when I wrote my previous comment.

I live in Tasmania, the whole island has a population of about 512,000. If you exclude friends of friends of friends, that's pretty much everyone here.

Still, Australia's top 5 cities have about 64% of the population. If you live in any of the non-top-five and exclude friends of friends of friends, that's a fair chunk of the locals.

You're making the case for why people don't want to match with their immediate friends, but there's a lot of value in matching with people just one degree of separation away, through a mutual friendship. After all, that's how a lot of dating already goes down in real life.

Your Jack example is true if you and Jack share a considerable amount of mutual friends. But almost all the people I meet on Tinder only have a couple mutual friends with me, no more. Often just one. Any sort of failures in our relationship don't have that much reach, yet I still have benefits like being able to query my mutual friend about that person, or leverage them in some other way like having them invite us both to an event to get the ball rolling.

> Friends of friends of friends? Complete strangers?

That's how it's supposed to work. lol But I guess the likes of Facebook among other social pressures has changed all of that.

I'm so glad I gave up on dating.

Why is that how it's "supposed" to work? Most couples I know met IRL, and from a close circle (direct friends/coworkers or friends-of-friends at most). I'm not sure I know any couples who were complete strangers before dating.

People tend to use dating websites/apps because they want to find someone _different_. People tend to have friends that are like them, but that is not always what you want in a relationship.

Centralization of data aside, playing non-devils advocate:

> The only people on facebook are boomers arguing about politics. Dating is all about exclusivity and compartmentalization. Nobody wants to date in the same place they get happy birthday messages from their grandma.

The Facebook you see is very different from the Facebook I see (which is the point I guess).

> Nobody wants to see their friend of friends on a dating site. Tinder tried this already and it bombed. The current meta for dating apps is to exclude anyone in your contacts or friendlists.

I think it depends on what we mean by "dating" and who we're talking about.

Dudes on Tinder and Grindr (hookups), sure, that could be awkward. I know people who opt for other apps because they're not trying to get laid, but rather want to find someone who they can form an actual meaningful connection with. In this case friend of friends are great. As OP mentioned, safety is also worth considering and something disproportionately worrying women: meeting people integrated in your near social graph keeps you safe both physically and emotionally.

Same here. I'd rather not online date someone from my social circle. Sure, if it happens with someone I know offline, it will happen. But I don't want to turn FB into a pseudo-dating site as well. There's too much personal info on there for that kind of stuff. Plus scope for waaay too much drama, if things go south.