Older men charged more for using Tinder's premium service
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
Not much different than real life... in many clubs women can go inside for free while men have to pay entry ticket fee.
Currently there are 3 men for every woman on Tinder [0].
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/975925/us-tinder-user-ra...
In general I'm not a fan of the "gay people can just chose not to pay" argument - it sounds too similar to the one where some companies argued they should be allowed to deny gay people service, since they can simply go somewhere else.
Then again, the actual figures in the article tell a different story than the title does.
- Queer female under 30: $7/mo
- Straight female over 30: $30/mo
- Straight male over 50: $35/mo
So it's really age in general.
Though I'm a male in my 30s in a metro center and it's just showing me $8/mo. Though that's probably just Tinder's AI recognizing me as the gift to women that I am.
Also, Tinder Gold is optional. I'm a heavy dating-app user and would never pay for premium features.
If the price is higher that what it should be, there's your opportunity to sell your matching service at lower prices.
Just like in a night club or country club, the house is free to set whichever memebership rules it wants, if you don't like them you are free to go somewhere else.
Unlike the jobs market, the dating market and its (discriminatory) dynamics is not something the government could regulate.
But, why would Tinder control a public square?
I asked because the response to that question helps me understand w the point of view one is coming from
Just because there's publicly funded precedent, doesn't mean it's not something that should be tackled and fixed.
You're applying this corporate-libertarian ideal to this situation but only a small change to your statement undermines it.
Discrimination law strongly disagrees with you.
http://www.roydenhollander.com/main/ladiesnightdc/LN_OrigCmp...
Huh? That is completely unrelated to why this is done.
Human attraction, unfortunately, is not very fair, and definitely doesn't really follow anti-discrimination practices, from everything I've read so far.
But if you don’t crash you pay the same as the next regular Joe.
Consider this: if the first accident happens to an average person after 10 years of driving, young people will take a loooong time to build a driving record that can even be considered average let alone good. And you can't start charging higher rates only after the crash, such rates would need to be so high as to be ompletely prohibitive. Bottom line, young people will never be paying as good a price as older people under any system that has a semblance of fairness to it. Sadly.
(This can get into a really long discussion about a lot of things that can correlate with higher accident rates and how sometimes it's a false correlation, like how in some places black people have more accidents, but it's not because they are black but because they are poorer on average and drive older less safe cars - but filtering by race could be used as a quick filter which is, obviously, unfair(and illegal))
Not the same with gender or race, you're stuck with what you're born with (statistically insignificant numbers of transitions notwithstanding).
I think this is a meaningful, if not perfect, distinction.
In practice this argument leads to insurance companies charging thousands per year for all new drivers, and then giving discounts to drivers willing to install surveillance devices that report all aspects of the driver's driving.
As for the G-force tracker - it's also shit, she was getting points docked constantly for "smoothness" of driving, because every time you went through a speed bump the tracker would register "abrupt braking event" and recommend "smoother braking for better scores". It was such a shit system that she willingly paid 2x the premium on her next insurance to not have a tracker.
https://www.carrotinsurance.com/help/what-data-does-the-blac...
> This includes data on speed, smoothness and usage, which all contribute to your total Driving Style Score.
> The black box also enables your car’s GPS location to be identified in the unfortunate event that your car gets stolen.
After all, you would never agree to have trackers in your house just so the insurance company can judge if you're a safe home owner and lower your home insurance premium - why agree to it in cars?
If the underlying cost of the service is legitimately and significantly affected by age, sure, charge accordingly. Tinder's case seems different.
The examples above are about age because any rules about age at least apply more or less consistently to all people as people age over time. I'm not saying that doing the same kind of pricing by other personal traits such as race or gender or eye color would be ok, just so that we're clear.
Consider their COGS to be user acquisition costs. Serve too many unattractive people and those costs go up as people leave the platform.
With the amount of data they have, I'm sure you could reliably estimate the cost of any given profiles being shown to any other given profile.
This could be used to determine who profiles are shown to, and how often. One implication is that attractive but dead accounts will be shown more often to unattractive but highly active accounts. Another is that unattractive but highly active accounts must be charged more to maintain the same margins.
I am equivocating attractiveness with age here, but presumably there would be too much public outcry if they charged by attractiveness alone, so they my guess is they use age as a proxy.
And tbh the whole attractiveness argument smells a lot like how black people were considered unattractive customers that would make it harder to sell to white customers in real estate transactions in 1950s America.
It's not unreasonable that marketing a fair platform would cost more than a discriminatory one, just as it's not unreasonable that e.g. mitigating pollution at a factory costs money.
Regulations should address such things to level the playing field of course, but shit companies trying to sneak in practices like this should be condemned.
I think no. Everyone should shoulder the costs.
It's a difficult one; objectively speaking, cost is a factor of risk, and risk is what insurance is for. But at the same time, it's discrimination based on age - not ALL people who just got their license are reckless.
On iOS at least you can get around this. Create a profile aged 18 and purchase a subscription. Now sign out and create your real profile and use the “restore purchases” option.
Charging less for children, families and the elderly is the same thing. Charging less for women in clubs. Same with booking hotels and flights, based on browsing history, IP address, cookies and the extrapolated demographic.
Even a repair contractor adjusts his prices up for someone who lives in a mansion with expensive cars in the driveway, and down for a single mother with three young kids running around her.
Of course Tinder charges more for older men, why wouldn't they. Every industry ever wanted to be able to do this, and some can now automate it easily with all the available demographic data they collect.
This is the key bit here. You go in expecting a level-ish playing field (it's not really level, obviously, but for other reasons.) Turns out that to even get access to the same service as young people, you have to pay 5 times as much as them. Dating when you're older is already difficult so making it even more difficult isn't exactly great.
Now, the argument here is that Premium is a choice, you don't have to get it. That's true but I still find it unfair that certain categories get an artificially inflated price. I'm fine with discounts for younger people as they tend to earn less (especially queer women, which are noted as having the lowest asking price for Premium.) However, it shouldn't come at the expense of other users.
This seems extremely naive.
What is the difference between these two hypothetical grocery stores:
At Pete's, apples cost $3 per kilo, but if you're under 25 and can prove it, pete will give you a $1 discount.
At Jane's, apples cost $2 per kilo, but if you look over 25, jane will stick you with a $1 'ugly old fart' surcharge.
And yet you seem to be arguing that jane's store is over the line, but pete's is a-okay.
That seems rather silly. So all Tinder has to do is adjust _the wording_ used in their tiered pricing model and they're in the clear?
Honestly 50 people have given this similar vibe. You people make it seem like someone has a gun to your head, forcing you to use a dating app. There are alternatives. It's a free market. If you don't like something, don't spend money on it.
And often illegal.
Discrimination based on sex/gender or age is (usually) prohibited in Europe, for example, unless there are very compelling grounds to do so.
From museums to bus fares, europe is littered with discounts for 65+ and <12 or <18.
So is this a case where government run orgs get to price discriminate but business can't, or where the laws make explicit exceptions for gigantic subsets of the economy (I'd call transportation a pretty big sector), or... what? Your claim that price discriminating based on age is illegal in the EU is hard to believe without some proof.
- make the most money from vulnerable people
- make non vulnerable people behave like if they were on a social network
Having different price, per geography, gender and age is just a consequence of the first.
It is not surprising that you can't see anymore the instagram handles of people on tinder. Instagram is a direct competitor to tinder for most of their users ( the non vulnerable ones).
Actually that's very smart, Tinder is probably the only big social network (tinder is not a dating app) which didn't require ads or a lot of funding to get big, only because one small portion of their user are willing to pay to be part of their community
What a world.
plus people that are ranked on a single dimension, so you only get the same kind of polished person that is liked by the majority.
Now if Tinder would offer some sort of selection by categories like activities, tastes etc, that's a feature I would happily pay for. Other apps already have that.
Like what?I went through tinders sales page for their tiers and can't see anything that would offer a different experience based on any demographic: https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004487406-T...
I get the feeling you may respond telling me that people over 30 are looking for a different type of relationship, to which I say that no type of relationship has a feasible monetary induction price, and even if it did, it is impossible to know which users are looking to have a fling and which are looking for an SO.
>to which I say that no type of relationship has a feasible monetary induction price
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Someone can use any of those premium features to facilitate any of those possibilities, and more. Having more likes or options to message along with a super-like doesn't mean someone is looking for anything in particular.
It is simply true that some people
> value the premium features differently and be willing to pay more or less for them too.
But that's it. There's nothing about age or whatever in there.
It's literally the same thing but with age. Just how much do you think we can squeeze out of 30+ black women eh?
The practice is despicable. I'm not saying you're advocating for the above, but if the approach is to just extract the maximum because you can extract the maximum, which is the logic you're advocating, this is an expected result.
1: The paid membership gives you a lot of features, but one thing you can additionally pay extra for is the ability to see who has liked you directly, so called "Tinder gold".
So, if we take that into account women get maybe 25 free matches per day and men maybe 0.5 free matches per day. Men pay so they can get more matches per day, women don't. The service cost is per match and not per like. A man liking 1000 candidates costs as much as a woman rejecting 1000 candidates.
When money comes into play, you obviously don't want your users to leave.
Honestly, at this point, who is to say that the good matches are not paid employees acting as real users, or that "ghosting" (ending matches or blocking messages) isn't forced by the service, to induce an addiction? Clearly they can get away with scummy tactics, so why not milk all the money they can?
Example from a quick search: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/ftc-s...
Most companies that offer some product are in this dilemma. You want to satisfy your customer's demands but not too much so that they come again. You could sell them a laundromat or fridge that lasts 40 years, but you rather sell them one that lasts 10 and welcome them back in your shop much sooner. Planned obsolescence basically.
Charging more in this case is arguably in the interest of older straight men. The experience of a woman on a dating platform is to get bombarded by hundreds if not thousands of messages. Do you, an affluent man in his best years, want your profile to be drowned by out by hundreds of losers that never stood a chance? One way to mitigate that is to limit exposure to people willing to afford a modest amount of money.
Let's face it, if you are old and you can't afford 30+$/month for something as significant as dating, you are not going to find a woman anyway, might as well take you out of the game so as not to annoy the women on the platform with your unsightly presence.
* they’re not doing this to make more money off the higher charges cohort as that doesn’t make sense * they’re trying to make they most money, period, and that is done by attracting the most people overall * in order to do that they’re trying to maintain a ratio that attracts all cohorts of all sexes, ages, and orientations * because there is some non-reciprocal demand among cohorts (more older men like younger women than vice versa)
So if they just charged everybody an equally low rate you’d wind up with a lopsided population that none of the cohorts want and people would leave. Nobody wants this.
So arguing it’s not fair because discrimination isn’t fair as a rhetorical argument feels intellectually dishonest since the state you’re advocating for is a failed one.
Actually you'll likely find plenty of men, but women - actual, genuinely interested women, not bots / scam accounts - is a lot more difficult.
Personally, I think one should create social communities and have things develop from there, not dating sites where the only reason to go there is to find a match.
Source: met my girlfriend via gaming forums. I mean sure it took over ten years between first seeing each others' usernames on there and her moving in, but still.
I'm not sure what you were doing in those 10 years leading up to you two getting together... but most of us want to be dating someone in that time - not waiting 10 years for a single match.
Any Australians care to comment on the use of queer?
It's pretty derogatory in the UK (in the context of sexual orientation)
edit:
added, in the context of sexual orientation
edit 2:
looks like my knowledge is outdated then :)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_heterosexuality
Edit: formatting
Pretty much any word can cause offence these days, but ABC have presumably been advised on a house style that is acceptable.
Isn't "queer" the Q in LGBTQ, an acronym that most will happily identify with? Perhaps it _used_ to be derogatory, but it appears has been redefined into something positive.
"I wouldn't hire that woman."
"I wouldn't hire that woman"
Yeah, I think this is partly a generational thing. My step-mum (in her 50s) was a bit taken a back when I used the word queer casually in conversation. But my 20-something friends in the gay/trans community pretty much all use queer to describe themselves.
I think it became popular partly as a reclamation of the word, and partly because the LGBTQIA acronym got so long and unwieldy. People want to be inclusive, but nobody wants to say LGBTQIA often.