Giving up on scale might be a good thing tbh. With scale comes a lot of noise. Also with it comes choice paralysis.
On noise, it's not uncommon to see less than 1% of male right swipes to turn into a match. As many here may know, this can be pretty emotionally taxing.
Then add on the choice problem. It's a well known psychological effect that too many choices can cause us feel bad about our choices. The classic example of this is with cereal in the grocery store. If you only have a few choices you pick one and think "I did the best I could" but if you have a hundred to choose from you'll think "maybe I could have done better" and doubt yourself even if you like the cereal. In relation to dating I think we end up judging a bit more than normal on first dates. I know I do. But first dates are often awkward and not a great indication of if you're a good match or not, unless there are major red flags.
I'll admit that I've had more success by being set up by friends. They know your personality, they know the other person's personality and if you will match. I think there's also a bit of pressure to go on a few dates and help get out of that awkward stage and really find out who the other person is.
But everyone has different takes. With scale one method might work well for some people and might not work for others. A wide array of tools is honestly the best because there never will be a singular solution for everyone. I think the major problem here is that were trying to turn all forms of dating into Tinder like and pretending like that's the only successful model.