Tinder charges more for young gays, lesbians and the over-30s, says Which? | Hacker News Reader

Tinder charges more for young gays, lesbians and the over-30s, says Which?

independent.co.uk

I notice that the wording leaves room for some clarification: if Tinder offers to all users the same choice of pricing tiers for different levels of service, but individuals in different communities have a tendency to select different levels, then on average they could appear to pay more, when in fact they requested higher tiers of service.

such "second order price discrimination" is completely legal and quite common.

It's called second order because it's indirect: blue plate special at 5pm is a cheap complete meal. It attracts senior citizens because they are time flexible and prefer to eat early, and have lower budgets, and the restaurant likes it because that's a quiet time so why not fill it with customers. But anybody can buy it.

I'm not saying this is what's happening with Tinder, I'm saying I apply the same cynicism-of-doublespeak to greedy corporations as I've now learned to apply to SJWs.

And if it is what is happening with Tinder, it could be that they priced different tiers on the basis of usage and it turns out that different groups just have different usage profiles.

Or they could have determined which groups have less price elasticity of demand and charged more for services that those groups want. This could be cast as unfair, but is simply charging "what the market will bear"

The over 30s penalty is nothing new with Tinder. Their price for their subscription membership would double for new members over 30. I remember seeing on the Tinder subreddit if you wanted the discount you needed to set your age to 29, and just put in your profile that you were 30 (I didn't do this though)

If tinder otherwise decides to never show people of those communities,they're paying for equal service, rather than a higher tier

Of course they do. All marketplaces like Tinder are ways of selling access to the 18-29 year old women who are attracted to men sector of the userbase (the scarce element in the equation) to the rest of the userbase.

To dating apps that aren't specifically gay/bi focused, everything else is a rounding error.

The OKCupid founder's data book was really eye-opening.

May you link that data book please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataclysm

(the first google result for "okcupid founder data book")

This makes me suspicious that what's really going on is they are offering a lower price to those most in demand. It's in their interest to have more desirable prospects show up.

Can you describe how that's any different from saying "Tinder charges more for young gays, lesbians and the over-30s"?

making an economic decision to make more money is different than making an identitarian decision to hurt a group you dont like.

So are you saying that Tinder doesn't charge more for these cohorts?

You keep repeating that, but did anyone say that?

I guess I'm just curious as to what would compel someone to be so pedantic about something like this, unless they're just that willing to go to bat for a company who is obviously discriminating against these groups.

I don't consider explaining motivations as "going to bat" for someone.

Perhaps it's not useful to point out the obvious that discriminatory practices can be tightly coupled with economic practices. Explaining it away as "well they're just catering to a certain demographic" doesn't negate the fact that it's literal discrimination, especially when it's obfuscated to the extent that actual journalism has to bring it to light.

im saying that if they are, there are reasonable explanations besides bigotry.

Not at all actually. Liberal ideologies like to dress up things like racism as moral and emotional hate-based, but discrimination and oppression often has economic roots. US slavery itself existed purely for economic reasons. Further oppression was to concentrate wealth in white society.

Yet these are recognized by straight people as racism, but straight people don’t recognize, let’s be fair, anything at all as discrimination against gay people.

That doesn't explain why you couldn't put a gun to your neighbors head and keep him as a slave in america. Theres without doubt a racial component to who could be a slave and whow couldnt

Long ago it was most certainly racial. However, these days what we see is mostly economic effects. This is why anti-discrimination efforts don't change things--it's not discrimination in the first place.

No, it can be one in the same. A modern day example is neighborhood gentrification. Increase the price until only a certain group of people can live there, and those that can't tough luck. So the end result is we get neighborhoods that consists of a majority of one group, and like super low percentage of other groups. ie, Mostly white neighborhoods vs ghettos dominated by black/hispanic groups.

Then looking back, there's IBM who profited by building systems to help Nazis process the Holocaust. And then later built a punch card system for Japanese internment camps in the US, during a time when asians, and Japanese people especially, were highly discriminated against in WW2. People were hurt here for no good reason, and all as an 'economic decision'. In my eyes, IBM is culpable for the atrocities they helped create, even if it was 'just for money'.

Bringing it back to Tinder, the question is why do we need this kind of price discrimination? How is it >consistently< determining that gays, lesbians, and over-30s should be charged more than their younger and hetero counter parts? The key word is consistently, because that feels like targeting. Why not have a flat fee structure, since we're all created equal in the pursuit of a romantic partner? If Tinder wanted to make more money, then just increase the base cost for everyone, not just for certain people in protected classes.

Can anyone imagine if Netflix said, hey we're gonna increase the price for gay and old people by 20%. Like Why? Everyone enjoys watching movies and shows, it's not like gay and older people have more fun watching them than heteros. It's equal enjoyment.

Gentrification is an inevitable result of improving neighborhoods, nobody is doing it. If the neighborhood improves people will want to move there and will bid up the price. Nobody's trying to discriminate.

As for a flat fee structure--they're charging more to those they think will be willing to pay more. Either because they can afford more or because they're more desperate. Thus those with better prospects get charged less.

It's in their best interest for less desirable prospects to show up and keep paying for Tinder Gold. Desirable prospects will leave the platform; they're valuable for marketing the platform, but are not valuable as customers.

Dating platforms are in this interesting spot where the most successful users of your platform no longer have a need for it.

It definitely creates some perverse incentives. It is in their best interest to not show you your best matches.

Their incentive is to show you matches that *look* good, but aren't.

The article this keeps refering to: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2022/01/tinders-unfair-pricing-...

I believe the assumption here is that this is a bad thing, and it may be, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

When is it OK to charge different cohorts of users different prices? Why is it ok in some instances, and not in others?

If we charged white hetero males (of which I am one) more than everyone else, would that be OK because they are NOT part of a minority?

To give a bit of context of how I'm looking at this for our business, we're in the sleep tech space, and lack of sleep is a huge issue in the African American community due to socio-economic reasons. I've got some designs on how we can offer African Americans a lower price on our product than other user groups. I doubt there would be a "backlash" because it's a discount, rather than an increase in price...which is really just perspective...

Straight people: here’s why homophobia doesn’t exist (because if I acknowledged it exists I’d have to acknowledge that I play a part in it and I’d feel bad about myself)

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