The user (perhaps) wants to find a lifelong partner, and never use dating apps again.
The site developer wants users to never find a lifelong partner, and to spend months/years returning to the app to find new candidates.
In my experience, the developer usually wins - some users on dating sites have been there a decade or more, and active much of that time.
So at best, the developer is incentivized to have the user find someone to date in the short term and have the relationship fail in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on the dating site. And it's not really feasible for the dating site distinguish between "will successfully date for a few months" and "will successfully date for a lifetime".
You could apply the same logic to any long term purchase. Dealerships only sell lemons because they want you to come back and buy more cars. Recruiters only match you with companies that you'll definitely want to leave because they want to match you again. Realtors only show you houses you'll hate because then you'll want to move again.
I think it is feasible for a dating site to figure that out, given enough data.
And I think the 'few months' figure is probably too high - they want to match people who will go on a few dates or a one night stand, then return to the app.
It's a pretty damn strong signal when a user matches with someone, exchanges phone numbers, then deactivates their account. The ML algorithms will be trained to do everything possible to avoid that outcome.
I've worked on the developer-side of this; I assure you, it's not. It's hard enough to predict if people will exchange messages with any reasonable precision + recall.
> It's a pretty damn strong signal when a user matches with someone, exchanges phone numbers, then deactivates their account. The ML algorithms will be trained to do everything possible to avoid that outcome.
Yeah, any dating site that does this is doomed to irrelevance.
If it were as easy to make a successful dating site by just optimizing for that signal, you should really do it. Match will acquire you for millions - billions, and the core code is relatively simple. You could get it running in under a week. Get some VC funding, do a gradual roll out onto a few colleges, you'll be a multi-millionaire by Spring.
This isn't entirely true. A portion of the user base uses it almost entirely for entertainment and validation. I'd suspect it's a sizeable portion at that.
If an app isn't getting you decent dates every so often, you'll move to an app that does. And it's pretty clear within a couple of months if an app is working for you or not.
And then once you're in a relationship, the app has zero control over whether it succeeds or not!
So no, dating apps aren't working against your romantic interests, simply because a) there's too much competition and b) they're not even smart enough to identify your true love and then hide him/her from you.
They are trying to make a buck off of you though. Which they should, since they're a business.
But so no, the developer doesn't "usually" win. I have lots of friends who got married from an online date. The people you know who are still on the apps after a decade -- well it's not like they've settled down with anyone they met in real life either. It's probably not the apps' fault.
Many people use dating apps expecting to find a lifelong partner and never come back.