Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

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I downloaded Tinder right after I got single, back in 2015? It was glorious. It really did feel fun and exciting - I'm by no means a model-looking dude, but I got hundreds of matches in a fairly small place (think city with population of 50k), and people just felt more genuine and interested on the various apps back then.

Next time around I tried Tinder et. al. was a couple of years later(2018/2019), and I immediately noticed less matches, less convos, and the app being more pushy.

I recently, as in this year, tried some of the apps again...it's a total shit show, to be honest.

I've never tried any apps that applied so many dark patterns. It all feels like one big funnel where the goal is to extract money off you through gold memberships, boosting, extra swipes, and what not. I noticed "fake" notices, spammy notices, just a constant barrage of notices and messages NOT from actual people.

After a couple of days I concluded that most (all?) of these dating apps are pay-to-play. You start off with some initial amount of matches, which drop off sharply - then nothing. I asked a friend in the same room if she could see me on Tinder, but no dice, I didn't even show up on her feed - though she came up on mine.

These apps used to be easy and fun - now they just feel like the most pushy and parasitic apps out there.

> Next time around I tried Tinder et. al. was a couple of years later(2018/2019), and I immediately noticed less matches, less convos, and the app being more pushy.

They also filter you based on age. When I turned 40+, everything changed in terms of presentation and matches literally the next day.

Isn’t turning 40 just likely to remove you from all users filtering up to 39, which sounds like a natural setting many users would choose?

Often those settings are ignored or fuzzy. Tinder also doesn't show you what someone else's settings are, so you can't game that. When I'd set my age ranges to 30+, I'd still see people younger than that because the person on the other end would put older ranges in. It is kind of a two way fuzzy search engine.

I built a super popular dating app right before Tinder came onto the market... our search was intentionally pretty fuzzy in this regard.

No, it’s not. You’re either both in each other’s ranges or one of you has the selection that says sometimes show people outside this range

I worked for a dating app.

They are scum.

Having worked there I could game their algorithms quite well.

#metoo

Show me the code.

If you could see the code, that’s the code you’d want to look at? I wanna see what my world ranking is lol

My point is show me the proof. None of the details of how their app works are public and you're telling me what I've seen from personal experience, isn't true.

What you describe matches perfectly with most users just putting their preferred age to 25-40 or something. No need to blame Tinder here.

No kidding. I'm not blaming Tinder, I'm describing my experience.

Unless I'm missing something, you haven't proved it's fuzzy either though. Many of these apps have a "make this setting strict" switch for age and distance, that makes both of you half right.

Maybe the part you're missing is that we are talking about Tinder from the response to the OP, downwards. We are not fuzzily talking about 'many of these apps'.

Maybe the part you're missing from my comment is that you have proven just as little yourself, and there is precedent for both.

Because you want to ignore that and nitpick that I mentioned other apps doing the same thing, as if that prevents Tinder from doing it, I went out of my way to get a screenshot of my own Tinder settings. What do you know? It's right here. "Only show people in this range" https://imgur.com/a/yt34L2b

Upon further reflection, I'm just going with "they were actually correct".

Nice that they finally added that feature. I've been in a relationship for the last N years and haven't looked at the app at all.

So yea... maybe they are actually correct, now.

Don't you think it's the user settings doing that to you? As in people setting their ages preferences on decades?

Harsh. You'd think they would work this on a spectrum...

You don’t look a day over 35 on a dating app.

I've been 29 for decades.

Ah yes, I totally want to find the love of my life and start it off with a lie about my age.

Play to win. You want to get in front of someone before a competing dating market participant does, and people are tolerant of “white lies” when necessary (“dating apps are the worst amirite?”). If you can’t excuse it away, work on your sales skills.

Hate the fact that third spaces have evaporated and you need a dating app to meaningfully participate in the dating marketplace, not that you have to take liberties with facts to increase your opportunities and potential to close into a relationship.

Tangentially, love is grown, not found. Find someone you can grow to love (ie trust and mutual respect, shared values and belief systems).

I met my ex-wife on Match. Things didn't work out in the long run (10 years) between us for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with online dating.

But, I certainly know that if I had lied initially, it would have never worked from the start.

Your attitude on this matter ("play to win" and "work on your sales skills") is what makes the whole scene really horrible. I feel for your partner, I wonder if they realize that is your train of thought.

After saying what you did, I find your advice at the end contradicts what you said above. "play to win"... but grow love with trust after lying about my age? Weird.

Married 15 years, together 20. My partner is aware what she’s dealing with, she finds my approach attractive (fwiw) and will encourage me to flirt in front of her. I am kind but also confident and direct. Win friends and influence people sort of thing.

I agree the dating marketplace is terrible, but you can’t change it, you can only change how you operate within in to arrive at a desired outcome. Would you own a business but do no sales or marketing because you find it icky? That’s a quick way to bankruptcy.

I am glad it works for you. I suspect you’re in the minority.

40-50% of first marriages fail. 60%+ of second marriages fail. This doesn’t account for relationships that never get to marriage and still fail.

That is to say that most relationship success is timing, luck, and emotionally healthy enough people (have to love yourself first before you can love someone else in a healthy way). I wish I had more actionable advice, but I don’t. Be a decent person, sell yourself, and get in front of as many (emotionally healthy) potential partners as possible. That’s it. I agree I am in the minority. I recognize luck for what it is, but try to encourage everyone to get more dice rolls in (see: this sub thread). I wish you luck and happiness.

> After a couple of days I concluded that most (all?) of these dating apps are pay-to-play.

It's definitely most and certainly feels like nearly all, especially once you start to notice just how many of these are all run by the same scummy corporation, Match Group [1]. Most of them are just thin skins over the same underlying terrible monetization platform.

Most of the dating apps that aren't from Match Group generally either have their best features stolen by Match Group and monetized and then out-competed to death or live long enough to see themselves become the villain and reaching for the same monetization dark patterns or even just exiting directly into Match Group.

(Among others, OKCupid was explicitly founded to be the hero against Match Group and eventually succumbed and was bought by Match Group. Tinder was built by whole cloth by Match Group to steal good ideas for features from smaller apps including but not limited to Bumble and was built to be an intentional slow boil-the-frog as it slowly added in other Match Group monetization features and then slowly started passing on its own features to the overall group "platform" as the features themselves stopped being the novelty. Now nearly all of Match Group's apps act like Tinder and swipe left/right.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group#Dating_services_ow...

The problem with all dating apps is the monetization. If you're truly successful on the app then you're no longer a customer.

I really don't know the solution to this problem but until someone solves it all dating apps will devolve into dark patterns.

I unironically think there should be a nonprofit or even government dating service, the market can't solve this

There is a dating app in my country that doesn’t have the option to chat, if you match you can only choose to meet up or not. If you do, you get to choose from one of the participating bars/coffee shops and you pay a small fee. That fee includes your first drink at the chosen place.

Basically, they monetize by setting people up on dates at specific places they have a deal with, driving customers to these places.

On the other hand you'd think people would flock to an alternative that actually works, while they're searching.

And truly successful in the sense 'never ever need the service again' probably has enough obstacles after the initial matching and dating phase that there could be a fair number of returning customers nonetheless.

Having enough users that could justifiably be called "customer" at all may be a catch of a different kind though. Can't say I know for sure, but I strongly suspect the network effects make it very difficult to attract useful amounts of people to match with to a purely paid service initially, even if it would be readily worth the fees to everyone involved if the system was already established with a large enough network.

Maybe it would have been neat if Musk had bought, and tried to reform, that major online dating service instead of the little bird company...

It's simple. An Escrow offer.

Explain the game to the user and make a package where the company reserves a large-ish sum on the credit card and they get to cash only when the user stops dating after a successful match.

The dating app doesn't make any money until a successful long-term. The dating app could also require feedback after dates, to both improve matching and verify that one user is not cheating.

If a couple colludes after they get i long-term relationship, they could continue dating... but it increases risks of cheating.

This aligns the interest of the daters and the dating company (less infrastructure expenses and also less risks from reserved but unpaid transactions).

There are open relationships, the app can learn to screen for people with profiles that are prone to that and avoid making the escrow offer.

Interesting idea for sure, but how do you distinguish between users successfully starting a relationship and those just not using the service anymore? Can I say "I did not find a relationship with that person and I'm not interested in looking again for a while"? If so, what would stop people from saying that even if it's untrue?

Also, it means zero monetization for people looking for single encounters and/or flings, which I would bet is a meaningful portion of Tinder's income.

Monetization is pretty straightforward, annual subscriptions, with equal access. Plenty of people will always be looking for love.

I am shocked at some of the prices I saw people paying? $100+ dollars/month to get a reasonable match? How much more monetization do you need there? A $60/year Strava subscription has done more for my love life than this.

A dating app for couples that help them keep the spark alive?

Wasn't that Ashley Madison?

Those exist. They send you weekly messages like "Try talking to your spouse!" "Try playing a board game!" "Have you considered wine?"

Having used these in the past to moderate at first and then later fairly poor effect, in retrospect this conclusion seems obvious. Huge profit making corporations don't care about your relationships, your self esteem, your sex life or whatever is important to you. They're not neutral actors. They will manipulate and distort whatever they feel is appropriate until it extracts the maximum amount of money from its platform.

If you think it's eroding your self image then you can be fairly sure they've tuned something to do that to you because they think it will encourage you to part money for the perception of romantic advantage, or because they think it'll get your eyeballs on some ads, or for some other reason that funnels it money. The best move both romantically and for mental health 90% of users can make is to go touch grass, stop pushing for a date so hard and wait for serendipity to do its thing.

It sounds like you discovered what getting old is like

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