I totally agree with you, and I would go even further. I'm actually furious that an essential part of human social life has become commoditised by a for-profit industry led by publicly-traded corporations. It being almost a monopoly, hidden to "consumers" [0] under an illusion of choice, is only the poop cherry on top of the whole steaming pile of crap.
One of my fantasies to become a millionaire (from a starting point of billionaire) is to establish an open source, transparent, non-profit and community-based online platform and app whose only mission is to help people meet someone with whom they are happy to meet and viceversa. Imagine a dating app but:
- Nothing encouraging "power users", even discouraging match accumulation.
- No gamification, other than configurable by user choice.
- No secret algorithms for rating. Instead, a choice of open community-developed algorithms for the swipe queue (if swiping is your thing, you can also filter and sort by query).
- No falsifying the potential dating pool size to keep users hooked. Do not show the profile of user A to user B, even if A fits B's filters, if B does not fit A's filters such that A would not see them.
- User engagement KPI in the denominator, not the numerator—the numerator being user reported success and personal satisfaction. The less time spent for good results, the better.
- No "pay to win". Instead of that, please donate if you win.
My dream would be to create a dating(?) platform, nay, a human relationship platform, with no perverse economic incentives that conflict with users matching. I would hope it could be So Damn Good that anyone looking for a date, or a shag, or a FWB, or to meet people to see where it goes, or whatever would feel like a chump to fall for Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, etc. Let swiping and notification addicts continue to use those for-profit games. Meanwhile, people wanting a human connection could stick to the platform that cares to make it as likely as possible.
Unfortunately, the only thing stopping me from doing this is that I have no plan in motion to become a billionaire such that I can finance this idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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[0] No, damnit, searching for a relationship, a fling, a connection, is not an act of consumption, it is an act of basic fucking humanity!