Most dating apps sell and share users' personal data
foundation.mozilla.org
foundation.mozilla.org
Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
Dating apps changed the dynamics of meeting people to the worse in my experience and I'm sharing that experience.
Wow, talk about condescending.
You’re not wrong about what dating apps have changed but don’t discount issues others have faced that you may not have.
I think the specific activity is less important than whether it's done by a community or not. That's especially true if you're the kind of person who has trouble connecting quickly with new people.
Some of those things (e.g. volunteering, gyms) can turn out to be relatively solo activities or have a lot of people treating them as such.
> Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
I agree with that broadly, but I think if "finding someone" is on your list of priorities, you should try to gravitate to things with a larger group or a just-right amount of churn.
Imho, if you're joining a group with a goal of meeting people to possibly have a relationship with, you want a group that:
- Is a community (people stay in it)
- Is growing or has turnover
- Has enough of a connection to make friends
That's the way things used to be done before social/dating apps -- "Hi, have you met ____? I think the two of you have a lot in common..."
And by and large, it worked pretty well. Who better to matchmake than people who actually know both of you?
I feel like some uncomfortably large fraction of consumer-focused tech is like that: take something that worked, and replace it by some new-shiny junk-food like thing that's actually worse in all important ways.
There are plenty people around looking to have a date, and maybe more. The big caveat is meeting someone who's a match.
If you want to reel in a fish, you will inevitably have thrown out your line many times and come up empty handed.
The elephant in the room is learning how to confront your own feelings regarding rejection in a healthy way. This is true regardless of how and where you meet others.
My favorite group activity is sleeping together with lesbians.
Even the stock price of Match Group reflects that. They were in moderate use before and then had a few good years during before falling off a cliff. People who had, up until that point, not bothered trying to use these apps gave them a shot and then ran away.
It's never been all that difficult to ask someone out anyway. Discovery of new people got easier when things opened back up. People now make it a point to go out when they didn't before.
I was always too shy to ask a stranger for her number, but do remember a push to make that inappropriate in the 2010s (though that might have been more of an angry online feminist thing, the gist was asking someone for their number was a non-consensual imposition, thus harassment, while online dating was consensual).
People (male and female) need to take ownership of the difference between being uncomfortable and assaulted, because they're very different things.
If I ask someone for their number, and they're not comfortable giving it, they say "No thanks." I hear that and I say "No problem! It was nice meeting you" and then forget about it (or leave, as appropriate to the situation).
There's discomfort in life, because we're not all psychic.
Attempting to normalized discomfort out of life is just going to end up in some weird fun house mirror world, where we're still doing the same things, just through proxies or at arm's length.
I don't think I would go through the dating app shit show again if I were to be single again.
Once you're out of college, it's a sorry state. Dating apps get worse because these companies know that the alternatives owing to the always-online life are not great.
Asking someone out in itself is the same as it always was, what has changed is appropriate opportunities to capitalize on.
Is that really the case?
I think people feel the need to go out, especially when they are single. Not necessarily for dating purpose but when you have nobody to talk to at home you look more easily at danse/gym classes, sports club, art events, etc.
I've done most of the aforementioned examples, and gyms have not been a place to socialize very much; people are there to train on a schedule, then leave. Sports clubs can be more forgiving but it depends on what you're doing (dancing may be better). I played competitive team sports as an adult a few times and unless you were already part of some in-group, making friends is not that easy. People play then go home.
I had the largest returns (socially-speaking) in book clubs and similar groups like that.
Like I have a few friends who met people within the group of their crossfit/whatever fitness class it was and when I am passing by on the seafront I very often see people doing sports with a coach, some of them having a chat when they are finishing up and wrapping their yoga bag and stuff.
Without coming off sexist, it seems very apparent that a lot of women just use these apps for some attention and have no intention of actually meeting up. Ymmv.
Or meeting people through work (though I wouldn't recommend that one generally on the basis of “don't shit where you eat”, I've seen it work for others).
Or through hobbies (I know a few people who have found partners in the trail running community, for instance).
Or just being happy single. Or, at least, no less happy than you feel you'd be with a partner. Take it from me, someone who is content to be an honorary mad cat lady, it can be a decent life.
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and every now & than they try to fix me by trying to nag me into the dating game. I'm not against dating, or finding a partner, I just don't care for it enough to make much effort, I'm not willing to lie about that or pretend to be someone I'm not more generally, and I doubt potential partners will find that very appealing!
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and feel like lesser people because they are single, which is possibly why people often assume my PoV is something I'm pretending about. And some just want the physical side of things, and see dating/relationships as a gateway to that, and they again see me as odd (or lying) when I say I can happily live without it.
I've never been single for more than a couple of months in my adulthood and I don't see myself as particularly attractive. But everytime I met my new long time partners it was at a moment where I was not really in a mood to enter a new relationship and was pretty much looking forward to spend some time single. But that probably means I was more attractive and looking less like a predator than men who were actively looking. The funny part is that on 2 occasions I used dating apps because as much as I wanted to stay single, I wasn't against the occasional sex but was underwhelmed by the experience and it resulted in very few dates. I've never been much into "marketing" and didn't want to reveal too much which probably didn't help.
We literally have scientific research showing that loneliness is just as bad for health as smoking, so please stop with this "you can be happy single" meme, it's not even funny at this point.
There's something about modern society that completely breaks the most basic human interactions, leaving people absurdly lonely. It's a pattern that can be seen in all countries: as the society gets more developed, people stop spending time with each other. What it exactly is remains elusive, but if the same statistic shows up across completely different cultures, then it's ignorant at best and evil at worst to put the blame on individuals for failing to thrive in an environment that sets them up for failure.
Evolution didn't create a self-consistent mixture of drives and desires (that wasn't a priority). To me, it's not a mystery how revealed preference is at odds with the biological Ponzi scheme of having kids, suffering, and dying after preparing them to repeat the cycle. That sucks. If you have better alternatives, you take them.
Where in my post did I say I was lonely? Not having a relationship partner does not imply being lonely: I spend plenty of time with friends, family, and other people in my hobbies. Being single does not necessarily correlate with being lonely, in fact loneliness is a common problem for people in bad relationships. So while some single people are undoubtably lonely and many people who describe themselves as lonely are single, there is a huge pile of nuance between the two concepts.
But the relationship project, as a concept, isn't "two is better than one"; in a world where we met a lot of people (a thing rapidly receding into the past), you eventually met someone with whom your chemistry is so overwhelmingly, irrationally powerful that you feel like you can't afford not to be with them, which blows the joys of being single out of the water.
That might be obvious to people, but it's been a while since I was reminded about that feeling. When I remembered, I realized I was thinking about relationships the wrong way. :p Dating apps also skew your thinking, where you're picking from a menu, engaging your rational brain about what ingredients add up to good chemistry. "If they're `x`, that's a deal breaker. They need to be `y`! Also, I want someone who `z`s..." There's no rational analysis though; it's the least rational thing ever. You just have to try enough times.
That might also not be the sole motivator for people who feel lonely being single (a thing I can't really relate to, thankfully -- being in a relationship just cuz I have to sounds like hell).
If you pointed a gun to my head, I'm pretty sure I could think of a reason why someone would want to use Tinder.
I am stealing that line!
Even if you're already paying for the service!
I was listening on the radio to an interview with a "privacy journalist" the other day. He said that paid services are likely not collecting your info. This is simply not true. You can't make any assumptions here. I think most people don't seem to care because what's happening behind the curtain is not exactly obvious.
It's the only way to meet people and will become even moreso over time.
The market is not very effective at addressing second order inefficiencies and abstract privacy violations. How can you expect a random person to accurately value the tradeoff vs the service given?
This kind of stuff we need regulation to handle.
It makes sense that their actual product would be near-total access to data from people ignorant of the value of this data and behavior on these apps.
Anyway, dating apps are garbage for the majority of men. You’re better off just going to a bar or social events and playing the numbers game in the meat market.
The solution is to turn that asset into a liability. Add unlimited downside (corporate death) for a company that loses control of personal data that they’ve harvested. Turn that oil into radioactive. waste.
Even my state's DMV sells my data as a side business. I guess if I want out of that I can ride my bicycle in the woods.
The other big thing is that not knowing things about people makes it harder to control them. So, data is useful for the government as well, and commercially gathered data is a subpoena away from them to access.
So right now, privacy is a hard sell. The individuals don't like it, because it makes thing inconvenient* or inaccessible*. It's a hard sell for companies, because they can turn it into income by selling or using it for advertising themselves. And it's a hard sell for the governments as well, because private people are harder to control.
* I mean inconvenience like when migrating an E2E encrypted messaging app from device to device, and no way to share message history, because of the encryption.
* Inaccessible, as in applications refusing to work if not given specific permissions
That also goes for terrible security, and awful UX.
Oh lord.
>some of those AI features in the future, such as a paywalled chatbot boyfriend
Ohhhh I do not want to talk to what that chatbot is going to turn into.
It is interesting though, even if the company itself wasn't doing it a third party could mine for a lot of data as well. So I don't really know what the solution here is.
That being said it is incredibly frustrating that yet again, paying to be premium and remove ads does nothing about the privacy issue.
How so? Aren't there gay friendly places in every city nowadays?
All my LTR in IRL have started offline and with people I knew in some other IRL context. Online dating apps never led anywhere but the bedroom briefly then straight back on the app. That's just me, no knock on people who have formed successful relationships that started online. Or people who just want naked bedroom gymnastics. Or serial daters, or anyone for whom dating apps dynamics might actually work.
Would it be too cynical to posit dating app algorithms optimize around short term relationships to prevent customer churn? Users must be successful enough to continue subscribing to the platform but not so successful they cancel. Do we even get into OnlyFans 'creators' using dating apps as marketing channels (there are guides online instructing people how to do this, looking at you r/)? Is it too cynical to suggest that social media in general hijacked nascent online communities in the 90s in order to make the world safer for advertising? Anything grassroots and authentic was mowed down and paved over. It wasn't an online paradise, but it is now an virtual parking lot.
The major problem IMO is that the goals of the company (revenue) and the goals of the users (relationships) are misaligned. The companies are most successful when users are only marginally successful or given a proxy illusion of success, because that keeps the subscription revenue flowing. If two users meet and continue offline, bam, two users cancel (excluding poly folk). Companies exploit users' goals to bait them into subscriptions, trick them into surrendering private data, etc.
I feel this way about a lot of modern technology platforms. The goals of social media companies (adtech revenue) are misaligned with the users (community), so that these adtech nee social media companies are motivated to drive engagement even when there is a cost to online communities and society as a whole. Feeds of family and friends devolve into clickbait doomscrolls. Algorithms optimize on inciting rage, because rage drives engagement. It is a powerful emotion. Programmed by evolution us meatbags have our attention optimized towards potential threats. That rage spills offline into deeply divisive politics.
I've opted out of adtech. DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Last month I finally deleted my Facebook account after years of neglect. I'd only kept it to log on to third party sites but never actually used it for that even. I've started a broad retreat from much of the Internet and I don't think it is simple fatigue -- I've been online for over three decades. Monetization drives enshittification and it is has spread like a virus until most of the online landscape is infected. I feel that most sites and apps are only after my attention, my personal data, my money. 90% of the time if I want to look something up I go directly to Wikipedia instead of a search engine. I'm probably just going to pick Wikipedia anyway after I wade through all the ads and marginal sites in the search results. After all the paywalls. I use ChatGPT instead of searching for stuff like simple programming syntax -- sorry Stackoverflow, you were probably the least worst for years, but I'm relieved that AI is doing the work of grinding through dozens of pages to find a helpful answer.
I've subscribed to Coursera to fill the void so that if I am idle and pick up a device, instead of doomscrolling I'll learn something about machine learning. I've mercilessly cancelled most other online subscriptions, beating the lobster trap (easy in, hard out) and surprise renewals and the unsubscribe gauntlet (are you sure you want to cancel -- what about 90% off for the next 6 months?. I funnel that money into a monthly voluntary donation to Wikipedia.
I guess it comes down to ad tech burnout. Tired of monetization. Tired of algorithms optimizing on outcomes beneficial to corporations and even detrimental to me. I'm not seeking experiences online anymore, too many billboards in the way.
Writing this I realize my online experiences had devolved into a litany of crappy marketing tactics. It's almost funny that the first thing a lot of companies seem to think about with generative AI is automating customer service with chatbots, saving money by having less authentic engagement with customers. Predictable and perfect. It's also hilarious that all the content scrapers are screaming about genAI scraping their scraped content. It's the online content ouboros eating it's own AI generated tail.
This is what happens when we seek to monetize all human experience. We need new algorithms, new metrics, new gods, another drink ... </rant> #adtech #corporatesurveillance #monetization #trollingisthenewmarketing #notabot
I don't want to detract from the article, but whenever I see this I think "we know that already, but now what are you going to do about it?" and their answer is "invest in AI safety!"