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Comment by thr0w | Hacker News Reader

Funny thing is that when dating apps used to be "browse profiles, send message", nobody had to debate inner workings. Users could self select people of interest, send them a message directly, and know there'd be a very good chance that their profile/message would at least be seen.

Issue today is that apps control visibility, both in terms of profiles and likes. I've tried Hinge a few times. Did like a 4 month initial stint that had me consistently matching/meeting very attractive women (ones in the standouts section), tried it again a year later under a paid plan and had one mediocre match in 2 weeks (same photos and profile).

Skimmed the article so maybe this was addressed, but there's dark patterns happening on these apps, or faulty algos, or both.

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I think Hinge was better when it was new. Probably people who try a new, non-sleazy dating app early on are more serious about meeting someone and more active, so you get more and better matches.

One problem I’ve realized lately is that a lot of people are on dating apps because they feel like they have to be to meet someone, but they don’t actually enjoy chatting online and may not even be very good at it. Apps probably have a stage when they have a high percentage of “online” people who are just better at texting and, for better at worse, on their phones more.

Hinge has a great user interface undermined by the theme of deep intentional relationships

A lot of people join specific dating apps by the theme

So you get a large percent there just because of the pacing and look, and then a large percent of actual dates that are like “wait I thought casual hookups werent part of this app”

> Hinge has a great user interface

Why do you say so? IMO Hinge obscures all the relevant details of a persons profile into the tiny, horizontal scrolling thing. Age, location, family plans, etc. all crammed in here, and then the best real estate dedicated to stupid prompts that are almost invariably “I go crazy for… amazing food!” “One thing you should know about me… My ig @hotgirl”

I ran into the opposite a decade ago when I used dating sites. Many women would just be happy chatting forever through text or email to fill an emotional need and never want to meet in person (they could have been cheating, exploring, etc).

I would have a 2-week rule: If we didn't meet in person (or setup something in the future) within 2 weeks, I would move on.

This helped filter out the people that weren't interested in actually meeting.

Two weeks is a really long time. You should’ve cut that down to 3 days. You’re right about there being a lot of women on these platforms who just use it as a validation and emotional need tool. It’s probably most of the interactions men have on the app since these women would be prolific on them and clearly spend more time on the app than women who want to immediately meetup and get into a relationship.

I really dread the idea of having social media algorithms decide who gets to talk to who. This "browse profiles, send message" actually how I met my first boyfriend on /soc/!

"/soc/" Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. A long time...

> I really dread the idea of having social media algorithms decide who gets to talk to who.

We're getting there, whether that's dating apps controlling your stack of faces one at a time, or even seemingly innocuous things like this site's opaque comment ranking system.

These things happen by inches.

The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS. That in turn made demographics very skewed, which made the problem worse.

In fact I'd say being able to balance this gender imbalance is THE issue to solve for modern apps. Everything including monetization models is built around that.

"The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS."

Many women I know loved the attention and having the ability to choose.

Have you seen a woman using tinder? They absolutely have the ability to choose, almost every right swipe will be a match. Now they just have to give an ok before the pm notifications reaches them.

The current model is clearly preferred as tinder made dating apps mainstream.

As a gay dude who didn't experience it anyway, bumble did this (only the woman can message first otherwise men can't interact) and found that women eventually hated that as well. Obviously they just switch that whole feature off for us gay dudes.

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