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Comment by ozzyphantom | Hacker News Reader

After finding my partner on Hinge (following years of dating apps, setups, and in-person approaches), I've reflected on this journey. Despite the countless disappointing dates, the 3-year struggle ultimately proved worthwhile.

However, I'm troubled by how profit motives distort online dating. The business model incentivizes engagement over meaningful connections, creating a system where genuine relationships feel like marketing bait for swipe addiction.

Hinge worked best for me and several friends, but I suspect its designers know how to better facilitate connections—improvements they avoid implementing because they would hurt revenue.

This has sparked my interest in creating an open-source, non-profit dating platform—one designed to address loneliness without answering to shareholders who prioritize metrics over human well-being.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever go through with it but I think it would be a worthwhile project to consider.

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I think it's a fantastic idea! Having met 90% of my girlfriends through dating apps, I've watched them all gradually morph into Tinder clones with dark patterns and steep monthly fees ($20-$50). It's terrifying to think you might never meet your future spouse because you accidentally swiped left on a touchscreen.

I used to really like OkCupid. Old school OkC reminded me of Bantr from Ted Lasso, it was more personality-driven. You'd answer hundreds of questions and see compatibility scores with people nearby. Even though that might be a questionable metric (I actually enjoy dating people different from me), it was interesting to sort by inverse and see who I was supposedly incompatible with.

What I love most about meeting through apps is how low-pressure it feels. There's no second-guessing about whether they're interested, if they're single, or worrying that you're bothering them. A dating app that actually tries to help people connect instead of sucking us dry through backtrack fees would be amazing.

I have no knowledge of the non-profit space, how would you initially fund something like that?

A non-profit dating platform probably means you don’t charge much- which initially seems good, but it probably also means you’ll attract a bunch of users who aren’t serious because they have nothing at risk. So the people who are seriously looking for a relationship will be lost in all the casual users. Sure, you could make people deposit a bunch of money to prove they’re serious but you’ll lose all your users.

If you can figure out how to select people seriously looking for a relationship without becoming a pay to play app then it would be popular. But so far nobody knows how to do that. Or maybe someone does know but they won’t do it because there’s no profit in it.

Also likely is attracting a lot of bots and scammers and not having the resources to keep the platform focused on real people.

Isn’t it the usual case that dating app users do not pay?

That is the case, but practically this entire comment section is about how the usual dating apps suck. GP was commenting about how they hoped they could build a better app, and I was pointing out an issue that is likely to keep it from being successful.

You could charge a lot and only not have dark patterns :-). Nothing says you have to charge a little because you are open-source/foss.

Yes. Make it a one time payment that is sufficiently large and you remove the pressure to retain users. In fact, it would be the opposite; find a great match as soon as possible to get the user off your platform.

Take a deposit and refund part of it when you prove you have a marriage certificate. Will you be my McBride?

Another idea I had to play a role in solving that issue (not that I’ve really thought too deeply about it yet) is, similar to how the free version of Hinge works, greatly limiting the amount of likes you can send in a day. Perhaps with greater limit for women since all data shows that men need to send many times more likes for much fewer matches. However, there is no paid tier where you get more like or anything like that, obviously. Because then it would be just like every other app.

Is it possible to root out everyone who “isn’t serious”? Definitely not, but I think there’s a lot more that can be done when you remove a profit motive.

I appreciate your empathetic need to help, but the answer is not more tech, no matter how that tech is funded. It's less tech. As a species we have to return to more local life where we grow up knowing those around us, including the opposite sex, and pair off that way. Humans did not evolve to live in gigantic cities of millions of people and be able to select mates from the entire dating app population (I include Facebook and Instagram in that). The way our instincts want to select mates works best in local groups, like how we lived as a species thousands of years ago.

Yeah, having a community of people that love each other and can learn about one person's relative over here who might be a good match for another person's relative over there is a nice way to facilitate such networking.

Of course, those kinds of situations depend on the goodness of those doing the matchmaking, i.e. there must be no money changing hands (to coerce anyone), and the happiness of the potential couple must be the primary goal.

Getting one's selfish motives out of any interaction is a root problem in the human world, especially in many old-world cultures where women's rights don't count for shit. The sooner those old cultures are reformed, the better.

Girl Power!

> As a species we have to return to more local life where we grow up knowing those around us

This only works if the local people accept you. I know many LGBT people who aren’t accepted by those around them. Personally, I left everyone I grew up around because I couldn’t find friends or work.

I don’t completely disagree with you but I don’t think that’s very realistic to be honest.

Plus, in my experience, I felt very similarly in that I wanted to meet someone in “real life”. That felt important to me, to have some kind of story about how the relationship began that wasn’t “we met on Hinge”.

But after meeting that person, after so much trying and heartbreak and struggle, I realized how much I don’t care at all how we met. Just that I’m so happy to have them in my life.

Meeting in person is awesome, but having a companion who feels like your person isn’t diminished because you met on a dating app in my opinion and experience.

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