Meeting people from dating apps is quite literally the opposite of that: one person at a time, extremely short period of time, they can pretend, no or little interactions with third parties (how they treat a waiter maybe).
I honestly believe that making workplace dating something frowned upon (or even a terminable offence sometimes) was a huge disservice to society. People spends most of their adult life going to work but are supposed to squeeze the search for a partner into the little time and energy that remains outside of work.
Also, the whole concept of finding your significant other by ONLY going out on dates is... kinda broken in concept? It's not really that hard to pretend to be someone else for a few hours a week.
An awful person gets to just reset their reputation every time, and in turn, people assume the worst by default.
I'm sure a lot of couples met through friends of friends but the date with someone you barely know has always been a thing, I believe.
Just in case you were serious I think they meant clubs like a sewing circle, crown green bowling, tennis, the local brass band, civic action groups, etc. In other words associations of one kind or another, in tech. terms special interest groups.
(I'm gay, but I listen to and observe a lot of straight people in their natural habitats).
because the owner of the business do not want relationship frictions to affect people's work.
Another example is that most economists admit that as women entered the workforce en masse, prices settled higher for the same goods and services. Now survival requires two incomes instead of one. It was a massive net loss to society, but we also agree that women should be free to work if they would like, without barriers. We see similar things with women becoming educated. The more educated women become, the fewer children they have. That's really bad for society, but we also want women to be free to become as educated as they like.
Sadly I see no easy solutions here because it requires weighing individual and societ-wide rights. Companies aren't going to risk higher rates of misconduct to benefit society broadly. These are collective action problems, and unless we find ways of individualising the problem, they're only going to get worse.
I knew a lot of dudes who just agonized over what to say next, as if there was an optimal response or something. Turns out, treating the person on the other side like a real human you want to get to know because you plan on soending a lot of time together is a much better frame than 'How do I convince this stranger that I'm so super cool or hot'
If you can get to that point, it doesn't matter what space you end up in. Like Frank Herbert once said, a place is only a place
Singles mixers and speed dating exist specifically for this, but those come with their own problems - one needs to be confident to approach others, social enough to navigate a group environment, comfortable with receiving and providing rejection, which is much less subtle than in apps where a chat just dies, and so on.
Does Singapore lack these spaces? The last time I was there I saw lots of people hanging out in hawker centers, malls, and their pubic gardens.
Malls are very much illusion of socialization since businesses there have no incentive to keep you around - spend the money and go away.