and reminder, these places make more money if you don’t find a match. they are actively disincentivized from doing their stated job.
same is true for companies like incogni. if mass data harvesting is made illegal, they’re out of a job. and many of them are owned by companies that also own data brokers. the removal process is often just sending your data to a data broker and asking if they have it, which obviously just hands that data right over in the process. they will make more money from data harvesting staying legal and they know it.
As a reminder, you can make your own dating site if you think you could do better. And there is huge financial incentive to do better. Say you make a dating site that actually effectively finds people good matches quickly and easily. Millions, if not billions of people would flock to your site, and you could name your price to use your service.
Since I’ve been online, I’ve seen a lot of different dating sites with different formats and gimmicks. Craigslist personals, OK Cupid (the old style), Grindr, Tinder, r4r, Bumble, Hinge, Fruitz, Badoo, Feeld, along with countless others that never took off. Match group doesn’t have a stranglehold on the industry. Any of their competitors could become “the dating site that actually gets you good matches” if they wanted. And since dating apps are purely digital, it would cost zero money to make an open source version and collapse the whole industry. So why hasn’t anyone done that? Why does it seem like online dating engages in a constant cycle of novelty, rather than ever getting better?
Well, probably because the fundamental problem is not solveable by software: people want to “date up”, but don’t want to improve themselves. It’s like Ronnie Coleman said - “Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weights.” If you made a dating app that told people what their problem was - “The person you just liked is an instagram model, but you are not instagram-model-hot, go hit the gym” - then no one would use it.
Is that why they all feel the same and suck equally?
OKCupid used to be great. Felt different. Less corporate I guess. Easier to talk to people. Was shit the last time I checked a handful of years ago.
Fun Fact: OKCupid used to be SparkNotes, which used to be a CliffNotes type site. Then they started doing user generated quizes. Which X-Men would you be? Then it was randomly a dating site one day.
Back in the day, TheSpark.com used to be unhinged and a lot of fun. The Stinky Meat Project was so stupid, but so dedicated, that I couldn’t help following along. And the quizzes were a great way to abuse poorly supervised time with computers at school, too!
It sucks getting old, but I’m grateful for the time we got online before it became all this.
OKC changed its model because it was losing marketshare to Tinder. Now they are both owned by the same company - but I would guess the two sites operate largely independently and try to compete with each other, since from the parent company’s perspective, two services trying to outcompete each other will drive eachother to also outcompete outside competition.
Oh god the quizzes, I almost forgot about those.
It’s almost a shame they didn’t use them for their matching algorithm. I could’ve found the Dr. Jean Grey for my Cyclops. 😏
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Isn’t their reason for existence now just to harvest your data?
Many of the sites charge subscriptions. They exist to make money no matter how they do it.
Could we have a fediverse dating app? What would it look like? How would we go about it?
There have been some solutions but they usually face two problems:
- Small userbase due to lack of commercials and aggressive attempts to make users stay there as long as possible
- No advanced matching algorithms due to high costs of their maintenance. No ELO. Then we turn back to the userbase and marketing question: people with completely different interests or “look ranges” see each other all the time and their high expectations and standards make them bored on such apps. I’d be very happy to know any FOSS app that defeated these problems but such issues are pretty much universal.
Can you point me in the direction of these failed attempts? I’m tempted to try something similar and would rather learn from others’ mistake first.
Alovoa.com need improvment
Pour one out for the greatest dating website of all time, Craigslist Personals. You just posted a picture, wrote literally whatever essay you wanted, and you could subscribe to custom search results as an RSS feed.
The back door Craigslist adds were the best, prostitution unleashed
Pour one out for Okcupid. In its heyday it was such a fun site.
I met my wife there 14 years ago. I feel bad for people who are dating now. Seems bad out there.
Changend ownership since. They got bought out.
Good on them. It really felt like a genuine attempt by a few math nerds back in the day, if you read the blog. Hope they made bank.
Though I never met The OneTM on there, I had a few hook-ups that I really needed at the time. If I hadn’t already met The OneTM through other means at that time, I would’ve abandoned ship as soon as I heard that it got sold.
Wait til you learn about local news.
Break them up. Fine them for anti competitive practices. Bar their leadership from working similar roles for life. The solutions are easy.
The solutions are easy.
The concept of the solution is easy. The act of carrying it out is difficult because humans like taking bribes from rich people. And corporations. Oops, I forgot corporations are people in America.
Except they can’t get the same punishment as people like ‘going to jail’ and will instead get a stern talk or maybe even gasp a slap on the wrist
Perhaps I should have written “simple” instead of “easy”.
But yes, the road to implementing solutions is blocked by rich people and class traitors.
And bumble and even a Japanese dating app it says lol
I would be curious as to who owns that company. What investment group?
Your question got me interested, so I took a look.
https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NASDAQ/MTCH/institutional-ownership/
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/MATCH-GROUP-INC-111381420/company-shareholders/
Conflicting answers on Vanguard’s investment, they seem to have divested recently. But Blackrock is the largest at around 12%, all other companies with holdings are dwarfed by their share. Also, there’s only one single person in the board + c-suite that’s been there since before 2020. If I were more conspiratorial, I’d start drawing lines here.
1 - you are awesome. That is some decent research QUICK that I am not as inclined as you to do. 2 - glad you keep a level head. The lines turn into threads, and threads turn into full blown garments. And before you know it you have undone your own fabric of reality. Unable to stitch the tattered scraps back together…
Ask me how I know.
Be careful with institutional ownership as a metric, as many if not most companies that are publicly traded will have high percentages of institutional ownership. Blackrock and Vanguard, for example, have many, many Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds that are part of normal retirement savings practices without there being anything shady going on.
MTCH fell out of the S&P 500 earlier this year which may be why Vanguard divested some going off what new_world_odor said. I can’t get searches to exactly line up on which iShares (the Blackrock ETF side of their house) hold MTCH. There are some funds that have charters about how they’ll track an index, so when it fell out of the S&P 500 those funds had to get rid of it or shift those shares internally.
I wonder why they had such a huge drop, though. It looks like their stock shot up during COVID and is kind of falling back down to “historical” levels for something that went public in 2015.
I wonder if you will find real people, real connections if you create a profile that contradicts what you are looking for.
You want an outdoorsy, travelling, generally adventurous personality to travel the world with. If you ask for that, they’re going to match you with introverted hermits.
Ask for hermit homebodies. You’ll find your Ellie.
Consider the chance that they built an algorithm that matches you with failures to keep you coming back to the platform.
That’s a losing game. If you think the website is hostile, then don’t use it at all.
Yep. it’s essentially a ridiculous, yet somehow legal racket.
And they convinced several generations that using them is necessary for dating.
My experience using Bumble was great. I treated it as a background task that I want expecting immediate results from. When I was killing time, I’d swipe instead of using socials. When I matched, I’d chat briefly to see if she seemed ok, but then quickly asked to meet. Found my wife using it. My adult daughter found someone on Hinge and he’s great. I’d recommend trying apps to everyone looking.
Yeah, I won $50 with scratch offs one time… I don’t recommend trying the lottery.
It somewhat is for some people. Like where are you going to meet people of the opposite gender? I don’t think most women want to be hit on at work, gym, grocery stores, whatever. Men are starved enough for attention that many of us will appreciate any, anywhere, anytime, but I’m not into guys.
We need a real-life amulet of Mara tbh.
Except third spaces have been systematically dismantled by capitalist interests, and the dating app industry’s astroturfing on social media has done a lot of damage to the perceived validity of meeting someone in person organically.
You can’t just say dating apps are necessary because there’s nowhere else to meet people and ignore the fact that that very problem is socially engineered. It’s manufactured scarcity.
Like if nestle were to poison a town’s water supply so that they could sell more water bottles. After buying out deer park, dasani, and aquafina. And patenting the idea of selling water in bottles. You wouldn’t say “actually it’s necessary to buy their water bottles,” you would say “that’s fucked up and should be illegal.”
Agreed on third spaces, but it’s mostly because of car-centric city design and everyone having to work 40h or more a week (leaves little time to even visit those spaces). The dating apps have capitalised on it, but the change has been happening since before them. And also drinking has fallen out of fashion with young people… Bars and clubs were a major place to meet new people in the past. If you look at the statistics now, Gen Z barely drinks at all. In my country, most clubs are shutting down because people under 50 barely go and people over 50 are starting to get too old to go. Bars are still fairly popular among younger people, but not as much as even a decade ago.
In my neck of the woods bars and clubs are closing down because mayors don’t like noise that’s not tourist-appealing…
The oldest dance club in the entire region (opened in the 1970s) has recently shut down 'cos the city allowed some dumb-ass to open an AirBnB next door and he complained about the noise… and the courts aren’t being kind…
Another club that was the go-to place for live indie rock concerts has closed down due to the mayor coming up with bullshit excuses (the real reason being it’s in a fancy area coveted by real-estate agencies).
Even before these started running into issues, a derelict shopping mall was sorta taken over by bands that used it for rehearsal and such, had a bar and the spot for metal concerts… mostly dead 'cos, you guessed it, mayor thinks that would be a great place for yet another hotel.
It’s not that 50+ are getting old (although we are) is that the only places left are multiple copies of the same old BS that only young drunk german or brit tourists like.
Fucked up timeline.
Yeah, an iconic bar in my country is being hounded into shutting down because the dare make noise till 3 AM. Very close to the city center and other bars, but juuuuust a bit away so there’s a few apartment buildings nearby.
They’ve been there for ages. Since 2008 in that particular building according to Wikipedia. Not the oldest bar by any means, but if you’re a foreign exchange student, you’ll find your way there 100% and they host LGBT events among the many, many other things they do.
I do hope they’ll get to stay. Whoever started complaining about the noise is a fucking idiot. Wouldn’t even be surprised if they moved there BEACUSE of the proximity to the bar and other great third places, but have now decided it’s not for them. Because it’s such a coveted location, you have to pay a lot to rent or buy an apartment in that area.
The wildest part is that all those apps in post basically useless, even if you pretty — girls there in free market basically, where they can choose anyone who messaged them, there no point for them to seek attention first.
And in just a minute after registering on grindr I got hit on multiple times. So yeah, I guess I’m gay now.
So if all the single men become gay the problem will solve its self!
Or we just need more mtf women.
Sorry, best I can do is a JoJo villain. Take it or leave it
Sounds good to me!
Congratulations, I guess.
Good for you, I sometimes wish I was gay because it sounds easier lol
My advice for dating has always been: focus on making friends first. Meet people from work, sign up for a class, rekindle with old friends, volunteer somewhere. Just make new guy and girl friends, don’t go in looking for anything more.
You start inviting people for stuff, you’ll get invited to stuff. Then other people might show up to, friends of friends, relatives, etc… Such and such might not be into you, but she has a cousin the same age. Or such and such is a cool friend and he has a female best friend he brings along to parties.
Worst case scenario you are single and have a really healthy social life. Then when you least expect it… bam someone falls out from somewhere you never expected. lol
You don’t have to hit on strangers, the ideal person to proposition is a friend of a friend. So start by getting friends, then tastefully flirt with their friends.
Absorbing other companies is illegal under anti-trust, but taking a company as a subsidiary is not, which is the workaround for anti-trust. It gives the false illusion of competition being available.
Absorbing other companies is illegal under anti-trust
Huh?
anti-trust
As if that were a thing anymore.
Someone needs to patch that hole but we know the current government won’t…
Federated dating app when?
Fedivr
OKCommune?
OnlyMLs
okcommie
OKComrade - we ONLY swipe left
Our date
When someone wants to moderate it.
Hint: ain’t nobody want that
Moderation would be a nightmare, especially since Lemmy is used within many jurisdictions.
Don’t a lot of instances just bother with laws in the host country though?
I think it can be replaced with the group chat in matrix.
There no point in making dating app for 5 users.
There is an open source one at least: https://alovoa.com/
From my tests, it is full of fake bot account, bugs (my account simply vanished, twice, without reason), and moderation is basically nonexistent.
None of my 30+ interactions was with a genuine human, all of them were crypto scams, or similar scams.
It comes from a good idea, but god it is badly done.
Makes perfect sense! How many companies would you expect to own all the popular dating sites? 5? 10?
Of course not! There should only be one company controlling entire markets, it’s the American way 🤡
Here are all the sites the match group owns. All of the ‘* people meet’ sites are making me laugh.
Archer Asian People Meet Babyboomer People Meet BB People Meet Black Christian People Meet Black People Meet Black Professional People Meet BLK Catholic People Meet Chinese People Meet Chispa Delightful Democratic People Meet Divorced People Meet Genxpeoplemeet Her Hinge Indiamatch Interracial People Meet Italian People Meet J People Meet Latino People Meet Ldsplanet Little People Meet Loveandseek Marriage Minded People Meet Match.com Match Japan OkCupid Ourtime Pairs People Meet Pet People Meet Plenty of Fish Republican People Meet Salams Seniorblack People Meet Single People Meet Sniffies (minority stake)[63][64] Stir The League Tinder Upward Yuzu
If you want each entry to appear on a new line, you need to put two spaces at the end of each line.
Line 1
Line 2If you want a paragraph break, use two newlines
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2
If you want each entry to appear on a new line, you need to put two spaces at the end of each line.
Line 1 Line 2
Interesting, I had no idea and always wondered what was the deal with line breaks here. I only know how to do the paragraph breaks. Thanks!
Archer
Asian People Meet
Babyboomer People Meet
BB People Meet
Black Christian People Meet
Black People Meet
Black Professional People Meet
BLK
Catholic People Meet
Chinese People Meet
Chispa
Delightful
Democratic People Meet
Divorced People Meet
Genxpeoplemeet
Her
Hinge
Indiamatch
Interracial People Meet
Italian People Meet
J People Meet
Latino People Meet
Ldsplanet
Little People Meet
Loveandseek
Marriage Minded People Meet
Match Japan
OkCupid
Ourtime
Pairs
People Meet
Pet People Meet
Plenty of Fish
Republican People Meet
Salams
Seniorblack People Meet
Single People Meet
Sniffies (minority stake)[63][64]
Stir
The League
Tinder
Upward
Yuzu
I tried Yuzu, but the only one who wanted to fuck me was Nintendo.
For a list of items like this, it makes sense to use either an ordered list
1. Item one 2. Item two 3. Item threeor an unordered list
- Item one - Item two - Item threeneither of which require extra spaces or extra newlines
The problem is converting the list to point form. I would have used bullet points if it was easier than spacing
A bit of an advanced technique that I use often: Paste the list into a text editor like VSCodium, then use find/replace (in regex mode) to add a hyphen and a space to the beginning of each line, then copy all and paste that into Lemmy.
Find:
^Replace:
-Or in vim you can do the same regex replace thing with
:%s/^/-Or as I like to do sometimes without regex
:%norm I-Sure, but I’m surfing 100% on my phone
I use Joplin for this purpose on mobile.
You can also put a backslash before the new line
Like\ this.Like
this.I
had
NO
idea.
Thank
you!!!
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