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I tried Tinder for the first time and it's genuinely awful. (reddthat.com)
submitted 5 days ago* by to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
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It's so obviously designed primarily to get you to spend money on it, not to help you meet people. Some people have liked me, but despite daily swiping, I have no matches. It's clearly hiding them to get me to pay. On top of that, I had to verify my profile several times as well because I kept getting locked out of my account. It also deleted my bio because it thought I was sharing a social media handle (because how dare you chat to somebody outside of Tinder).

And before anyone calls me a fool for continuing to use it, I'm deleting my account right now lol.

When it comes to dating, nothing tops just going out and meeting people face to face without predatory apps acting as a "middleman".

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[–] 96 points 5 days ago (5 children)

All of the dating apps have been bought out by Match Group and all enshittified in the exact same ways. It's essentially just one app with different wrappers, and they all cost $40/month for the "premium" mode that maybe makes them usable. (I say maybe because I've never ponied up the money.)

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  • [–] 17 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    All of the dating apps have been bought out by Match Group and all enshittified in the exact same ways.

    I do wonder if that'd open the door to competition, if they become sufficiently undesirable. Unless they've got some way of getting an edge over any competitors.

    considers

    So, dating match systems are going to be subject to network effect. Their value is something like the square of the size of their userbase. That'll create a barrier to entry for any challengers. But...I don't know if the effect is as strong as with many other systems.

    • I'd assume that many users are going to be looking principally for matches in their geographical area. That's going to be a smaller pool than with, say, a global system like Facebook. The value isn't O(n²) for the entire userbase of the system, but the value to any given user is something like the squares of their particular dating market.

    • It sounds like the userbase is not massive, not compared to most forms of social media.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group

      In August 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Match Group reported growing profit and revenue and surpassed 10 million subscribers across its portfolio.[48]

    • Unlike, something like say, eBay, the "product" can be offered for sale on multiple systems. If I want to auction something, I can't offer it to two different pools of bidders, since two people could both win the single item. With a dating system, a user isn't forced to exclusively use a single system to bill themselves; they could use multiple concurrently, which means that they could use both an incumbent system and a challenger system. Again, makes it easier for a challenger system to get someone to use it.

    • If you assume that most people are only looking for matches in their age cohort, that'd also divide up the userbase. In the past, social media systems have occasionally seen younger generations shift to newer systems.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago

    This all matches my experience. As a man over 40 in a small European country, I have a vastly different experience on Hinge (another of the Match Group products) than other people report.

    Also, I noticed that I am getting always more attention when I keep conversations going with at least 2 other users. My guess is that factors that maximize time_on_app are being favored by the algo and the match with me being one means that I am proposed in the highlights etc.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago

    It's not all, but the most known and general ones. I've had a great experience with dating apps for specific lifestyles and interest. I highly recommend that, try to find something that's as specific as you can find and it'll be a good time.

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