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How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

gizmodo.com

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Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#71

Post by standardUser »

Companies should be required by law to publish a standard service agreement and to inform a user if any changes are made to their account that deviates from that agreement. It's a necessity for companies to be able to manage their user community, but who among us wants a company to secretly change or restrict an account we use regularly without our knowledge and no recourse?

And sure, restricted users will make new accounts, but that's a problem as old as the internet and something companies just have to fucking deal with.

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#72

Post by hungryforcodes »

commandlinefan wrote: post #53
catlover76 wrote: post #4

I've used Hinge a lot as a heterosexual male, and it's pretty obvious they want dudes to pay for Roses to message attractive girls. For me and most of my friends who have used it, the disparity between the normal, free feed and the "Standouts", for which one must use Roses, is comical. I don't see how that's too mysterious, and, for the most part, I don't hold it against Hinge, which has to try to make money. edit: a…

> pay for Roses to message attractive girls I'm too old to have used dating apps, but IIUC the conspiracy theory is not just that you have to pay a premium to message the attractive girls, but they're actually paid by the dating app itself to interact with you. (I'm too old for dating apps, but I'm not too old for certain types of "clubs" whose business model was the same).

That's easily solved by just meeting the girls. If you're dating anyways -- it's your main goal.

In Asia for all the popular sites like Tinder, Badoo and OK Cupid -- I've never had a girl not show up where there wasn't mutual interest. Continued after yes or no -- that's just a human problem. But the girls are real for sure...

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#73

Post by peoplearepeople »

lapcat wrote: post #26

> With the exception of Bumble and Grindr, almost every popular American dating app is owned by a single company called Match Group, including Hinge, Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and many others. This is truly a nightmare. How did we allow such a crucial human function, finding a mate, to become monopolized? Both Democrats and Republicans need to date (though maybe not each other), so the issue should…

I think the barrier to making new dating apps is actually rather low, as they tend to spread via word of mouth within small communities.

I remember it was always a constant "which app should we be using now" conversation with acquaintances

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#75

Post by soupfordummies »

kimbernator wrote: post #32

I wonder how dating apps will fit into society in 10+ years - they are dominant now as the way for young people to find romantic partners, but from the accounts I've heard (all second-hand, I haven't used one in ~5 years) they appear to be getting worse and worse for people who are anything below average attractiveness (or perhaps are just bad at making an appealing profile). It makes me wonder if there will be a cor…

I think it's already shifting back. Everyone couple I know under the age of 30 met IRL

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#76

Post by lapcat »

everdrive wrote: post #36
lapcat wrote: post #26

> With the exception of Bumble and Grindr, almost every popular American dating app is owned by a single company called Match Group, including Hinge, Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and many others. This is truly a nightmare. How did we allow such a crucial human function, finding a mate, to become monopolized? Both Democrats and Republicans need to date (though maybe not each other), so the issue should…

I agree that it’s terrible, but you can still meet people in real life. This isn’t really aimed as a refutation your comment, but as pushback to people who are frustrated by these apps. It’s good to get away from them whenever possible.

Society has changed, though. I've seen it during my lifetime. The pandemic certainly changed everything as far as in-person socialization is concerned. But even before the pandemic, people were becoming increasingly isolated and antisocial, and there are a lot of factors at play here. Technology has changed how we interact. Instead of looking around and striking up a conversation with a stranger, they have their heads down looking at their smartphones. And the increasing prevalence of remote work has left fewer opportunities to meet people at work. Sexual mores have also changed. There's a lot more awareness of sexual harassment nowadays, which is good, but it also makes people more reticent to flirt in many situations.

That's not a comprehensive list of relevant societal changes, just some factors off the top of my head.

The very existence of the dating apps makes them difficult to avoid, because if that's where a significant % of the population are already looking, then you're ruling yourself out from that population by avoiding them.

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#78

Post by spott »

zdragnar wrote: post #6
bradley13 wrote: post #2

Look at the incentives. Dating apps want you to keep paying. That means they don't want you to meet someone worth entering a long-term rrlationship with. They want you to have just enough success to stay a customer. The occasional, not-awful date. Like playing the slots: you get occasional, small payouts, and you hear about other people winning jackpots (oops, they slipped up), so you keep putting money in. A believa…

This erroneously believes that the owners think the following: 1- it is possible to completely tap the dating market and long term customers are necessary 2- customers all have a similar threshold at which they are just-successful enough to stay engaged long term Neither of these things are true. The more people "win the jackpot", per your analogy, the more people will use the platform. The market is big enough they…

Not if they don’t believe that customers will be able to tell the difference between stringing along and honestly trying.

The problem is hard. It can’t be deterministically solved. Any likely statistical improvement is unprovable in a marketing sense (a competitor that is as good as possible at finding matches cannot prove it to the market that they are actually better at finding matches than a method that strings people along).

Your points are only true if there isn’t an information asymmetry, but there is.

I don’t think they are necessarily stringing people along on purpose, but they don’t have incentives to tell people they can’t help them, and they don’t have incentives to improve the product for those who aren’t successful. Those who are successful are probably going to be successful regardless of the platform they are using, and those who are unsuccessful aren’t going to be successful anywhere. And fixing that (rather than just milking money from the unsuccessful) isn’t really worth anything to them.

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#79

Post by Mordisquitos »

lapcat wrote: post #26

> With the exception of Bumble and Grindr, almost every popular American dating app is owned by a single company called Match Group, including Hinge, Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and many others. This is truly a nightmare. How did we allow such a crucial human function, finding a mate, to become monopolized? Both Democrats and Republicans need to date (though maybe not each other), so the issue should…

> This is truly a nightmare. How did we allow such a crucial human function, finding a mate, to become monopolized?

I totally agree with you, and I would go even further. I'm actually furious that an essential part of human social life has become commoditised by a for-profit industry led by publicly-traded corporations. It being almost a monopoly, hidden to "consumers" [0] under an illusion of choice, is only the poop cherry on top of the whole steaming pile of crap.

One of my fantasies to become a millionaire (from a starting point of billionaire) is to establish an open source, transparent, non-profit and community-based online platform and app whose only mission is to help people meet someone with whom they are happy to meet and viceversa. Imagine a dating app but:

- Nothing encouraging "power users", even discouraging match accumulation.

- No gamification, other than configurable by user choice.

- No secret algorithms for rating. Instead, a choice of open community-developed algorithms for the swipe queue (if swiping is your thing, you can also filter and sort by query).

- No falsifying the potential dating pool size to keep users hooked. Do not show the profile of user A to user B, even if A fits B's filters, if B does not fit A's filters such that A would not see them.

- User engagement KPI in the denominator, not the numerator—the numerator being user reported success and personal satisfaction. The less time spent for good results, the better.

- No "pay to win". Instead of that, please donate if you win.

My dream would be to create a dating(?) platform, nay, a human relationship platform, with no perverse economic incentives that conflict with users matching. I would hope it could be So Damn Good that anyone looking for a date, or a shag, or a FWB, or to meet people to see where it goes, or whatever would feel like a chump to fall for Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, etc. Let swiping and notification addicts continue to use those for-profit games. Meanwhile, people wanting a human connection could stick to the platform that cares to make it as likely as possible.

Unfortunately, the only thing stopping me from doing this is that I have no plan in motion to become a billionaire such that I can finance this idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

.

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[0] No, damnit, searching for a relationship, a fling, a connection, is not an act of consumption, it is an act of basic fucking humanity!

Re: How Hinge's algorithm decides who you date

#80

Post by kimbernator »

wnevets wrote: post #34

In general people throw the term shadow banned around too much. Whenever someone's content does poorly on youtube or tiktok they start claiming they've been shadow banned instead of considering their new content isn't worth watching.

I agree this is an incorrect usage of the term. Had they simply been unable to match with anybody but still saw everything as the same, that would be a shadowban.

I'm not sure what the correct term is for gently nudging people to get off the platform by making their experience worse.

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