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If you could see the code, that’s the code you’d want to look at? I wanna see what my world ranking is lol
My point is show me the proof. None of the details of how their app works are public and you're telling me what I've seen from personal experience, isn't true.
Many of the popular dating apps are all owned by Match group -- Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, etc. etc. It was a huge private equity play under IAC for awhile and then they spun out and IPOed but the universal dark patterns and enshitification isn't coincidental.
It's like Expedia owning many of the familiar travel brands: in reality they are all serving up the same content, but with different marketing, yet many people think it's a different company. You might think a brand is different and it might appeal to a different clientele but underneath its the same entity making all the decisions. It allows the brand to target different people without confusing everyone with a sing…
It also allows them to capture the money of disgruntled customers. Someone who has a terrible experience with (say) Tinder may swear it up and start using a "competitor" like ... OkCupid.
IIRC, this is also a strategy in home appliance space. My understanding is most home appliance brands are owned by just two companies: Whirlpool and Electrolux. They've really cheapened their designs, but if you get pissed off your washer breaks after 3 years and decide to go with a competitor, there's a good chance you may end up buying literally the same model, from the same company, with different branding and styling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is show me the proof. None of the details of how their app works are public and you're telling me what I've seen from personal experience, isn't true.
What you describe matches perfectly with most users just putting their preferred age to 25-40 or something. No need to blame Tinder here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like Expedia owning many of the familiar travel brands: in reality they are all serving up the same content, but with different marketing, yet many people think it's a different company. You might think a brand is different and it might appeal to a different clientele but underneath its the same entity making all the decisions. It allows the brand to target different people without confusing everyone with a sing…
I've been thinking of late that we need to add some sort of five year sunset rule about brands and acquisitions to antitrust laws. So after an acquisition the buyer has a couple of years before they have to stop using the acquired companies name and brand.
Like, needing to go down to the "Yum! Brands" to get take-out, no not the pizza one, the chicken one. Other chicken one. Reverse-mergers would be a nightmare too.
> 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…
https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles-reports/...
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Play to win. You want to get in front of someone before a competing dating market participant does, and people are tolerant of “white lies” when necessary (“dating apps are the worst amirite?”). If you can’t excuse it away, work on your sales skills. Hate the fact that third spaces have evaporated and you need a dating app to meaningfully participate in the dating marketplace, not that you have to take liberties with…
I met my ex-wife on Match. Things didn't work out in the long run (10 years) between us for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with online dating. But, I certainly know that if I had lied initially, it would have never worked from the start. Your attitude on this matter ("play to win" and "work on your sales skills") is what makes the whole scene really horrible. I feel for your partner, I wonder if they reali…
I agree the dating marketplace is terrible, but you can’t change it, you can only change how you operate within in to arrive at a desired outcome. Would you own a business but do no sales or marketing because you find it icky? That’s a quick way to bankruptcy.
I downloaded Tinder right after I got single, back in 2015? It was glorious. It really did feel fun and exciting - I'm by no means a model-looking dude, but I got hundreds of matches in a fairly small place (think city with population of 50k), and people just felt more genuine and interested on the various apps back then. Next time around I tried Tinder et. al. was a couple of years later(2018/2019), and I immediatel…
If you think it's eroding your self image then you can be fairly sure they've tuned something to do that to you because they think it will encourage you to part money for the perception of romantic advantage, or because they think it'll get your eyeballs on some ads, or for some other reason that funnels it money. The best move both romantically and for mental health 90% of users can make is to go touch grass, stop pushing for a date so hard and wait for serendipity to do its thing.
> 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 it's worth remembering that actually only a minority of people with a partner found that partner through an app/dating site, even among relatively young cohorts. The only thing there is a monopoly over is the digital part but that's strictly optional. https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles-reports/...
I'm not arguing that the dating apps are particular good or successful. I wouldn't be complaining about Match Group if they were. In fact, there's been a rising share of people who are unpartnered: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-...
In another comment, I talked about societal changes that have resulted in more social isolation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37213625 I think it's a problem is that we've become increasingly dependent on dating apps. Nonetheless, I don't think "just don't use dating apps" is really a solution, as if they were "strictly optional", because we can't magically go back to the good old days where everyone met their partners in person. The world has changed, and the old world doesn't exist anymore. In many cases, the alternative to avoiding the apps is singleness and loneliness.
We might all be better off if we collectively decided to abandon the dating apps. Short of that, however, it's kind of like "unilateral disarmament".
I downloaded Tinder right after I got single, back in 2015? It was glorious. It really did feel fun and exciting - I'm by no means a model-looking dude, but I got hundreds of matches in a fairly small place (think city with population of 50k), and people just felt more genuine and interested on the various apps back then. Next time around I tried Tinder et. al. was a couple of years later(2018/2019), and I immediatel…
It's definitely most and certainly feels like nearly all, especially once you start to notice just how many of these are all run by the same scummy corporation, Match Group [1]. Most of them are just thin skins over the same underlying terrible monetization platform.
Most of the dating apps that aren't from Match Group generally either have their best features stolen by Match Group and monetized and then out-competed to death or live long enough to see themselves become the villain and reaching for the same monetization dark patterns or even just exiting directly into Match Group.
(Among others, OKCupid was explicitly founded to be the hero against Match Group and eventually succumbed and was bought by Match Group. Tinder was built by whole cloth by Match Group to steal good ideas for features from smaller apps including but not limited to Bumble and was built to be an intentional slow boil-the-frog as it slowly added in other Match Group monetization features and then slowly started passing on its own features to the overall group "platform" as the features themselves stopped being the novelty. Now nearly all of Match Group's apps act like Tinder and swipe left/right.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group#Dating_services_ow...