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Related personal anecdote: I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches ar

• Cloudef 4y ago
  • Carrok 4y ago
    > meet people in real life like you are meant to be Keep this gatekeeping nonsense to yourself. I met my wife of many years on a dating app. We probably never would have met by chance.
    • Cloudef 4y ago
      Good for you. Doesnt change the fact they are shady and made to mainly exploit people's weakness for money.
      • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        > exploit people's weakness for money Weakness?
        • Cloudef 4y ago
          Loneliness
          • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
            I feel like that's just being human, not a weakness. Thy are exploiting humanities desire to form relationships.
            • kzrdude 4y ago
              I'm sure you have some vulnerability in your humanity
              • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
                For sure, the spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised. But in this case our ability and desire to form attachments is also a strength, I find it funny to be called a weakness.
      • denton-scratch 4y ago
        How is wanting to meet a partner "weakness"?
        • Cloudef 4y ago
          Loneliness can make people do dumb things, like waste money on scammy dating apps that artificially block you out unless you fetch the money.
          • skyyler 4y ago
            Calling loneliness a "weakness" says a lot more about you than dating apps.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Realizing there is survivorship bias might help people appreciate the complexities this topic.
  • mikepurvis 4y ago
    If you've already graduated university, aren't part of a religious community, and don't want to do the bar/club scene, what does that leave? Friends of friends, or family introductions? Activity groups like sports/dance? Your workplace, or the gym? Neighbours? Most of these are extremely hit and miss, and a lot of people have no interest in being hit on while trying to do their job or work out. Dating sites/apps absolutely fill a need— you can argue that that need only exists because of systemic issues in how modern society works, but it's possible to tackle that in parallel to adopting a non-judgmental attitude toward those using the best tools available within the system we do currently have.
    • Cloudef 4y ago
      Dating apps do not work because you are not actually present. You have the attention of hundreds of people at the same time, so unless you decide to meet up right away, the other party immediately loses interest. Most of the people are just looking for sex or something less serious, and the apps heavily paywall males. They are cancer. Meeting through friends is probably the safest, as that at least gives you some safety that you arent meeting up with someone completely nuts. Personally I met my date through a bar though.
      • blfr 4y ago
        > unless you decide to meet up right away, the other party immediately loses interest Well, yeah. You should meet up right away. What else you gonna do? Flirt over text for weeks?
        • Cloudef 4y ago
          Actually get to known each other before we go over for a drink or lunch, instead of hurrying it up just to have an awkward time?
          • blfr 4y ago
            You can get to know each other in person. Why would it be any more awkward than over text.
  • kashunstva 4y ago
    > meet people in real life like you are meant to be. Meant by whom - you? The form of this argument could be extended in any number of equally ludicrous directions where things were previously one way and now they are another, e.g. “Forget airplanes, walk like you are meant to.”
  • skyyler 4y ago
    I kind of agree with you, but expand "real life" to include "group chats local to your geographic location and/or hobby and/or interests" Furries have been doing it like this for years and it works very well. I met my wife in a chatroom dedicated to making fun of people that misinterpret Hegel.
• mikepurvis 4y ago
  Agreed. It also seems extremely gross that you're initially pushed to buy Tinder Gold, but then only afterward realise there are still features locked behind Tinder Platinum, and even after that you'll probably spend still more buying packs of boosts and super-likes. I know they're far from the only game in town, but this really feels like the behaviour of a monopoly entity that knows it can do basically whatever.
  • nerdponx 4y ago
    If I were an unethical data scientist working at Tinder, I would actually reserve the best matches until later in the period, after the initial flurry of "visibility" subsides a bit. That way you are less likely to immediately find a good date or two in the first few matches, helping to ensure that you will not just unsubscribe next month, while providing you with enough tantalizing options that you think it makes sense to keep going. "Great matches started coming up, I had better renew so I don't lose out!" It's like a slot machine that actively adjusts the odds as you play, in order to keep you hooked as long as possible. I'm pretty solidly mediocre when it comes to "algorithm design" tasks like this one, so I thought of it you can bet for sure that someone at Tinder did too.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • idealmedtech 4y ago
      There's certainly no doubt in my mind that they save your "top" match, based on your swipe history and whether or not they've already matched you, to show up right after you use your last free swipe. Wait 12h and hope they show up again? Maybe, or maybe I'll spend the $2 to get that super like. Very scummy.
    • orta 4y ago
      One of the protagonists in the book Version Control works in customer service in a role a lot like you're describing, it's a great read for anyone into sci-fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733442-version-control https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733442-version-control
• somedude895 4y ago
  Back when I was on Tinder I'd delete my profile and make a new one once every three months or so, seemed to do the trick.
  • opportune 4y ago
    I am pretty sure they also boost you when you start using the app again after a period of inactivity, but not sure if the implementation/magnitude is different from the new-user bonus
  • no_time 4y ago
    I'm very suprised they are not using face tracking and/or device fingerprinting to thwart this.
    • flutas 4y ago
      It's all speculation, but they _seem_ to track a large amount of data to try and check for "new profiles" that are old users starting a new account, supposedly for 3 months after you delete your account. These are the ones I've seen commonly talked about. - Phone Number - IP - Device IDs - Email - Photo hashes - Photo exif - Facial recognition - Linked Facebook, Instagram, Spotify accounts
• welshwelsh 4y ago
  Honestly, I am ok with this system. Paying a couple dollars for a matchmaking service isn't a big deal. If you go to bars instead you will pay way more. An introduction to a potential partner is worth at least $50 in my opinion, if anything Tinder is too cheap. There are too many guys on tinder and most of them are not serious, mindlessly swiping as a way of wasting time. If you filter out the free users and only match guys who pay for boost with girls, it's a much better ratio for those guys and a better experience for the women since guys who buy boost are more invested and more likely to follow through.
  • louissan 4y ago
    Well I'd rather go to a bar/pub anyway. Social, human beings, brawling to order a beer at the zinc, contact and all that? Not to mention you at least get the tipsiness/(more: drunk) if/when all else fails... 8>
    • throwaway289943 4y ago
      Same here, I can look at, meet, and chat with 5-10 girls in one evening in a bar, and get a pretty good impression of them. Takes months to do the same on a dating app, with heaps of added toxic behaviour/people that you don't get in a bar. Gave it up a long time ago..
      • nerdponx 4y ago
        Maybe I'm just socially inept, but I have never once managed to meet someone at a bar that wasn't already part of some bigger group that I was with. Edit: that's actually untrue, there are exactly 2 instances where it happened in my life. They were in the kinds of bars that I would usually avoid (too many drunk people shouting over loud music), in areas far from where I lived, that had pretty strong "going out" cultures. Edit 2: now that I think about it, I'm not exactly dashing handsome. I've historically done a lot better in "house party" type of settings, but again that's with people who are already friends of friends.
        • 4y ago
• hahamrfunnyguy 4y ago
  I am sure that is the case, their goal is to keep you swiping as much as possible and buying their upgrades. I had a Gold membership for about a year or so. Boosts didn't work for me, I found that the boots only yielded a lot of low-quality likes (ie: profiles, that my filters should have rejected). I also continuously had profiles showing up that didn't meet my filter criteria and that I'd already swiped left on just days before. I ended up emailing support and making the case that the site wasn't working as advertised or even as support said it was supposed to be working. I ended up getting a full refund.
• LtWorf 4y ago
  2-3 years ago you could use a GPS faker, stay somewhere random a week and then return and you'd have many matches again. I experimented a lot with it because I used to work at a different online dating company (where I was also doing scummy things).
• onetimeusename 4y ago
  ya. I pay about $100 per month over a few apps and if you read the sales pages it's clear they deliberately disable useful features if you don't pay so you are paying to have an "enhanced experience". That alone should suggest they don't really have a value proposition for your life. Maybe that's because they don't want to be sued by promising to sell relationship success. But they keep user statistics secret and I suspect that is because the statistics would tell the truth about what they sell. I have had a bad experience but I don't think HN is the the place to talk about it.
• btbuildem 4y ago
  It IS exploitative, by design. If you don't have the paid service, they'll never show the people who liked you in your normal stack. But once you pay, they've identified you as willing to pay, so the incentives are at extreme odds (any time you get a match, it's a risk for Tinder that you won't pay again)
• cryptonector 4y ago
  I wonder if for younger people now the best way to meet dates is off-line. Well, I suspect it's always been so, but the question is whether the culture for young people will be decidedly on the off-line side.
• jesterson 4y ago
  > It feels like the app's algorithms are rigged to gradually push you towards paid subscription options I'd be extremely surprised if it happened to be otherwise.
• mock-possum 4y ago
  I've only ever used ok cupid back in the day, not tinder, but - why do likes matter? Can't you still use the search function to find people you're interested, and begin interacting my messaging them?
  • OkGoDoIt 4y ago
    No, not anymore. OkCupid is just a stack of people you swipe right or left on now, just like Tinder.