Least they are using an algorithm that has the intended purpose of matching people. For profit dating apps are more interested in keeping you coming back then they are in creating successful relationships
This is an extremely common sentiment I see online - that there is some conspiracy to keep people single to reduce subscription churn. I have run two dating apps (my own apps, not working for a company), and what I found through trial and error was that no matter how many levers you pull and tweaks you make, a lot of it is simply user-behavior problems, not a tech or product design problem. There is no reliable way for a dating app to only serve users non-committal matches for example. The reason someone's matches aren't committal is because they don't want to commit.
The thought experiment I usually pose is to ask what you think a free, open source, and community supported dating app would change. The answer is "not much".
You ran not one, but two, dating apps that were your own apps, and were not part of a company?
Which apps were these? What were your user metrics?
Seems somewhat suspect to extrapolate from your personal experience to what the large dating apps are allegedly doing if you are not approaching their scale. You've mentioned your personal experience as some kind of authority a few times now in this discussion, why not name the two apps directly? Apologies if I missed it but I don't see where you gave any indication that this appeal to authority is credible.
They weren't Tinder sized. They were only published in latam. The first (Mil Besos) flopped and my second attempt (MiAmor) got to a several hundred thousand downloads and I sold it for not very much because I was tired of the moderation. Neither exists anymore. This was more than 10 years ago. There used to be A LOT of dating apps around 2014-2018, I mean hundreds of them on the Apple and Play Store. There has been a lot of consolidation because almost the only thing that matters for dating apps is giving users optionality, which means having more user profiles the other ones.
I'm not claiming I'm an expert, but just sharing personal insight. It doesn't take many users before statistical observations of behavior make themselves apparent. Start producing 5-10k matches per day on your platform and you will see what people want and don't want really quickly.
I don't wish to belittle you but, if I were you I would certainly not be in this discussion saying things like "Source: I used to build and run dating apps" (you said this in another comment in this discussion) when making claims about the major dating app companies if these were the two apps in question.
Certainly not in the manner you conveyed your experience. The market dynamics and design problems of these apps are very well known. Given the scale of your experience, I would suggest your invocation of it as some kind of authority was superfluous at best.
Congratulations on your sale though. Have a nice day.
I think that source is fine. Not necessarily because running a small dating app gives you the same experience as running a large one; but because it also means you thought long and hard about the space, too.
Definitely more than your average armchair backseat quarterback.
I'm happy to hear from someone who's built 2 dating apps on the topic of dating app algorithms, they probably know more than I do. I appreciate the contribution, and don't think the gatekeeping is necessary.
Note that it's possible for dating problems to be user behavior problems in a way that is suits the profit motive of dating sites, without any conscious intent from anyone in the ecosystem.
Model a world where everybody's self-perception of their mating value is just a little bit higher than their actual value - in other words, one not too far off from reality. Some segment of this population will drop their standards in the face of repeated rejection, and then eventually find a partner because of this. Their "lowered standards" become an accurate self-perception of reality. But some segment of the population will be unwilling to do this. They have a problem - they cannot find a partner no matter how hard they look.
A problem creates a market. People who can't find a partner turn to dating apps to find a partner - some may pay, and a lot more will click on ads. There's a decent chance that dating app management isn't consciously optimizing for failure in dating and success in clicking on ads. However, all the apps that are good at finding partners for their customers find that their customers disappear, while the apps that are good at getting people to click on ads generate huge amounts of revenue and take over the market. Which is entirely composed of people who don't actually want to find a partner, anyway, because those people who care more about the outcome of finding a partner will usually drop their standards enough to find one.
The same dynamic applies in many other markets. Evolution and selection bias > intent and intelligent design. The market ends up composed of people who can't achieve the ostensible purpose of the market, largely through their own actions, because people who can drop out of the market. Happy people often go through life with very few transactions: they might change jobs a couple times early in their career before finding a boss and job they're happy with and staying there until retirement, or they date around a little and then find a partner they marry for life, or they might rent a couple apartments before buying a house, renovating once, and then staying in it for 40 years. The transactions are overwhelmingly composed of people who are dissatisfied, because that's why they're buying things.
I am interested in creating my own dating app/website, but the problem I foresee is getting users - a Catch 22 problem.
I would like to create a service that opperated like OkCupid used to before they sold out. Visible compatibility percentages and being able to search profiles. No curation/algorithms or swiping.
I'm interested in helping people, not taking their money.
Getting users to dating apps is probably easier than you think. Because men will go to where the women are so you only need to work on attracting female sign ups. It's actually that simple. The best way to launch is with a waitlist of warm users in 1 large city. I've seen a lot of people pining for the 2010-era OkCupid so you probably would have plenty of people willing to give it a try.
> There is no reliable way for a dating app to only serve users non-committal matches for example
While that certainly sounds difficult, it sounds feasible for e.g. Facebook.
> The thought experiment I usually pose is to ask what you think a free, open source, and community supported dating app would change. The answer is "not much".
That sounds more like a framing problem. If the ultimate goal is promoting long-lasting new romantic relationships, and it's developed without any profit motive, I'd imagine a general social network that primarily organizes in-person social gatherings.
My take is that it isn't about serving non-committal matches and withholding promising matches or whatever, it has more to do with whether you feel like there are better matches on the app if you just keep lookin or waiting. I can see how and app using the stable matching algorithm could really make you feel like you're getting the best match you're going to get, which I think could have a real impact on commitment.
"it has more to do with whether you feel like there are better matches on the app if you just keep lookin or waiting."
Yes, the FOMOism in dating app user psychology is extremely real, but this isn't a product problem, it's a human psychology problem. In theory, you could make an app with, say, a lifetime number of swipes to prevent infinite FOMOism, but it would fail to be a viable product model because the #1 thing that I found users wanted -- more than everything else -- was optionality. And if you don't offer it, they'll go to someone who does.
Hinge actually already uses Gale-Shapley and it doesn't seem to be producing meaningfully improved outcomes.
Yeah, this seems to be a truism along the lines of "scammers intentionally use poor English to filter for stupid people". It gets repeated a lot because it resonates with people, but there's no evidence it's actually done deliberately. Sure, they're making UI and other decisions to maximize for time on the app, but in order to avoid serving you the best matches for a long-term relationship, they'd have to know what those are, and still serve you only plausible, appealing matches that are somehow bad (if they were too bad, you'd quit using the app). I don't think they have this much insight.
*I came very close to falling for a scam that was written in perfect English, formatted convincingly, and appeared to come from an organization I was expecting to receive a message from at the time. Believing that scams will always be obviously stupid increases your chances of falling for one that isn't.
> but in order to avoid serving you the best matches for a long-term relationship, they'd have to know what those are
No? With modern dating apps they can just serve you people who have already swiped left on you. Even if they made it a random presentation of candidates, they will never be incentivized to matchmake for free. If you're not paying then you'll get shown people in the area and that's it. That's all they need for their ad-revenue.
I think we're talking about different populations. You are talking about someone who gets zero matches at all but we are talking about people that get matches, but those matches never turn into relationships. To be fair, both populations of people have the same complaint that "dating apps don't work", but for extremely different reasons.
I don't think that dating apps are showing users profiles that have already swiped left, and if they do, it's not an attempt to get users to convert to a paid subscription. Consumer psychology doesn't work that way. People are far more willing to pay to upgrade a good experience than they are to pay to try to improve a bad one. Further, an unappealing profile that gets zero likes will continue to get zero likes after they upgrade to a paid subscription. This means that user will churn almost immediately after 1-2 months of paying for something that doesn't work. They typically don't stick around paying for years while getting zero matches all the while.
Dating apps DO derank unappealing profiles, but rather than doing it to try to get them to convert, it's instead done to try to prevent high bounce rates. Imagine a user downloads a dating app and is shown profiles in completely randomized order. This user is far more likely to get frustrated and uninstall after a few minutes than if they were to download the app and be shown profiles that are appealing. This rigged ranking may sound like its reducing relationship formation, but they never would have swiped on the unappealing profiles anyway; the counterfactual is they simply uninstall the app in frustration.
I agree with this. In my latest stint on dating apps as a woman looking for a man, I matched with dozens of profiles from guys average in terms of height and salary (when disclosed), and also in a niche of "attractive to me personally but not in the top 10% of conventionally-attractive dudes". So I know dozens of guys got at least one match, and most of the time they liked me first, I hadn't swiped in either direction when they were shown my profile.
Upwards of 90% of matches did not convert to dates, because many did not respond to messages at all, did not or could not carry on a brief "normal human" conversation, or if they did the first two things, never proposed meeting irl. I think you are correct in your assessment that the median user on a dating app is very non-committal.
I don't know... mid 2010's pre-match.com OkCupid and PlentyOfFish seem to get a lot of love. Not saying they didn't have problems but they did actually match a lot of happy couples and online dating didn't feel like nearly as much of a wasteland as it does today
Just like everyone else. I have a feeling your definition of “livable” is not in line with the reality that most people face. You share more in common with a stay-at-home mom going back to school to become a phlebotomist than you think. It’s just pride gets in the way
Even if you've saved enough for 1 to 3 years of university, there's a risk that you won't get a job especially if you're getting towards 40+.
Drawing down savings is a very high risk move, since you could easily never recover those savings because you may struggle to get a job that has a better ability to save as much.
Not enough buffer to take 3-5 years to rebuild a career is not the same as no buffer at all. Personally I have about a year of buffer which is no where near enough to meaningfully retrain.
I don't get it. Didn't you live way below your means so you can save up money for retirement? I've got enough money saved to get away with being jobless for about a decade.
If the stock market drops 80% and stays there for longer than a year it's Great Depression 2.0. Retraining won't do jack shit. There'll be breadlines, governments paying people to dig ditches and build trails in national parks.
Not everyone's had the luxury of saving for years and years. Some people just got into the industry (remember 'learn to code'? not to mention recent graduates), others had to work their way up through lower-wage roles (e.g. contracting) just to get to a place from where they could hope to save. Other people have family to take care of and can't just throw everything into their savings.
Even back when I had to make do with $400 a month I was saving. Live out of a van to save on rent if you have to. There's always a way to live below your means and save.
Of course there are exceptions, but I don't expect those to apply to anyone commenting here.
A bizarre perspective - you seem hung up on the virtue of saving but totally disconnected from the material implications - even if you saved 50% of your income for a year at that time, you’ve finished with $2400 in the bank - how long is that going to float you? About a week in my case.
It’s plainly true that for a significant number of people, even those who satisfy your moral sensibilities around money, they won’t have had sufficient time at sufficient incomes to have enough saved for a significant period of unemployment to retrain.
Live out of a van with children? Is that what you're suggesting people do? That's monstrous. You would rather put the weight of the world on a poor family's head than one iota of responsibility on the ruling class.
That sounds nice but in practice it’s probably not super helpful. Yes you could make a special case for reducing “+” over integers. But in python you can generally not promise that all the inputs are strictly integers, and you can’t even promise that your “+” function has no side effects.
If you watch The Price is Right episodes from the 80s, it is clear that household items have only had mild inflation. Many items are prices a little lower than today but not outrageously so.
On the other hand, the quality of the items is often much nicer. So someone might win a $500 desk, but that desk is hand-made out of hardwood. Today you can still buy a $500 desk but it will be IKEA quality. A product of comparable quality would cost many $k
Airline tickets are a very clear-cut example of this. Tickets are cheaper than they were in the ‘90s (even with inflation) but you get a lot less for that ticket than you did 30 years ago
It's less clear cut than that, because modern materials can be better at the job they are designed for. An IKEA kitchen, for instance, might not use traditional wood or stone for its benchtops, but the materials used are actually better in terms of cleaning and handling food on them. It's just that these improvements often get bundled with cheap plastic and parts in other parts of the kitchen to keep costs down.
Similarly, cars today are far superior to old cars in terms of safety, and the gains that have been made on the engine side of things are nothing short of incredible. Every modern car is essentially a supercar by the standards of the 90s in terms of oomph per unit of displacement. The problem is that all of the systems have been coupled together, often needlessly, in order to improve telemetry and capture a bigger share of the used market. It's hostile towards the end user.
There's no question that the level of quality today is higher, especially where it matters. It's just that value extraction eventually turns hostile towards consumers in the absence of real competition and the need for endless growth.
For my household I built my own cartoonishly big 200×80×4cm oak desk. The oak was €350 at the hardware store and only needed finishing. The height adjustable legs add some extra cost, but the whole was maybe €700 tops and a day of work.
This is how CPI is measured - with the substitutes. The desk CPI is the difference between the old hardwood desk and the new MDF desk, not the old hardwood desk and the new hardwood desk.
It's not a terrible philosophy as many people don't care what their desk is made of, and the cheaper materials are actually better in some aspects (MDF doesn't warp as it dries..) but some people do and it's resulted in inflation being massively undercounted, possibly by a factor of 10.
You have to look at it from an item by item basis. There are different reasons for each product.
You mentioned household items: This is a combination of two things:
1. Improved QA & reduction of parts thanks to the miracle of Moores law. Ex: a TV used to be a huge collection of boards each doing its own function (power, tuning, picture control, audio). Nows its 1-2 board(power + everything else) with typically one big chip doing everything. Less parts = less chance of failure and each part is QA better thanks to software/industrial automation.
2. These things are benefiting from the low cost of living in places like China. As those countries increase their wealth and alternatives are not found this disparity disappears and you finally pay the real cost of the item but you still benefited from Moores law.
TVs deflated insanely, other appliances less so but it averages out to 0 again thanks to Moores law.
Now look at a desk. The only way it benefits from Moores law is possibly via assembly and techniques used to reduce waste. That probably where IKEA's excellent ability to turn sawdust + glue into furniture comes from. That is real value that is returned back to you in the form of similar raw numerical prices as old wood tables from decades ago.
Machinery can automate the creation of a table made out of what is technically "wood" (sawdust was at one point wood wasn't it?) and computer software allowed designers to create appealing designs and more easily optimize them to target that same number people paid in the 70s(even though it isnt the real number inflation adjusted).
An old table used real wood that probably came from an old growth tree that no longer exists because the value came from decades (or centuries) of "work" done by nature. Exchanging money for that same amount of value that would reveal the diminished value of the currency if you were to get that same thing today. You cant exchange the exact dollar amount and you are not feeling that the modern IKEA take is an improvement/equivalent over the old growth wood.
Essentially the free market could not make a 1-to-1 replica/improved product using something like moores law so that same value costs more today. That difference in quality between the Ikea table and the old wood table is still there its just that most consumers dont see it or dont want to see it since they may not be able to afford the old style of table.
>Airline tickets are a very clear-cut example of this. Tickets are cheaper than they were in the ‘90s (even with inflation) but you get a lot less for that ticket than you did 30 years ago
This is a mixed bag in my opinion:
Airlines have benefited from Moores Law. I watched so many "aviation" youtube channels and my god, the accidents from the early days of aviation are truly nightmare inducing and heartbreaking tragedies. Today thanks to computerization(Moores law), pilots are so much better trained, airplanes are so many orders of magnitude better in terms of safety and fallbacks and fuel is reduced as a result of all of this technology as well. This helped cut costs and also allowed Airlines to provide more classes of service. If you fly first class all in, you get service closer to what you got 30 years ago because you are paying for the same value as 30 years ago.
At the same time, fuel itself comes from a non-renewable resource that included dinosaurs, sea algae, and plants that spent a lifetime doing the work to accumulate energy from the sun and then be stored in a format that can be exploited centuries later. You life's comforts comes from all that work done centuries ago and its not unlimited. Thus as fuel becomes harder to get, the numerical dollar amount goes up and is reflected in tocket costs. Its just that the other reductions didn't make it as evident.
As a side note with the Iran war and the loss of companies like Spirit, more are now being exposed to the fact that todays dollar isn't the same as yesterdays dollar. Those low cost options are just going away because finally the free ride given to use by cheap fossil fuels is going away and things like moores law have already reached the limit of where you can add value to keep the number close to the 70s dollar number.
When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere, and also in awe at how clean the city was. Never did the two thoughts cross each other in her head
> When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere
The first part I kind of get, humans get used to stuff they get, and get frustrated when it disappears without them really understanding why, it's kind of understandable.
But why would she be outraged about recycling bins being more readily available? Are the recycling bins like really ugly/disgusting, or why would they upset someone? Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something.
> Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something.
You joke but people who complain about public recycling bins would also likely be the ones to complain about public libraries too. I've encountered many people who think libraries exist to poison the minds of the youth and somehow make homelessness a problem and we should shut them all down to alleviate the homeless issues in our communities and ensure higher community standards in education (mostly, go read the bible at church, that's all you need).
When I was in school 15 years ago, BGP was described to me as a sketchy game of telephone.
“Oh yeah you want to route to a 129.37.x.x address? I know a guy who knows a guy. Said he’s the owner of the whole 129./ block. In fact, he’s my personal friend. I mean friend’s friend… Why don’t I just take those pesky packets off your hands and we walk away”
How could they? The alternative starts to look like every router maintains complete "internet state"...which turns out isn't possible. Awareness is complex and expensive. And there are endless variables and "whys" to consider
I think you overestimate the number of people that can work from home. For society to function the majority of us have to actually go to a physical place and do something real with our hands and our time.
So did you take them and have a bad time? Because they definitely work for me and I doubt a placebo could have such a large effect on the 48 hour stomach pains I used to get alongside my frequent panic attacks.
I find it funny that people complain about emotional blunting when that is the entire purpose of the drug. I would prefer not to live on the razors edge ever again. I’ve had chronic anxiety and depression ever since I was a child, though.
For some people the emotional blunting is desirable, especially as you said, if the problem is chronic anxiety. But for many other people, their depression is defined by a lack of positive affect and anhedonia, meaning that emotional blunting is literally making things worse.
Depression is highly heterogenous, and I am glad the medication helped you.
SSRIs have much more clinical evidence of efficacy for addressing anxiety disorders vs a placebo than depression. The effect size is ~0.7 vs 0.2 in meta studies.
Totally agree, they really shouldn't be called antidepressants at all. Important to add tho that for many with depression they have comorbid anxiety and often the anxiety is harder to tolerate than depression, so removal of anxiety symptoms can be hugely beneficial.
Also, IME they are dosed completely wrong. So many people seem to be on very low doses, which has no improvement on placebo in the studies I've read.
Whereas, higher doses are _hugely_ better than placebo, especially for anxiety.
What's worse is a lot/most studies on SSRIs in general often don't adjust for dose. Which seems like an enormous oversight to me.
> I find it funny that people complain about emotional blunting when that is the entire purpose of the drug.
The ideal would be to blunt the negatives but not the positives. The effect of some of the older antidepressants can be to blunt both, across the board.
Some of the newer atypical antidepressants can address depression without making everything flat.
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