I feel like it would be almost impossible for the app ti reach critical mass in any local area

As an experiment - try setting up a dating community on Lemmy - report back with how that goes.

I think it would be mostly men. I like the idea of it though.

"David has requested your public key, do you accept?"

I haven't tried it, but there is one: https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa

would be cool for meeting local foss nerds, if theres any

https://github.com/duolicious

having a lot of people on it would be the thing that makes it good.

for real though, here's my formula to fix a major dating app problem:

1. women can swipe men, but men cannot swipe women
2. men can view and chat with women who have swiped them

now I can simply look cool, instead of trying to swipe 500 girls for an hour

no for-profit dating app will ever do this, because it means that men are not swiping 500 girls for an hour

My wife wouldn't be thrilled..

Well, if we weren't doing it together.

About me: Arch btw

Hopefully none of that "subscribe to see more matches" bs

Oh, and one of the generic message prompts is "What Linux distro do you use?"

Literally just a dating app without the hidden algo that keeps people onboard and no payment. It could be federated.

Sure, why not.

What would it look like? Same as the others, text field for description, pictures, interests.

If it's foss, I would want to see a https://reproducible-builds.org/ or some other method of verifying the accuracy of the process. Getting no matches would be better than the fake stuff the others do.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.alovoa.expo

Instead of assessing compatibility I assume it would include ideological purity tests.

Nah, In person for the win!

I have had this idea in my mind of building a privacy-first, open source dating app built on "privacy by design" principles. Still didn't get to it tho.

What it would look like is a badly themed badly optimized front end that isn't in the App store, was recently removed from the Play store, with a rape awful name like CLIT or CL Isn't Tinder or LibreMeetCute and a nonsense icon. It would rapidly become recognized as the engine used by the huge number of extremely sketchy personals sites that popped up all of a sudden that contain only virtual prostitutes. It would also be the engine that powers Truth Romance. It would have the worst Github issues page in human history.

I don't think I'm into dating apps

Allowing you to meet meet people more like yourself!

My two cents on dating apps in general:

1. I would rather have something that actually marks someone as willing to have a relationship instead of clinging to people that for some reason are not available; maybe I'm just lazy of knowing people, but on the other side it skips some hurdles and puts me on contact with someone I might have taken a long time to know, if at all;
2. on the other side, dating apps really reward someone physically attractive or at least that uploads the best photos. I've met several people who in person are alright for me which I wouldn't swipe if I met them in an app. Also, after I actually paid a professional photographer to shoot a set of me and uploaded the pics on apps, I received more likes in a single week than during my entire life, even though nothing fundamentally changed and I'm still the same.

Rather do Matrimonial Tech meet

What would that even look like?

Lol it would be spammed by bots I think. And hard to moderate. I will pity any moderator who has to moderate such a platform.

The problem is most people are lazy and don't understand anything. They just use the app they know, even if it sucks.

If you got it to be popular it could work , but I don't see how you could.

It would be like old-school OKCupid, minus all the paid bullshit.