It's an especially insidious type of monopoly to me because it deals with relationships, they can manipulate millions of people, affecting the creation of their families and kids.

So capitalism is incompatible with dating apps. Who woulda thunk?

That's not really how that works.

short answer:

Dating Apps/Sites are basically social media sites, they only really work via the network effect, by being so huge that they necessitate significant financial investment.

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long answer:

A dating app is only broadly, mass appeal successful if it can scale to have a wide selection of people, users, ideally, in as many places as possible.

This requires a large amount of servers.

A large amount of servers requires a large amount of money.

A large amount of money requires investors.

Investors require as much profit as possible.

...

A conventional dating site/app, as we think of the big ones today... its a social media platform.

Just with a different, more constrained feature set, a different UI... but roughly similar levels of network infrastructure and overhead.

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You could actually make a reasonable argument for running a non profit, or ... some kind of collectively owned and operated dating service that is restricted to say a city or small region, or maybe a neighborhood in a larger city.

(Indeed, many of the older ones kind of began this way, pitched more like a ... a club that you join and pay membership dues for, thats how they were marketed in the late 90s / early 00s... though these of course were largely actually privately owned, but the marketing angle was that of 'exclusive community')

The technicals of exactly how to do that, legally and financially, might end up being impractical though... and if the government is directly involved, well... 10, 20 years ago I would say thats a rather serious privacy problem, but at least in the US right now, I am sure Tinder will sell your info to a data broker who sells it to the FBI if they want to investigate you, so.... yeah.

The other obvious problem is that the best dating app is the one you use the least... so... some kind of unconventional payment structure would have to be figured out, to counteract this massive and glaring incentive conflict between app and user.

Maybe high upfront fixed costs to the user, but if you don't find a good match after a year, 75% gets refunded to you?

Not sure. Could be legal nightmare.

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Other than that, privately owned and operated dating communities can work fairly well without huge server overhead... if they are precisely targeted at a pretty specific kind of people, be it a religion, or a bdsm community, or a specific ethnicity, who knows... those can at least theoretically work at a larger geographic scale, because that kind of scale doesn't also massively ramp up user count.

But there's nothing stopping them from being bought out if they get too big.

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Bonus!

Job application / recruiting sites are also basically dating apps/sites.

Its just person vs job instead of person vs person.

Broadly, guys on dating sites have been flooding women with match requests for years now, women have been overwhelmed by the volume and believe they can be very picky.

Now replace 'guys' with 'job seekers', 'match requests' with 'applications' and 'women' with 'companies'.

Both scenarios result in wasteful amounts of energy going into 'match-making', which is horrendously inefficient.

I may or may not be one of these people that suck at selfies. But damn if my profile pics weren’t top amateur talent from my sister. I may not have had dating life partner success(yet), but I’ve had a good number of dates that went some distance.

I repeat for those not listening: Effort pays off.

Thirded. People like to think that their match will be deep enough to look past something superficial like a bad photo, but that's not how most of us work. People see a decent photo and then check the rest.

You don't have to be a model or movie star. Good lighting. Clothes that fit. A background that's not, like, a dingy bathroom or your car.

Yep. It takes a minute to break that mindset. Worse is remembering on trips, like on my last one I forgot to take a pic while walking the amazing vineyard.

Feels like a meat market, but the effort helps.

Yes, they literally are fuck algorithms. 🤣

Not a fan of how corporations make them work myself but understanding a little about them can make things like this a little less frustrating.

I would argue that the existence of an algorithm isn't inherently evil, they just ruin things when they're designed to maximize profit.

It's all conjecture. I suspect the algorithm puts it towards the bottom of the stack because there's more money in casting a conventional net.

Most people seem to accept living on debt or handouts. It's strange. I see everyone around me (both sexes) acting the same. So it's not even a dating app issue, I think it's a people issue. Offer nothing and expect everything in return. Maybe it's an American thing?

I don't want to be grouped into incel mentality, but is there a dating app to meet people from another country?

I think a lot of nerdy people need to just start going outside and doing stuff. Like, if you enjoy DND roll up to the local hobby store and start hanging out, even if you arent playing.

None of this is targeted directly at you, just as good a spot as any to rant.. lol

I think more people would be surprised that the horror stories are the minority. At my local game story I go to a painting night once a month mostly to hang out and chat. There are a pretty even split of women/men.

Point is I think this a safe spot to make friends and making friends is the only way to get into a relationship you'll actually enjoy.

I met my girlfriend doing Star wars rp. My friend met his girl playing magic l. All my single friends have something in common. They don't make time for their hobbies and don't hang out with like minded people in that space.

Just a side note I'm not saying that everyone should go harass people at their FLGS or use it as a dating service, but rather, going out and hanging out with like minded people opens up a lot of options that aren't on dating apps.

I'm pretty introverted too but when people are into whatever my hyper focus is it's much easier to open up. Go out there! Be uncomfortable! Not a cure all but it's something.

Let's see, I'm in an entire server where people your age are playing pokemon tabletop. Ok, it's not even funny anymore. I wanted to make a joke about how I'm single and into those things, but it really is like that.

I am putting it out there for him. It's all circumstance and luck.