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Kev's avatar

I really enjoyed reading your article and resonate with many of the points you made about the challenges and perverse incentives within dating apps. I’ve been thinking about solutions for these issues and had a question:

Given that Facebook Dating is free and doesn’t seem to suffer from the perverse incentives you described, why do you think it hasn’t taken off? Facebook has the incentives to create a matchmaking system that works well because it drives overall engagement with their platform, yet it hasn’t gained much traction. Is it just a lack of focus, or are there deeper challenges at play?

That said, I feel your proposed third-party idea might overcomplicate things. If a consumer social company like Meta (leveraging Instagram, Threads, or even Facebook) truly focused on connecting people to highly compatible matches—along with culling problematic accounts and offering user coaching (e.g., “this photo is underperforming, consider updating it” or “this message might not land well with Stephanie”)—I think they could genuinely improve the experience and outcomes.

I also think limiting the number of "matches" to, perhaps one MAXIMALLY COMPATIBLE match (see Marriage Pact that came out of Stanford for how this would work) might work a lot better than offering people unlimited choice.

Do you think this approach could work, or are there other factors I might be overlooking?

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martin fischer's avatar

For a dating app it is very important that only women can start a conversation with men, men cannot start a conversation. When men can start a conversation with women, attractive women are completely littered with messages.

Also it is important that the dating app does not get more money if they invent fake woman profiles or if they keep women profiles active even if the profile owner did not show up for months.

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