A couple others here have the problem figured out and are echoing what I’ve been saying for years. Swiping is the problem. The addictive gamification of it may be fine for hookups (or just people browsing) but not for finding a potential partner.

Displaying more people, keeping you on the app for longer, is how these apps sell advertising. It’s about money, not love (especially given that they’re almost all owned by the same company now).

The more details you can include about yourself, the more data the platform has to understand you, the more likely it should be able to set you up with a partner. This results in far fewer people to choose from (less ad space), but potentially a higher likelihood of making a match.

Now, this may suggest the solution is a subscription service with some exclusivity and actual effort put into solving a problem for single adults. However, it’s clear that when given the options of a high-quality subscription service or an ad-subsidized inferior option, most people choose the cheaper. And the video streaming services have pointed out that they make more money from ads than they do subscriptions.

I have other opinions about how so many people are choosing to not interact with people IRL and how this is impacting our self-confidence and ability to function as a giving and empathetic partner. But maybe that’s off topic.

If dating apps did what they advertised, they would eliminate their customer base.

The objective of the application is to keep you engaged in what they are selling. They want you dating, but not in a long relationship.

They don’t have a lot of control on how it happens after you meet, so most of their influence will be in who they present to you and how they gamify interacting.

Solutions are going to come down to real world social skills and overcoming the boundaries of online connections.

Verified accounts only, mandatory 2FA, have a non targeted ad system that users can opt out of via subscription automatically show users other users who have liked them, put the bio at the top of the profile with the photo gallery at the bottom, only becoming viewable after the user has had enough time to read the profile and bio, same for the ability to swipe on them, use a reporting system that boosts reports from people who file actionable reports, do A LOT of advertising aimed at women because drawing women to the platform is consistently the most difficult part of running a match making site, the gender gap between users of different gender is a significant part of that “avalanche of unwanted dicks” phenomenon women who do brave the sites complain about.

Cut the algorithm out entirely, just line up potential matches with their distance from you, or if you have a questionnaire system like OkC, a matrix of Distance and match score from their answers.

Allow filtering based on love languages in addition to the other categories, also allow filtering based on star sign, but then also allow filtering out anyone filtering based on star sign.

Issue bans for trying to hide or lie about political opinions and relationship goals, IE trying to claim you’re a centrist when really you’re a socialist who knows that it won’t get you dates in deep red Alabama, or claiming you want to be childfree when really you want to saddle someone up to be a SAHP.

Have a separate app for long term dating vs hook-ups, and probation any accounts switching from the hook-ups app to the long term dating app.

Do not permit long distance matching, LDRs can work amazingly, but overwhelmingly the cases where they do work involves a scenario where the partners start geographically close and then have to endure an extended period apart.

Ban users for linking their social media at all on the apps.

Have a date planning feature that just displays well rated attractions in the area like parks, restaurants, and theaters, and then allows users to share picks from that map with matches to suggest where they can go to meet up for the first time.

Make OKCupid Great Again

One of the biggest problems is how shallow dating apps are, incentivising you to make split second decisions about others based on a couple of pictures and a small blurb of text that most people just waste on a movie quote they like. And there’s really no incentive on most of them to take your time and be thoughtful about trying to match. They prioritize quantity over quality.

Honestly I think something like Bumble’s old Speed Dating feature would work really well if you built an entire dating app around it and it had a critical mass of users. When it was a thing, I used it and it led to way more matches (and hotter matches) than I ever got simply by swiping. Because it forces a minimum level of interaction between the people before they decide if they like each other.

There is no possible way to fix an experience that is built on the idea of shopping for people.

Maybe if you were to hide profile pics until a long conversation happened, and if you were able to rate people once you’ve conversed with them it would push things to be less shallow. But I’m sure there would be ways around it.

Shadow ban any accounts that include the words “coffee,” “dog,” “long time,” or “the office” in their bios.

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