Would a federated dating site work well? What would it look like?

swab148@startrek.website to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 110 points –

Basically title, every bit of online dating nowadays is either Match or Meta, and we're all about breaking corporate chains right?

So these are the thoughts I had:

  1. Matches based on simple user selection: age range, lifestyle, hobbies etc. None of that dumb algorithm stuff that makes you reset your profile every month.

  2. ActivityPub protocol so that anyone can run their own instance, but can also be blocked if anything heinous happens.

  3. E2EE for messaging (and anything else if it's possible).

  4. Someone wrote an open-source anti-CSAM script for Lemmy recently, I hope we could adapt that to our use.

  5. Just, like, everyone have a good time on this app, we're here for love lol

I am not a coder, so I would have no idea how to do this, but I wonder about the interest in such a creation. Maybe some of you out there could make something I could use to get a date (pls).

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Federated or not, dating sites don't work well

I'm getting married next week. Met her on Tinder. Sometimes they absolutely do work

I used some dating apps on and off for about 4 years and got probably a couple dozen or so genuine not bot matches. Most of which didn't last for more than a message or two. Even ran my profile by some of my women friends who I trust and they said it looked good. While obviously it works for some people, the experience for most people isn't that great. These apps make their money by keeping people on the platform so getting matches goes against their main profit motive. The traditional methods work a lot better.

Why would they work well? Their business model doesn't incentivize dating apps to work well. They sell subscriptions so they'd rather their users stay perpetually single and become increasingly desperate.