Data-Hungry Dating Apps Are Worse Than Ever for Your Privacy

HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 300 points –
Data-Hungry Dating Apps Are Worse Than Ever for Your Privacy
foundation.mozilla.org
10

Worse, they're incentivized not to get you matched with anyone because once you're paired up, you're going to delete your account.

So it's all this data collection and lack of privacy for all of it to be used against you actually finding a partner, instead dedicated to making you lonely so you keep spending money on the app.

And spending money only gives the illusion of making a difference, because now especially when you’ve proven you’re a money spending customer, they don’t want to lose you.

Totally anecdotal, but I met my current partner not long after subscribing to the paid tier of Tinder. Those super likes came in handy. This was like 5 years ago though not sure how different it is now. I have to imagine it’s worse just like everything else.

5 years ago was the beginning/middle of the descent. It's so much worse now. ... plenty of fish is a streaming platform now. 🤮 🔫

I'm so unbelievably undesirable I've been on the apps long enough to watch the whole thing play out. Over the course of 10 years these apps have been absolutely tripping over themselves to become a shitty tinder 2.0 clone. All the offices now have "Always Enshittify" plastered on their walls as their daily affirmations since they were almost all bought by Match Group.

Okcupid wants $50 a month

I'm not trying to speak negatively against your lived experience. But personally... I just can't imagine starting a serious life-long relationship because I bought twitter blue checkmarks and that impressed the lady. At least that's what it sounds like the "super likes" are. That shit sounds dystopian.

Super likes just alert the other person you swiped right without requiring a “match.” I still had to do all the talking, agree to a date, etc. When there’s like a 10 to 1 ratio of men to women on these apps, it just helps you stand out amongst the noise.

"once you're paired up, you're going to delete your account" woah woah woah, I never said that.

Heck, even my bank app informed me that they changed their privacy policy to allow sharing their customers data with advertisers. That's N26 for the record.

Well, of course dating apps want your date-a.

(I'm just kidding and sincerely hate this.)