The destruction of OkCupid by Match Group looks like a politically motivated attack against the minorities and intellectual power users who used to flock there.
OkCupid used to be the best place to match diverse people.
They crowdsourced thousands of multiple choice questions from which you built your search filter:
- Which answers you accept
- How important each is to you
- Your answer for the other side of the match equation
- Voluntary explanation
The match results were factored into friendship, dating, and sex. “Friendship” contained ethics and communication style, so it also worked for business partnerships.
Then Match Group bought it.
For a while they let it be, but then they:
- Removed the factoring - no more looking for friends or sex, only complete packages
- Removed search - no more finding the best matches anywhere on the planet, now you just swipe like Tinder
- Removed keyword search - no more finding niche interests not included in the questions, like “furry”
- Removed the search filter - now everything has to be the same to match: both of you must have or not have tattoos for example, never mind what you like - one of my likes went from 95% to 50% match
- Deleted the voluntary explanations without warning, so no one could back theirs up
- Deleted ~95% of the match questions without warning
- Deleted all accumulated likes, which were the best matching people around the world with maximal couple/friend/sex partner potential except, for example, location for now. They broke the profile links, so bookmarks became useless.
- They delete matches (mutual likes) if they haven’t been messaging in a while, as if that meant they’re not a match - no, they have a temporary problem, such as life situation
- They police inconvenient statements in the users’ introductions as the political situation evolves - the day after the mass murderer healthcare insurance CEO got shot, the section in my profile containing (for months) “fuck the healthcare system - make a better one” was deleted without sending me a copy to edit
Dating apps have never been compatible with their business models. Even without the politics, they’re motivated to keep you on the site and using it forever instead of finding a longterm partner and going on with your life.
The only actual business model I’m aware of that’s compatible with finding a partner is a traditional marriage-focused matchmaker, as often used in traditional Indian arranged marriages. These matchmakers work best as a lifestyle business where the matchmaker personally knows the families involved and relies on (usually her) reputation, so can’t just run off with the money if the marriage doesn’t work out.
Changing the business model from pay-to-play into escrow-held matching success reward would change dating.
If a user likes another, and wants more matches of the same kind, they must admit the dating company was successful, and the escrow pays them.
If you choose not to release the payment, it means the match was bad and the matching algorithm must be corrected according to your stated reason for dissatisfaction. If you hold on to the deposited money despite success, your matches get worse.
That sounds at least somewhat plausible but I’m still skeptical.
I think the core problem is the loss of trust in our society. This of course is not limited to dating but is everywhere, affecting almost everything, and it’s taken place over the past few centuries. We’ve gone from a village lifestyle (where everyone in a community knows each other and relationships of all kinds are lifelong and reputation is extremely important to uphold) to a metropolitan lifestyle where everyone is anonymous and mass media predominates, and by far most relationships are temporary transactions (even in retail stores).
This latter structure of mass anonymity does not foster trust in any meaningful capacity and so is not conducive to partnership formation, among many other things. News media has similarly suffered catastrophic loss of trust due to the erosion of the classified ad business model and the consolidation and cost-cutting which followed.