> This is truly a nightmare. How did we allow such a crucial human function, finding a mate, to become monopolized?
I totally agree with you, and I would go even further. I'm actually furious that an essential part of human social life has become commoditised by a for-profit industry led by publicly-traded corporations. It being almost a monopoly, hidden to "consumers" [0] under an illusion of choice, is only the poop cherry on top of the whole steaming pile of crap.
One of my fantasies to become a millionaire (from a starting point of billionaire) is to establish an open source, transparent, non-profit and community-based online platform and app whose only mission is to help people meet someone with whom they are happy to meet and viceversa. Imagine a dating app but:
- Nothing encouraging "power users", even discouraging match accumulation.
- No gamification, other than configurable by user choice.
- No secret algorithms for rating. Instead, a choice of open community-developed algorithms for the swipe queue (if swiping is your thing, you can also filter and sort by query).
- No falsifying the potential dating pool size to keep users hooked. Do not show the profile of user A to user B, even if A fits B's filters, if B does not fit A's filters such that A would not see them.
- User engagement KPI in the denominator, not the numerator—the numerator being user reported success and personal satisfaction. The less time spent for good results, the better.
- No "pay to win". Instead of that, please donate if you win.
My dream would be to create a dating(?) platform, nay, a human relationship platform, with no perverse economic incentives that conflict with users matching. I would hope it could be So Damn Good that anyone looking for a date, or a shag, or a FWB, or to meet people to see where it goes, or whatever would feel like a chump to fall for Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, etc. Let swiping and notification addicts continue to use those for-profit games. Meanwhile, people wanting a human connection could stick to the platform that cares to make it as likely as possible.
Unfortunately, the only thing stopping me from doing this is that I have no plan in motion to become a billionaire such that I can finance this idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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[0] No, damnit, searching for a relationship, a fling, a connection, is not an act of consumption, it is an act of basic fucking humanity!
Why would you need to be a billionaire to build a platform like you described? If you think you can't acquire users without big spending, then this platform is not really much better than existing ones?
To be honest, I'm mostly joking about the billionaire thing. If I were emotionally invested enough in this idea above other parts of my life I would look for a way to get it moving. The problem is that, by its very nature, a non-profit open-source project like this could not attract venture capitalists or angel investors, lest it become the very thing it was created to challenge (*cough cough*, OpenAI, *cough cough*). A project like this would need venture altruists or angel donors instead to be feasible and sustainable — hence my fantasy of become stupidly rich to be able to get it moving, at the cost of downgrading to "normal rich".
You don't need investors, unless you think you can't get users without buying them. The platform you described don't need much resources and can be bootstrapped. You can still capture just 1% of the value that Match Group captures and live nicely.
I think the reason we don't see competitors like that is that dating without aggressive monetization won't be much better for the average user.
I totally agree with you, and I would go even further. I'm actually furious that an essential part of human social life has become commoditised by a for-profit industry led by publicly-traded corporations. It being almost a monopoly, hidden to "consumers" [0] under an illusion of choice, is only the poop cherry on top of the whole steaming pile of crap.
One of my fantasies to become a millionaire (from a starting point of billionaire) is to establish an open source, transparent, non-profit and community-based online platform and app whose only mission is to help people meet someone with whom they are happy to meet and viceversa. Imagine a dating app but:
- Nothing encouraging "power users", even discouraging match accumulation.
- No gamification, other than configurable by user choice.
- No secret algorithms for rating. Instead, a choice of open community-developed algorithms for the swipe queue (if swiping is your thing, you can also filter and sort by query).
- No falsifying the potential dating pool size to keep users hooked. Do not show the profile of user A to user B, even if A fits B's filters, if B does not fit A's filters such that A would not see them.
- User engagement KPI in the denominator, not the numerator—the numerator being user reported success and personal satisfaction. The less time spent for good results, the better.
- No "pay to win". Instead of that, please donate if you win.
My dream would be to create a dating(?) platform, nay, a human relationship platform, with no perverse economic incentives that conflict with users matching. I would hope it could be So Damn Good that anyone looking for a date, or a shag, or a FWB, or to meet people to see where it goes, or whatever would feel like a chump to fall for Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, etc. Let swiping and notification addicts continue to use those for-profit games. Meanwhile, people wanting a human connection could stick to the platform that cares to make it as likely as possible.
Unfortunately, the only thing stopping me from doing this is that I have no plan in motion to become a billionaire such that I can finance this idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
.
.
[0] No, damnit, searching for a relationship, a fling, a connection, is not an act of consumption, it is an act of basic fucking humanity!