keltan's Shortform

keltan

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To Make Dating Apps Not Terrible, Make Them Not-for-Profit?

I'm skipping the explanation of why dating apps are bad for their users.

To fix these problems, why wouldn't we make a not-for-profit dating app?

It removes incentives to keep users lonely for as long as possible.
There are rich people who are worried about population decline, who might fund it.
- I'm assuming some governments are probably getting worried too.
An app that legitimately finds people love, is probably a good candidate for warm fuzzy donations, perhaps the general public would be receptive to this?

Questions

Does anyone know of any dating apps (other than Duolicious, which I'll write about in a comment) that have experimented with a not-for-profit, or charity model?
What am I missing? This seems like a big ol' hunk of power, social capital, and utility, just sitting on the ground of central station!

Two weeks after launching the website, someone will get date-raped by someone they met through your app, and they will sue you. The story will be in all clickbait media, which will report it as totally your fault. On your Wikipedia page, 90% will be the "Controversies" section, listing everything bad that has ever happened to any of your users.

Unless you spend tons of money on PR and lawyers, of course.

1[anonymous]1y

No, actually; the mindset implied by repeating that text as a meme is quite different than the mindset implied by unironically generating it.

5gwern1y

Indeed they are different mindsets. They are, however, both mindsets of concern.