It has been apparent for quite a while that these privacy-violation-as-a-service companies will suck up and monetize every bit of info you give them. But people seem to keep using them for whatever reason. I think it is totally nuts, but for some reason people just don’t seem to care.
Dating apps in particular have broken the social dynamics of dating. It's a big decision to stay off, it curtails the opportunities for meeting new people severely. You get restricted to the bar/party scene and that seem to attract a very specific sort of people.
Cooking classes, volunteering, sport clubs, the gym, group travel, boardgames, photography classes, dancing lessons, language classes, concerts, movie clubs, hiking groups, etc. etc.
Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
> Cooking classes, volunteering, sport clubs, the gym, group travel, boardgames, photography classes, dancing lessons, language classes, concerts, movie clubs, hiking groups, etc. etc.
I think the specific activity is less important than whether it's done by a community or not. That's especially true if you're the kind of person who has trouble connecting quickly with new people.
Some of those things (e.g. volunteering, gyms) can turn out to be relatively solo activities or have a lot of people treating them as such.
> Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
I agree with that broadly, but I think if "finding someone" is on your list of priorities, you should try to gravitate to things with a larger group or a just-right amount of churn.
> That's the way things used to be done before social/dating apps ... And by and large, it worked pretty well. Who better to matchmake than people who actually know both of you?
I feel like some uncomfortably large fraction of consumer-focused tech is like that: take something that worked, and replace it by some new-shiny junk-food like thing that's actually worse in all important ways.
I'd agree. The big differentiator being your own personality and your own outlook / expectations of life and others.
There are plenty people around looking to have a date, and maybe more. The big caveat is meeting someone who's a match.
If you want to reel in a fish, you will inevitably have thrown out your line many times and come up empty handed.
The elephant in the room is learning how to confront your own feelings regarding rejection in a healthy way. This is true regardless of how and where you meet others.
I dunno. None of those activities mesh with me. I went on a dating site and over the course of about a year found a couple other girls to watch movies and have sleepovers with. We all work and don't have hobbies like those, so we would not have run into each other.
My favorite group activity is sleeping together with lesbians.
I'm talking about the dating scene. Meeting people and making connections is not hard. It came across as condescending really. I'm talking about changing social dynamics and I'm getting life advice?
Dating apps changed the dynamics of meeting people to the worse in my experience and I'm sharing that experience.
People on this site have a really annoying habit of taking a selective quote to destroy any context. I think it actually is bad for writing, protecting against motivated mis-quotes is not something good authors worry about.
Or meeting people through work (though I wouldn't recommend that one generally on the basis of “don't shit where you eat”, I've seen it work for others).
Or through hobbies (I know a few people who have found partners in the trail running community, for instance).
Or just being happy single. Or, at least, no less happy than you feel you'd be with a partner. Take it from me, someone who is content to be an honorary mad cat lady, it can be a decent life.
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and every now & than they try to fix me by trying to nag me into the dating game. I'm not against dating, or finding a partner, I just don't care for it enough to make much effort, I'm not willing to lie about that or pretend to be someone I'm not more generally, and I doubt potential partners will find that very appealing!
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and feel like lesser people because they are single, which is possibly why people often assume my PoV is something I'm pretending about. And some just want the physical side of things, and see dating/relationships as a gateway to that, and they again see me as odd (or lying) when I say I can happily live without it.
> Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way,
We literally have scientific research showing that loneliness is just as bad for health as smoking, so please stop with this "you can be happy single" meme, it's not even funny at this point.
There's something about modern society that completely breaks the most basic human interactions, leaving people absurdly lonely. It's a pattern that can be seen in all countries: as the society gets more developed, people stop spending time with each other. What it exactly is remains elusive, but if the same statistic shows up across completely different cultures, then it's ignorant at best and evil at worst to put the blame on individuals for failing to thrive in an environment that sets them up for failure.
This is one of the common arguments that show the people who tell me I'm wrong to claim there is no problem with being single, and it is demonstrably wrong so, no, I won't stop with the “you can be happy single” thing.
Where in my post did I say I was lonely? Not having a relationship partner does not imply being lonely: I spend plenty of time with friends, family, and other people in my hobbies. Being single does not necessarily correlate with being lonely, in fact loneliness is a common problem for people in bad relationships. So while some single people are undoubtably lonely and many people who describe themselves as lonely are single, there is a huge pile of nuance between the two concepts.
Evolution didn't create a self-consistent mixture of drives and desires (that wasn't a priority). To me, it's not a mystery how revealed preference is at odds with the biological Ponzi scheme of having kids, suffering, and dying after preparing them to repeat the cycle. That sucks. If you have better alternatives, you take them.
I feel the same way. Being single is better the same way that not dealing with room mates is better.
But the relationship project, as a concept, isn't "two is better than one"; in a world where we met a lot of people (a thing rapidly receding into the past), you eventually met someone with whom your chemistry is so overwhelmingly, irrationally powerful that you feel like you can't afford not to be with them, which blows the joys of being single out of the water.
That might be obvious to people, but it's been a while since I was reminded about that feeling. When I remembered, I realized I was thinking about relationships the wrong way. :p Dating apps also skew your thinking, where you're picking from a menu, engaging your rational brain about what ingredients add up to good chemistry. "If they're `x`, that's a deal breaker. They need to be `y`! Also, I want someone who `z`s..." There's no rational analysis though; it's the least rational thing ever. You just have to try enough times.
That might also not be the sole motivator for people who feel lonely being single (a thing I can't really relate to, thankfully -- being in a relationship just cuz I have to sounds like hell).
You nailed it. When I was younger (my 20's on into my early 40's), I felt that I had to be in a relationship because it seemed the thing to do, and my libido had not yet started to wane because of lower T. Now that I'm almost 50, I don't feel the overwhelming urge to be with somebody, and so a woman would have to blow me out of the water for me to give up my freedom and independence at this point.
In my experience the less you seek, the easier it is.
I've never been single for more than a couple of months in my adulthood and I don't see myself as particularly attractive. But everytime I met my new long time partners it was at a moment where I was not really in a mood to enter a new relationship and was pretty much looking forward to spend some time single. But that probably means I was more attractive and looking less like a predator than men who were actively looking. The funny part is that on 2 occasions I used dating apps because as much as I wanted to stay single, I wasn't against the occasional sex but was underwhelmed by the experience and it resulted in very few dates. I've never been much into "marketing" and didn't want to reveal too much which probably didn't help.
Been out of the dating scene quite a while, but for those who are not, has the 'old school' way of meeting people and asking a phone number etc. become harder now? Do people only want to use dating apps for that purpose now?
> Been out of the dating scene quite a while, but for those who are not, has the 'old school' way of meeting people and asking a phone number etc. become harder now? Do people only want to use dating apps for that purpose now?
I was always too shy to ask a stranger for her number, but do remember a push to make that inappropriate in the 2010s (though that might have been more of an angry online feminist thing, the gist was asking someone for their number was a non-consensual imposition, thus harassment, while online dating was consensual).
People (male and female) need to take ownership of the difference between being uncomfortable and assaulted, because they're very different things.
If I ask someone for their number, and they're not comfortable giving it, they say "No thanks." I hear that and I say "No problem! It was nice meeting you" and then forget about it (or leave, as appropriate to the situation).
There's discomfort in life, because we're not all psychic.
Attempting to normalized discomfort out of life is just going to end up in some weird fun house mirror world, where we're still doing the same things, just through proxies or at arm's length.
I expect that it has because the culture has changed. People work from home and don't go out as often. Meetup organizers would avow that most people flake out and don't show up, and those that exist without a meaningful medium binding people together (an activity or game) tend to attract awkward interaction.
Once you're out of college, it's a sorry state. Dating apps get worse because these companies know that the alternatives owing to the always-online life are not great.
Asking someone out in itself is the same as it always was, what has changed is appropriate opportunities to capitalize on.
> People work from home and don't go out as often.
Is that really the case?
I think people feel the need to go out, especially when they are single. Not necessarily for dating purpose but when you have nobody to talk to at home you look more easily at danse/gym classes, sports club, art events, etc.
They feel the need increasingly because those needs aren't met. Watercooler talk is gone for many tech people in particular.
I've done most of the aforementioned examples, and gyms have not been a place to socialize very much; people are there to train on a schedule, then leave. Sports clubs can be more forgiving but it depends on what you're doing (dancing may be better). I played competitive team sports as an adult a few times and unless you were already part of some in-group, making friends is not that easy. People play then go home.
I had the largest returns (socially-speaking) in book clubs and similar groups like that.
I mentionned gym classes specufically, not going to the gym.
Like I have a few friends who met people within the group of their crossfit/whatever fitness class it was and when I am passing by on the seafront I very often see people doing sports with a coach, some of them having a chat when they are finishing up and wrapping their yoga bag and stuff.
It's even easier now to just ask for a number than before the pandemic. The median person seems to have ditched dating apps around that time.
Even the stock price of Match Group reflects that. They were in moderate use before and then had a few good years during before falling off a cliff. People who had, up until that point, not bothered trying to use these apps gave them a shot and then ran away.
It's never been all that difficult to ask someone out anyway. Discovery of new people got easier when things opened back up. People now make it a point to go out when they didn't before.
It's very embarrassing to admit attraction to someone in person. On a dating site you're trusting the site to be the friend who says "Hey you two both like each other".
Dunno but that is how we did it with my partner 4 years ago when we met. We both had an active account on at least one dating app and both having been deceived by all our dates on said app and in the end we met in a totally non dating context.
I don't think I would go through the dating app shit show again if I were to be single again.
Yeah it's sad really. It's become a worse version of social media where everything is fake, your data gets sold to the highest bidder, and you compete for a chance at mid, awkward sex with strangers.
It's not curtailing opportunities. I get probably 2 dates a year out of all the apps combined. The swipe right to match ratio is probably 0.5% or less. Asking someone for their number/date in RL is probably closer to 50%, at least for me.
Without coming off sexist, it seems very apparent that a lot of women just use these apps for some attention and have no intention of actually meeting up. Ymmv.
People who are looking for relationships in a serious way probably aren't on the apps very long before they're in some other kind of relationship. The majority are going to be those screwing around (figuratively but I guess also literally) because they never exit the main loop.
Complicated by the fact that it may be in an online dating company's interest _to keep you single_ and thus on the platform: once you find someone, you don't need to use the platform anymore, and they lose an active user / subscription.
I could list a couple of reasons:
- no alternatives to this service
- used to give data everywhere (let's face it, it has become an ubiquitous business model)
- lack of immediate feedback on how bad this is
Companies work hard into doing this. Look at Microsoft that now enforces an account signin on every new windows install with no easy way of going around it. Yet you're still forced to use windows to play some games or some softwares
I've become desensitised to how much data I'm losing because often I don't even have a choice and so one more service taking my data barely even feels significant. My data is out there everywhere so why even bother any more.
Convenience goes a long way. This is an area where harm is diffuse and removed from each individual's behavior, so the market has no way to punish bad behavior. A common failure mode.
will suck up and monetize every bit of info you give them
Even if you're already paying for the service!
I was listening on the radio to an interview with a "privacy journalist" the other day. He said that paid services are likely not collecting your info. This is simply not true. You can't make any assumptions here. I think most people don't seem to care because what's happening behind the curtain is not exactly obvious.
> But people seem to keep using them for whatever reason.
The market is not very effective at addressing second order inefficiencies and abstract privacy violations. How can you expect a random person to accurately value the tradeoff vs the service given?
Wait, aren’t the majority of these apps owned by Match Group?
It makes sense that their actual product would be near-total access to data from people ignorant of the value of this data and behavior on these apps.
Anyway, dating apps are garbage for the majority of men. You’re better off just going to a bar or social events and playing the numbers game in the meat market.
I can't speak for the state of apps today, but when I used them a decade ago I found they would be valuable for most people. It worked out for me and I'm not extraordinary. At the time though you could ignore all the match/swipe gimmicks (which leads to superficial cursory evaluation) and just send messages directly, drawing on someone's profile.
Searching for people yourself on these apps got entirely replaced by the match/swipe gimmicks. They claimed it was for your own good to reduce harassment or whatever, but it's really just more profitable to gatekeep.
It does seem anti-user. A decade ago I could sort by % personality/interest in common (on OKC) or just look at everyone (on PoF). I can only imagine that women are still harassed, and that a messaging filter would have otherwise been trivial to implement.
The sale of personal data is a lucrative sideband business for many companies. They discovered this asset, and they’re monetizing it. It’s akin to finding oil on your ranch.
The solution is to turn that asset into a liability. Add unlimited downside (corporate death) for a company that loses control of personal data that they’ve harvested. Turn that oil into radioactive. waste.
The individual perceives no negative effects from their data being sold, and this is I think the main reason why people don't care. And this will never change, so if we leave it up to individual choice, then the data will be harvested and sold.
The other big thing is that not knowing things about people makes it harder to control them. So, data is useful for the government as well, and commercially gathered data is a subpoena away from them to access.
So right now, privacy is a hard sell. The individuals don't like it, because it makes thing inconvenient* or inaccessible*. It's a hard sell for companies, because they can turn it into income by selling or using it for advertising themselves. And it's a hard sell for the governments as well, because private people are harder to control.
* I mean inconvenience like when migrating an E2E encrypted messaging app from device to device, and no way to share message history, because of the encryption.
* Inaccessible, as in applications refusing to work if not given specific permissions
As long as people are willing to pay for this kind of thing (and the people "paying" are often paying for access to the data the herdmasters are collating from the flock), then there are people who are willing to sell it.
That also goes for terrible security, and awful UX.
I care a lot about my privacy and this was one of the main reasons I didn't want to use dating apps. But I also didn't want to stay alone and meeting people in meat space (maybe I shouldn't have called it that) also didn't work for me, so I did end up using one of these apps. Luckily it worked and I clicked delete as soon as possible.
Deleting the app does not delete your data from their servers. Even wiping your apps local data before deletion, or deleting the account, does not wipe it from their servers. If you don't want them to sell info you provided as needed to use their service, you need to request them to delete it. Method varies by vendor.
Of course. Social media can't hold a candle to the amount of personal information mined by dating apps. Once again, we need regulation that bans selling personal information without explicit authorization
People simply don't realise the scale of the data brokerages that trade our data on everything we do. GDPR simply didn't go far enough in highlighting this.
It sucks that there really are not any alternatives, particularly for gay men. Other apps exist but really those 2 dominate except for a couple of niche areas.
It is interesting though, even if the company itself wasn't doing it a third party could mine for a lot of data as well. So I don't really know what the solution here is.
That being said it is incredibly frustrating that yet again, paying to be premium and remove ads does nothing about the privacy issue.
<rant>
Swiping felt like the death of dating apps. Dating has always been a numbers game (the more potential partners one interacts with and dates the higher the chances of forming successful relationships). Modern dating apps convert human relationships into catalog browsing, a simplified calculus of human affairs wired to a cash register.
All my LTR in IRL have started offline and with people I knew in some other IRL context. Online dating apps never led anywhere but the bedroom briefly then straight back on the app. That's just me, no knock on people who have formed successful relationships that started online. Or people who just want naked bedroom gymnastics. Or serial daters, or anyone for whom dating apps dynamics might actually work.
Would it be too cynical to posit dating app algorithms optimize around short term relationships to prevent customer churn? Users must be successful enough to continue subscribing to the platform but not so successful they cancel. Do we even get into OnlyFans 'creators' using dating apps as marketing channels (there are guides online instructing people how to do this, looking at you r/)? Is it too cynical to suggest that social media in general hijacked nascent online communities in the 90s in order to make the world safer for advertising? Anything grassroots and authentic was mowed down and paved over. It wasn't an online paradise, but it is now an virtual parking lot.
The major problem IMO is that the goals of the company (revenue) and the goals of the users (relationships) are misaligned. The companies are most successful when users are only marginally successful or given a proxy illusion of success, because that keeps the subscription revenue flowing. If two users meet and continue offline, bam, two users cancel (excluding poly folk). Companies exploit users' goals to bait them into subscriptions, trick them into surrendering private data, etc.
I feel this way about a lot of modern technology platforms. The goals of social media companies (adtech revenue) are misaligned with the users (community), so that these adtech nee social media companies are motivated to drive engagement even when there is a cost to online communities and society as a whole. Feeds of family and friends devolve into clickbait doomscrolls. Algorithms optimize on inciting rage, because rage drives engagement. It is a powerful emotion. Programmed by evolution us meatbags have our attention optimized towards potential threats. That rage spills offline into deeply divisive politics.
I've opted out of adtech. DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Last month I finally deleted my Facebook account after years of neglect. I'd only kept it to log on to third party sites but never actually used it for that even. I've started a broad retreat from much of the Internet and I don't think it is simple fatigue -- I've been online for over three decades. Monetization drives enshittification and it is has spread like a virus until most of the online landscape is infected. I feel that most sites and apps are only after my attention, my personal data, my money. 90% of the time if I want to look something up I go directly to Wikipedia instead of a search engine. I'm probably just going to pick Wikipedia anyway after I wade through all the ads and marginal sites in the search results. After all the paywalls. I use ChatGPT instead of searching for stuff like simple programming syntax -- sorry Stackoverflow, you were probably the least worst for years, but I'm relieved that AI is doing the work of grinding through dozens of pages to find a helpful answer.
I've subscribed to Coursera to fill the void so that if I am idle and pick up a device, instead of doomscrolling I'll learn something about machine learning. I've mercilessly cancelled most other online subscriptions, beating the lobster trap (easy in, hard out) and surprise renewals and the unsubscribe gauntlet (are you sure you want to cancel -- what about 90% off for the next 6 months?. I funnel that money into a monthly voluntary donation to Wikipedia.
I guess it comes down to ad tech burnout. Tired of monetization. Tired of algorithms optimizing on outcomes beneficial to corporations and even detrimental to me. I'm not seeking experiences online anymore, too many billboards in the way.
Writing this I realize my online experiences had devolved into a litany of crappy marketing tactics. It's almost funny that the first thing a lot of companies seem to think about with generative AI is automating customer service with chatbots, saving money by having less authentic engagement with customers. Predictable and perfect. It's also hilarious that all the content scrapers are screaming about genAI scraping their scraped content. It's the online content ouboros eating it's own AI generated tail.
This is what happens when we seek to monetize all human experience. We need new algorithms, new metrics, new gods, another drink ...
</rant>
#adtech #corporatesurveillance #monetization #trollingisthenewmarketing #notabot
Oh, Mozilla, why oh why do you keep talking about issues of privacy but gave up on your plan to invest into decentralized alternatives and mozilla.social?
I don't want to detract from the article, but whenever I see this I think "we know that already, but now what are you going to do about it?" and their answer is "invest in AI safety!"
Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
I think the specific activity is less important than whether it's done by a community or not. That's especially true if you're the kind of person who has trouble connecting quickly with new people.
Some of those things (e.g. volunteering, gyms) can turn out to be relatively solo activities or have a lot of people treating them as such.
> Of course, you wouldn't attend those with the explicit goal of finding someone special. I'd argue that the other way around is much healthier: go out there, explore activities that mesh with who you are, or get you a bit out of your comfort zone, and you'll likely meet new people who might just surprise you.
I agree with that broadly, but I think if "finding someone" is on your list of priorities, you should try to gravitate to things with a larger group or a just-right amount of churn.
Imho, if you're joining a group with a goal of meeting people to possibly have a relationship with, you want a group that:
And a particular note that you might not meet people in the group, but... the people you meet in the group might introduce you to other people.That's the way things used to be done before social/dating apps -- "Hi, have you met ____? I think the two of you have a lot in common..."
And by and large, it worked pretty well. Who better to matchmake than people who actually know both of you?
I feel like some uncomfortably large fraction of consumer-focused tech is like that: take something that worked, and replace it by some new-shiny junk-food like thing that's actually worse in all important ways.
There are plenty people around looking to have a date, and maybe more. The big caveat is meeting someone who's a match.
If you want to reel in a fish, you will inevitably have thrown out your line many times and come up empty handed.
The elephant in the room is learning how to confront your own feelings regarding rejection in a healthy way. This is true regardless of how and where you meet others.
My favorite group activity is sleeping together with lesbians.
Dating apps changed the dynamics of meeting people to the worse in my experience and I'm sharing that experience.
Wow, talk about condescending.
You’re not wrong about what dating apps have changed but don’t discount issues others have faced that you may not have.
Or meeting people through work (though I wouldn't recommend that one generally on the basis of “don't shit where you eat”, I've seen it work for others).
Or through hobbies (I know a few people who have found partners in the trail running community, for instance).
Or just being happy single. Or, at least, no less happy than you feel you'd be with a partner. Take it from me, someone who is content to be an honorary mad cat lady, it can be a decent life.
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and every now & than they try to fix me by trying to nag me into the dating game. I'm not against dating, or finding a partner, I just don't care for it enough to make much effort, I'm not willing to lie about that or pretend to be someone I'm not more generally, and I doubt potential partners will find that very appealing!
Many don't seem able to accept that life can be fulfilling this way, and feel like lesser people because they are single, which is possibly why people often assume my PoV is something I'm pretending about. And some just want the physical side of things, and see dating/relationships as a gateway to that, and they again see me as odd (or lying) when I say I can happily live without it.
We literally have scientific research showing that loneliness is just as bad for health as smoking, so please stop with this "you can be happy single" meme, it's not even funny at this point.
There's something about modern society that completely breaks the most basic human interactions, leaving people absurdly lonely. It's a pattern that can be seen in all countries: as the society gets more developed, people stop spending time with each other. What it exactly is remains elusive, but if the same statistic shows up across completely different cultures, then it's ignorant at best and evil at worst to put the blame on individuals for failing to thrive in an environment that sets them up for failure.
Where in my post did I say I was lonely? Not having a relationship partner does not imply being lonely: I spend plenty of time with friends, family, and other people in my hobbies. Being single does not necessarily correlate with being lonely, in fact loneliness is a common problem for people in bad relationships. So while some single people are undoubtably lonely and many people who describe themselves as lonely are single, there is a huge pile of nuance between the two concepts.
Evolution didn't create a self-consistent mixture of drives and desires (that wasn't a priority). To me, it's not a mystery how revealed preference is at odds with the biological Ponzi scheme of having kids, suffering, and dying after preparing them to repeat the cycle. That sucks. If you have better alternatives, you take them.
But the relationship project, as a concept, isn't "two is better than one"; in a world where we met a lot of people (a thing rapidly receding into the past), you eventually met someone with whom your chemistry is so overwhelmingly, irrationally powerful that you feel like you can't afford not to be with them, which blows the joys of being single out of the water.
That might be obvious to people, but it's been a while since I was reminded about that feeling. When I remembered, I realized I was thinking about relationships the wrong way. :p Dating apps also skew your thinking, where you're picking from a menu, engaging your rational brain about what ingredients add up to good chemistry. "If they're `x`, that's a deal breaker. They need to be `y`! Also, I want someone who `z`s..." There's no rational analysis though; it's the least rational thing ever. You just have to try enough times.
That might also not be the sole motivator for people who feel lonely being single (a thing I can't really relate to, thankfully -- being in a relationship just cuz I have to sounds like hell).
I've never been single for more than a couple of months in my adulthood and I don't see myself as particularly attractive. But everytime I met my new long time partners it was at a moment where I was not really in a mood to enter a new relationship and was pretty much looking forward to spend some time single. But that probably means I was more attractive and looking less like a predator than men who were actively looking. The funny part is that on 2 occasions I used dating apps because as much as I wanted to stay single, I wasn't against the occasional sex but was underwhelmed by the experience and it resulted in very few dates. I've never been much into "marketing" and didn't want to reveal too much which probably didn't help.
I was always too shy to ask a stranger for her number, but do remember a push to make that inappropriate in the 2010s (though that might have been more of an angry online feminist thing, the gist was asking someone for their number was a non-consensual imposition, thus harassment, while online dating was consensual).
People (male and female) need to take ownership of the difference between being uncomfortable and assaulted, because they're very different things.
If I ask someone for their number, and they're not comfortable giving it, they say "No thanks." I hear that and I say "No problem! It was nice meeting you" and then forget about it (or leave, as appropriate to the situation).
There's discomfort in life, because we're not all psychic.
Attempting to normalized discomfort out of life is just going to end up in some weird fun house mirror world, where we're still doing the same things, just through proxies or at arm's length.
Once you're out of college, it's a sorry state. Dating apps get worse because these companies know that the alternatives owing to the always-online life are not great.
Asking someone out in itself is the same as it always was, what has changed is appropriate opportunities to capitalize on.
Is that really the case?
I think people feel the need to go out, especially when they are single. Not necessarily for dating purpose but when you have nobody to talk to at home you look more easily at danse/gym classes, sports club, art events, etc.
I've done most of the aforementioned examples, and gyms have not been a place to socialize very much; people are there to train on a schedule, then leave. Sports clubs can be more forgiving but it depends on what you're doing (dancing may be better). I played competitive team sports as an adult a few times and unless you were already part of some in-group, making friends is not that easy. People play then go home.
I had the largest returns (socially-speaking) in book clubs and similar groups like that.
Like I have a few friends who met people within the group of their crossfit/whatever fitness class it was and when I am passing by on the seafront I very often see people doing sports with a coach, some of them having a chat when they are finishing up and wrapping their yoga bag and stuff.
Even the stock price of Match Group reflects that. They were in moderate use before and then had a few good years during before falling off a cliff. People who had, up until that point, not bothered trying to use these apps gave them a shot and then ran away.
It's never been all that difficult to ask someone out anyway. Discovery of new people got easier when things opened back up. People now make it a point to go out when they didn't before.
I don't think I would go through the dating app shit show again if I were to be single again.
Without coming off sexist, it seems very apparent that a lot of women just use these apps for some attention and have no intention of actually meeting up. Ymmv.
Even if you're already paying for the service!
I was listening on the radio to an interview with a "privacy journalist" the other day. He said that paid services are likely not collecting your info. This is simply not true. You can't make any assumptions here. I think most people don't seem to care because what's happening behind the curtain is not exactly obvious.
It's the only way to meet people and will become even moreso over time.
If you pointed a gun to my head, I'm pretty sure I could think of a reason why someone would want to use Tinder.
The market is not very effective at addressing second order inefficiencies and abstract privacy violations. How can you expect a random person to accurately value the tradeoff vs the service given?
This kind of stuff we need regulation to handle.
I am stealing that line!
It makes sense that their actual product would be near-total access to data from people ignorant of the value of this data and behavior on these apps.
Anyway, dating apps are garbage for the majority of men. You’re better off just going to a bar or social events and playing the numbers game in the meat market.
The solution is to turn that asset into a liability. Add unlimited downside (corporate death) for a company that loses control of personal data that they’ve harvested. Turn that oil into radioactive. waste.
Even my state's DMV sells my data as a side business. I guess if I want out of that I can ride my bicycle in the woods.
The other big thing is that not knowing things about people makes it harder to control them. So, data is useful for the government as well, and commercially gathered data is a subpoena away from them to access.
So right now, privacy is a hard sell. The individuals don't like it, because it makes thing inconvenient* or inaccessible*. It's a hard sell for companies, because they can turn it into income by selling or using it for advertising themselves. And it's a hard sell for the governments as well, because private people are harder to control.
* I mean inconvenience like when migrating an E2E encrypted messaging app from device to device, and no way to share message history, because of the encryption.
* Inaccessible, as in applications refusing to work if not given specific permissions
That also goes for terrible security, and awful UX.
Oh lord.
>some of those AI features in the future, such as a paywalled chatbot boyfriend
Ohhhh I do not want to talk to what that chatbot is going to turn into.
It is interesting though, even if the company itself wasn't doing it a third party could mine for a lot of data as well. So I don't really know what the solution here is.
That being said it is incredibly frustrating that yet again, paying to be premium and remove ads does nothing about the privacy issue.
How so? Aren't there gay friendly places in every city nowadays?
All my LTR in IRL have started offline and with people I knew in some other IRL context. Online dating apps never led anywhere but the bedroom briefly then straight back on the app. That's just me, no knock on people who have formed successful relationships that started online. Or people who just want naked bedroom gymnastics. Or serial daters, or anyone for whom dating apps dynamics might actually work.
Would it be too cynical to posit dating app algorithms optimize around short term relationships to prevent customer churn? Users must be successful enough to continue subscribing to the platform but not so successful they cancel. Do we even get into OnlyFans 'creators' using dating apps as marketing channels (there are guides online instructing people how to do this, looking at you r/)? Is it too cynical to suggest that social media in general hijacked nascent online communities in the 90s in order to make the world safer for advertising? Anything grassroots and authentic was mowed down and paved over. It wasn't an online paradise, but it is now an virtual parking lot.
The major problem IMO is that the goals of the company (revenue) and the goals of the users (relationships) are misaligned. The companies are most successful when users are only marginally successful or given a proxy illusion of success, because that keeps the subscription revenue flowing. If two users meet and continue offline, bam, two users cancel (excluding poly folk). Companies exploit users' goals to bait them into subscriptions, trick them into surrendering private data, etc.
I feel this way about a lot of modern technology platforms. The goals of social media companies (adtech revenue) are misaligned with the users (community), so that these adtech nee social media companies are motivated to drive engagement even when there is a cost to online communities and society as a whole. Feeds of family and friends devolve into clickbait doomscrolls. Algorithms optimize on inciting rage, because rage drives engagement. It is a powerful emotion. Programmed by evolution us meatbags have our attention optimized towards potential threats. That rage spills offline into deeply divisive politics.
I've opted out of adtech. DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Last month I finally deleted my Facebook account after years of neglect. I'd only kept it to log on to third party sites but never actually used it for that even. I've started a broad retreat from much of the Internet and I don't think it is simple fatigue -- I've been online for over three decades. Monetization drives enshittification and it is has spread like a virus until most of the online landscape is infected. I feel that most sites and apps are only after my attention, my personal data, my money. 90% of the time if I want to look something up I go directly to Wikipedia instead of a search engine. I'm probably just going to pick Wikipedia anyway after I wade through all the ads and marginal sites in the search results. After all the paywalls. I use ChatGPT instead of searching for stuff like simple programming syntax -- sorry Stackoverflow, you were probably the least worst for years, but I'm relieved that AI is doing the work of grinding through dozens of pages to find a helpful answer.
I've subscribed to Coursera to fill the void so that if I am idle and pick up a device, instead of doomscrolling I'll learn something about machine learning. I've mercilessly cancelled most other online subscriptions, beating the lobster trap (easy in, hard out) and surprise renewals and the unsubscribe gauntlet (are you sure you want to cancel -- what about 90% off for the next 6 months?. I funnel that money into a monthly voluntary donation to Wikipedia.
I guess it comes down to ad tech burnout. Tired of monetization. Tired of algorithms optimizing on outcomes beneficial to corporations and even detrimental to me. I'm not seeking experiences online anymore, too many billboards in the way.
Writing this I realize my online experiences had devolved into a litany of crappy marketing tactics. It's almost funny that the first thing a lot of companies seem to think about with generative AI is automating customer service with chatbots, saving money by having less authentic engagement with customers. Predictable and perfect. It's also hilarious that all the content scrapers are screaming about genAI scraping their scraped content. It's the online content ouboros eating it's own AI generated tail.
This is what happens when we seek to monetize all human experience. We need new algorithms, new metrics, new gods, another drink ... </rant> #adtech #corporatesurveillance #monetization #trollingisthenewmarketing #notabot
I don't want to detract from the article, but whenever I see this I think "we know that already, but now what are you going to do about it?" and their answer is "invest in AI safety!"
[0]: https://github.com/Firefly-Social/Firefly