[fortran77]

Even though it would get terrible press and PR, a "no surprises" dating site where height and weight and photo are verified would go a long way to solving some of these problems. This way people can swim in their lanes, without wasting other people's time.

[tgv]

The phrase "swim in their lanes" riles me in this context. While a photo and some basic personal data would help, dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome. And there's no pool attendant either. It's not up to you to decide who gets to date whom.

[shard]

> dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome

I'm not sure if I agree. From the perspective of the dating site you'd be right, the longer people are unable to find the kind of relationship that they want, the better it is for their business. However, from the point of view of the people looking for dates, if people are shown little to no profiles where it's highly unlikely that a relationship will happen, and shown mostly profiles where matches are likely, regardless of their stated preferences, and thus response rates and relationship likelihood rises, that seems like it can be a better outcome to me.

[tgv]

It's not about that, it's about the phrasing "swim in your lane". That means imposing social rules, and belittling people who behave differently. Taken in extremis, it can be interpreted as: ugly should only date ugly.

[tomp]

No, you're misinterpreting it, maybe even projecting your own insecurities. Nobody said you have to date fit / thin people - just that people shouldn't lie / pretend about it. You have a fetish on fatties? Set the weight filter up high. This is clearly superior to the current model, where it's easy for people to lie about weight/age/height/income/...

The real criticism of this model is completely different, and much deeper. People don't actually know what they want and who would make them happy, and they often conform / default to social conventions in their public preferences - e.g. maybe you want to filter out 10+ older men because you don't want to go on dates with "creepy" dudes, or you want to filter out fat women because you don't want your friends to judge you - even though in reality, you might actually be happier with those matches, or, more likely, those attributes are often orthogonal to your actual happiness.

[HeyHoJoe]

Wouldn’t help, the same numbers breakdown would occur, people would still be unhappy as a consequence, it would just be more up front. Well, it’s the world people want, hope they like it.