[romankolpak]

Related personal anecdote:

I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes.

Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of the time it's Boosted ($3 a pop or something). I get plenty once I'm boosted, so the profile attractiveness doesn't seem to be a factor.

It feels like the app's algorithms are rigged to gradually push you towards paid subscription options. There must be a huge invisible market of Tinder whales given how exploitative it is, gambling addiction, loneliness, and desperation for dates are correlated traits and I would absolutely bet on Tinder exploiting this heavily.

[mikepurvis]

Agreed. It also seems extremely gross that you're initially pushed to buy Tinder Gold, but then only afterward realise there are still features locked behind Tinder Platinum, and even after that you'll probably spend still more buying packs of boosts and super-likes.

I know they're far from the only game in town, but this really feels like the behaviour of a monopoly entity that knows it can do basically whatever.

[nerdponx]

If I were an unethical data scientist working at Tinder, I would actually reserve the best matches until later in the period, after the initial flurry of "visibility" subsides a bit. That way you are less likely to immediately find a good date or two in the first few matches, helping to ensure that you will not just unsubscribe next month, while providing you with enough tantalizing options that you think it makes sense to keep going. "Great matches started coming up, I had better renew so I don't lose out!"

It's like a slot machine that actively adjusts the odds as you play, in order to keep you hooked as long as possible.

I'm pretty solidly mediocre when it comes to "algorithm design" tasks like this one, so I thought of it you can bet for sure that someone at Tinder did too.

[idealmedtech]

There's certainly no doubt in my mind that they save your "top" match, based on your swipe history and whether or not they've already matched you, to show up right after you use your last free swipe. Wait 12h and hope they show up again? Maybe, or maybe I'll spend the $2 to get that super like. Very scummy.

[orta]

One of the protagonists in the book Version Control works in customer service in a role a lot like you're describing, it's a great read for anyone into sci-fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733442-version-control

[mikepurvis]

Thanks for the recommendation! I have a long flight coming up so I'll check this out for sure.

[somedude895]

Back when I was on Tinder I'd delete my profile and make a new one once every three months or so, seemed to do the trick.

[opportune]

I am pretty sure they also boost you when you start using the app again after a period of inactivity, but not sure if the implementation/magnitude is different from the new-user bonus

[no_time]

I'm very suprised they are not using face tracking and/or device fingerprinting to thwart this.

[flutas]

It's all speculation, but they _seem_ to track a large amount of data to try and check for "new profiles" that are old users starting a new account, supposedly for 3 months after you delete your account. These are the ones I've seen commonly talked about.

- Phone Number

- IP

- Device IDs

- Email

- Photo hashes

- Photo exif

- Facial recognition

- Linked Facebook, Instagram, Spotify accounts

[welshwelsh]

Honestly, I am ok with this system. Paying a couple dollars for a matchmaking service isn't a big deal. If you go to bars instead you will pay way more. An introduction to a potential partner is worth at least $50 in my opinion, if anything Tinder is too cheap.

There are too many guys on tinder and most of them are not serious, mindlessly swiping as a way of wasting time. If you filter out the free users and only match guys who pay for boost with girls, it's a much better ratio for those guys and a better experience for the women since guys who buy boost are more invested and more likely to follow through.

[hahamrfunnyguy]

I don't mind paying something, but their goal of selling boosts, super-likes, etc runs counter to the goal of the customer which is to meet a compatible person IRL and then (presumably) stop using the site.

My experience with boosts is that they were counter-productive. While the boosts yield likes, but a lot of them would be profiles I'd already left-swiped on, should have been excluded by my filters, or just low-effort profiles. The same profiles would keep showing up in my feed too after I had swiped.

As for your second point, I think women do exactly the same thing. There's just more guys on the site so women are just getting a higher ratio low-effort likes. I'd say a good 50% of the profiles don't have anything written in them except a series of emojis or statements like "I don't know what to write here." or other really low effort content. Even the gold profiles sending messages would initiate a conversation with the dreaded "Hi." These interactions were always a complete waste of time, I just stopped responding to them after a while.

[maerF0x0]

IMO if the business model is to pay for impressions, I wish they'd be up front and just state and charge price per mille (or hundred or whatever). Instead you get an ambiguous "boost" with no accountability/metrics about what even happened? They could literally show you to no one and say "Oops, guess your profile sucks!"

The match rate thing is also kind of a lark because you don't care about matches. You care about matches with people you want to match with... in fact that kinda understates the ultimate goal -- you care about matches with someone who would be good for you (and you for them)... everything else is just vanity.

[michaelchisari]

I agree, but a honest model has a flat subscription fee instead of promising matches for free and upselling through nudging and manipulation.

I haven't online dated in a long time, but if I ever do again, I'll go with a service that has a transparent pricing model with no free plan.

[jrnichols]

unfortunately Tinder has become a lot less useful, and a rising number of OnlyFans creators are using it as a vehicle for advertising. They'll match with a guy, chat like normal, and then start dropping hints about their "spicy site."

it's really kind of depressing, honestly. Guys on dating sites are viewed as transactions. Tinder isn't alone with this - they're on multiple sites doing the same thing.

[blfr]

I've made a similar comment before[1] but this is exactly right. The price-to-benefit ratio for Tinder is incredible. You can literally fill your calendar with dates for months on a budget that would last a couple of decent drinks.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30485955

[kevin_thibedeau]

Only if you've hit the genetic jackpot.

[notch656a]

I've always wondered if online dating selects HARD (relatively to in-person invites) for looks. I don't look very pretty but when I was on the (IRL) dating scene I could get probably half the women I talked to out on a date if I really tried. Being fairly ugly I tried tender and OkCupid for a year or two and was lucky to have someone accept once every few months and I had a 100% no-show rate where the counterparty backed out. Online dating seriously hurt my self esteem until a few months after I stopped.

I gave up the apps and married someone meeting them the old fashioned way.

[valarauko]

> I've always wondered if online dating selects HARD (relatively to in-person invites) for looks.

I think it does, since it's the primary determinant of selection. I also find that in-person personality can be more attractive, unlike profiles where you have fewer dimensions to go on. Likewise, I do think certain types of people do better online and some do better offline.

[Firmwarrior]

I'm not the prettiest dude in the world, but I'm not really particularly ugly.. I look like a brown Matt Damon IRL.

I had absolutely zero luck with online dating back when I tried it around 2008. I think I just got downranked into oblivion by not gaming the system, since those dating sites use a ranking algorithm internally to gauge how attractive you are. If you click the "like" button on any woman you'd be willing to go on a coffee date with, it assumes you're a loser and hides you away.

Fortunately, you can network your way into a relationship the same way you can get a job.. just put out the word among friends, family, family friends, etc that you're looking for a girlfriend. Chances are you're within a couple of hops of hundreds or thousands of people. This isn't good for finding hookups or for incel jerks, but if you're ready to settle down it's the best method IMO.

[kevin_thibedeau]

For men it selects hard for height. Looks are secondary if you pass the magic threshold.

[alfnor]

False. Women see your face before your height on dating apps, but vice versa IRL.

[louissan]

Well I'd rather go to a bar/pub anyway. Social, human beings, brawling to order a beer at the zinc, contact and all that? Not to mention you at least get the tipsiness/(more: drunk) if/when all else fails... 8>

[throwaway289943]

Same here, I can look at, meet, and chat with 5-10 girls in one evening in a bar, and get a pretty good impression of them. Takes months to do the same on a dating app, with heaps of added toxic behaviour/people that you don't get in a bar. Gave it up a long time ago..

[nerdponx]

Maybe I'm just socially inept, but I have never once managed to meet someone at a bar that wasn't already part of some bigger group that I was with.

Edit: that's actually untrue, there are exactly 2 instances where it happened in my life. They were in the kinds of bars that I would usually avoid (too many drunk people shouting over loud music), in areas far from where I lived, that had pretty strong "going out" cultures.

Edit 2: now that I think about it, I'm not exactly dashing handsome. I've historically done a lot better in "house party" type of settings, but again that's with people who are already friends of friends.

[briga]

Have you tried to meet someone at a bar that wasn’t a part of your group?

[Shugarl]

I know that works to make friends, when you drunkenly, randomly start to talk to other people, or jump into conversations. But how does it work for meeting the opposite sex ? Being drunk for these kinds of things usually isn't good

[throwaway289943]

It's dishonest though, it should be clear that you get downgraded over time as well, and not just marketed as a "boost".

[hahamrfunnyguy]

I am sure that is the case, their goal is to keep you swiping as much as possible and buying their upgrades. I had a Gold membership for about a year or so. Boosts didn't work for me, I found that the boots only yielded a lot of low-quality likes (ie: profiles, that my filters should have rejected). I also continuously had profiles showing up that didn't meet my filter criteria and that I'd already swiped left on just days before.

I ended up emailing support and making the case that the site wasn't working as advertised or even as support said it was supposed to be working. I ended up getting a full refund.

[LtWorf]

2-3 years ago you could use a GPS faker, stay somewhere random a week and then return and you'd have many matches again.

I experimented a lot with it because I used to work at a different online dating company (where I was also doing scummy things).

[btbuildem]

It IS exploitative, by design. If you don't have the paid service, they'll never show the people who liked you in your normal stack. But once you pay, they've identified you as willing to pay, so the incentives are at extreme odds (any time you get a match, it's a risk for Tinder that you won't pay again)

[onetimeusename]

ya. I pay about $100 per month over a few apps and if you read the sales pages it's clear they deliberately disable useful features if you don't pay so you are paying to have an "enhanced experience". That alone should suggest they don't really have a value proposition for your life. Maybe that's because they don't want to be sued by promising to sell relationship success. But they keep user statistics secret and I suspect that is because the statistics would tell the truth about what they sell. I have had a bad experience but I don't think HN is the the place to talk about it.

[mock-possum]

I've only ever used ok cupid back in the day, not tinder, but - why do likes matter? Can't you still use the search function to find people you're interested, and begin interacting my messaging them?

[OkGoDoIt]

No, not anymore. OkCupid is just a stack of people you swipe right or left on now, just like Tinder.

[cryptonector]

I wonder if for younger people now the best way to meet dates is off-line. Well, I suspect it's always been so, but the question is whether the culture for young people will be decidedly on the off-line side.

[jesterson]

> It feels like the app's algorithms are rigged to gradually push you towards paid subscription options

I'd be extremely surprised if it happened to be otherwise.