You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
I contemplated whether to try to build a dating site a few times while I was single, and every time what stopped me was the perverse incentives. Making a financially viable dating service without actively making things worse on purpose is really hard.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
It’s just the latest new tech right wing obsession (see Elon Musk ranting about it on twitter, meanwhile no Tesla has middle seat LATCH). In a couple of years they’ll move on to something else.
I do think society would be better off in many ways if more people had kids but the current dialogue about it is offputting.
This reminds me of a black comedy movie called The Lobster, People are essentially forced into confinement into a hotel until they find a romantic partner, otherwise they will be transformed into an animal of their choice.
If you couple up with someone you are evaluated in a compatibility period to which if you argue you get given a child, if you argue again, you get given a second child haha.
water-data-dude · · focus · HN ↗
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
piker · · focus · HN ↗
- we get paid for date $1
- we get paid for second date $10
- we get paid for proposal $100
- we get paid for marriage $1000
- we pay for divorce $1500
- we get paid for first child $500
- we get paid for second child $1000
- we get paid for nth child $2000 * (n - 2)
manvillej · · focus · HN ↗
epihelix · · focus · HN ↗
vigilantpuma · · focus · HN ↗
I do think society would be better off in many ways if more people had kids but the current dialogue about it is offputting.
piker · · focus · HN ↗
vablings · · focus · HN ↗
If you couple up with someone you are evaluated in a compatibility period to which if you argue you get given a child, if you argue again, you get given a second child haha.