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Would a federated dating site work well? What would it look like? (startrek.website)

submitted 1 year ago by swab148@startrek.website to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Basically title, every bit of online dating nowadays is either Match or Meta, and we're all about breaking corporate chains right?

So these are the thoughts I had:

Matches based on simple user selection: age range, lifestyle, hobbies etc. None of that dumb algorithm stuff that makes you reset your profile every month.
ActivityPub protocol so that anyone can run their own instance, but can also be blocked if anything heinous happens.
E2EE for messaging (and anything else if it's possible).
Someone wrote an open-source anti-CSAM script for Lemmy recently, I hope we could adapt that to our use.
Just, like, everyone have a good time on this app, we're here for love lol

I am not a coder, so I would have no idea how to do this, but I wonder about the interest in such a creation. Maybe some of you out there could make something I could use to get a date (pls).

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[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

Wouldn't work.

Much of the online dating market is an oligopoly run by two main players: Match Group and Bumble Inc.

Bumble Inc own Bumble and Badoo while Match Group own nearly every other major platform like Hinge, Tinder, OkCupid, POF and a few others.

This oligopoly is the reason why mainstream online dating is an unmoderated mess filled with scammers, OnlyFans advertising bots and otherwise fake users. Said users inflate the company's registration metrics massively and sucker people into paying several times the price of a WoW subscription just to see who liked their profile. Major switches to mobile also make it much harder for users to run reverse image searches and weed out these fakes more quickly.

A dating platform on the fediverse would be an even worse experience, not because of corporate greed but because inviting everybody and their mother to create a new instance creates serious content moderation issues. Expect this platform to be even more flooded with bots, spammers, scammers and other bad actors.