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ActivityPub protocol so that anyone can run their own instance, but can also be blocked if anything heinous happens.
The overlap between the users who will run their own instance and the users you want for a dating app is the empty set.
(Speaking as someone that runs a personal Lemmy instance here)
I'll bring you a grass box
Is that some kind of advanced seed box? At least that'll help keep my torrent ratios up!
Neckbeards fighting about Linux. No girls in sight.
Like Lemmy.
Select your distro, sock color, and [top|bottom].
I use arch btw
Sausages everywhere
I don't think there's any chick's here dude. It's just us.
bats eyelashes
briefly forgot men have eyelashes too and got excited
My wife is here, but for obvious reasons, her identify will remain hidden.
In theory? Yes. In reality? No.
Besides all the practical reasons already mentioned, it's simply a question of marketing to get people into it. Which costs money noone wants to pay because it kills the principle of breaking free of corpo-hold. Without marketing you'll end up with the nerds that are already here (majority). And of those, the majority are probably also male.
And on top of that, you might find other people living in NYC but what about smaller cities or even foreign ones? With reddits userbase you probably could, but you don't reach them because they already prefer mainstream-stuff π
And of those, the majority are probably also male.
Ok we start with a federated Grindr, then once that takes off we use the network effects to pull in other orientations..
Lol. But... We already have grindr. If I'd be gay, why should i use anything else? π
Yep. Dating services are hard mode for the network effect, because you need to find a bunch of users that are close to you.
I swear thereβs a group of people who want everything to be βfederatedβ without really understanding what that means. Itβs cryptobros 2.0. Letβs make a block-chain based dating app too!
Congrats you discovered a new technology - not everything needs to run on that technology.
Federation is not just a new technology, it's a new (imo better!) way to govern and distribute power in online services. Of course we should explore the possibility of creating federated alternatives for everything, we would be dumb not to. And it's fine if for some of the services the answer is no, that doesn't make the question bad!
The problem with Crypto imo is that many people don't actually want to improve things, especially the loud ones. They just want to make a profit and have no problem scamming others for it.
a new (imo better!) way to govern and distribute power in online services
I'd argue federation is the old way, the original way the internet was built, and the centralized walled-garden ecosystems ran by FAANG is the new way. Email, usenet, even http and world wide web itself are examples of federation.
I think people need to go outside and interact with each other in person. That's the best way to date.
It's true. At 28 I'd been dateless for 10 years, doing the sad neckbeard incel thing. One day a friend of a friend received two free tickets to a speed dating event. He didn't want to go, but he said he would go if someone else went with him for moral support. In a very out-of-character move for me, I volunteered and went along with him. It was the first time in over 5 years I'd been to a bar. We did 5 minute dates with 15 different women. It was the most women I've spoken to in one night in my whole life. There was only one candidate I connected with, I submitted her as a match. The next day I got an email saying that she had matched with me too! I got her email, and chatted via email for about 6 weeks, then organised to go on a real date. The rest is history from there, we're coming up to our 10th wedding anniversary.
So yes, going outside, interacting with people, it works. Its not a trick guys.
The people I'm interested in dating would pay to step into a human sized microwave before going outside.
I don't think it federates, but there's Alovoa, an open source dating platform.
You know, I am single and have been curious about dating apps for a while. But I never really got over the hurdle of making a profile because of how much of a hellscape it seems. I may be curious enough to make a profile in this website tonight (fully expecting 0 users in my entire country)
I took the leap last year into algorithmic dating, and it's been a great experience. Go in with no expectations just try to have as much fun, delight, conversation, wonder as possible and roll with the punches. There is always an adventure waiting.
I've meet with people all over, done little adventures, and got good friends out of it, and even some romance. Toally worth it to explore.
When you say algorithmic dating, did you try multiple apps or just one? Did you have more positive experiences with any one app?
I may do it, but I'm a bit shy about the account creation part, specifically having to take pictures of myself which are not terrible. I feel like I'm decently attractive, but I hate all pictures of me. I think this is honestly my biggest hurdle.
Tried multiple, basically it doesn't matter how good the app is, but where the people are. Different apps are popular in different places.
Everyone you haven't met is a stranger, it doesn't matter what strangers think. Just take your photos and make a profile, don't worry about it. Get the profile going and just see what happens, no pressure, all strangers anyway.
It doesn't matter if you don't like your own photos, your not trying to match with yourself. We are our own worst critics, other people are more forgiving.
Thanks! I'm almost wondering if a federated dating platform would even work, given the moderation challenges.
Edit: Also there were like, three women in my area, so that's problematic.
I never understood reddit as a dating site. And the problems there are only amplified on Lemmy.
user density in the geographic region I would date within. With reddit, at least I was quite sure there were other users within an hours drive of me
it's not a dating site and not set up with the guardrails needed to make it even marginally safe. If a person on Bumble starts being scary, there are some ways to report then and they will possibly be removed or restricted from the platform. On reddit and Lemmy, the responses will be one of the following "free speech, get wrecked", "if you don't want to be abused/harassed, you shouldn't go into public spaces", or "you signed up for the site, you asked for it", or "give them a chance, they are probably just not good at dating skills" or even Andrew Tate acolyte bullshit that I don't want to think about.
distribution of gender and of sexual orientation across the platform. I would be surprised if Lemmy userbase is less than 95% men. Unless those men are gay/bi at an improbably high rate, there aren't going to be many people available to match with.
"everyone have a good time, we're here for love" says the hordes of people who are actually here to waste time with no intention to actually date, cruise for nudes, or to data mine peoples personal information.
Tl;Dr if actual dating apps are not bringing a person dating success, nothing about Lemmy will be any better.
Gay nerd dating site
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.
Federated or not, dating sites don't work well
I'm getting married next week. Met her on Tinder. Sometimes they absolutely do work
Why would they work well? Their business model doesn't incentivize dating apps to work well. They sell subscriptions so they'd rather their users stay perpetually single and become increasingly desperate.
The main hurdles I see are
moderation of troll users, the unending flood of dick pics.
Spammers, catfishers, who love to flood these sites.
Not giving away too much privacy in terms of location sharing, or seeing who matches with whom.
Safety, what if something goes wrong with a date, what recourse do people have?
I think the upside is bigger then the downsides. It's worth the effort to build, just needs lots of thought to do in a decentralized way.
Somehow you'd want to continuously federate new instances to keep the userbase connected.
the problem with dating platforms is like they open and people start mixing and then many just leave the dating pool as they match up or give up. The remaining people lean a little less dateable. Once this short term process repeats a hundred times there's always some degree of permament toxic residents on a dating site.
This begs a feature dating sites should have is a shutdown date the minute they open.
Each person could keep a log of people they know who are single, and then when someone asks if they know anyone who might be interested in going on a date, they could instantly recall a suggestion from their cache! Distributed, peer reviewed recommendation, local. The best part is that it doesn't even require a computer!