this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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A Boring Dystopia

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Destruction of OkCupid as an attack against its liberal-skewed user base (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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The destruction of OkCupid by Match Group looks like a politically motivated attack against the minorities and intellectual power users who used to flock there.

OkCupid used to be the best place to match diverse people.
They crowdsourced thousands of multiple choice questions from which you built your search filter:

  • Which answers you accept
  • How important each is to you
  • Your answer for the other side of the match equation
  • Voluntary explanation

The match results were factored into friendship, dating, and sex. "Friendship" contained ethics and communication style, so it also worked for business partnerships.

Then Match Group bought it.
For a while they let it be, but then they:

  • Removed the factoring - no more looking for friends or sex, only complete packages
  • Removed search - no more finding the best matches anywhere on the planet, now you just swipe like Tinder
  • Removed keyword search - no more finding niche interests not included in the questions, like "furry"
  • Removed the search filter - now everything has to be the same to match: both of you must have or not have tattoos for example, never mind what you like - one of my likes went from 95% to 50% match
  • Deleted the voluntary explanations without warning, so no one could back theirs up
  • Deleted ~95% of the match questions without warning
  • Deleted all accumulated likes, which were the best matching people around the world with maximal couple/friend/sex partner potential except, for example, location for now. They broke the profile links, so bookmarks became useless.
  • They delete matches (mutual likes) if they haven't been messaging in a while, as if that meant they're not a match - no, they have a temporary problem, such as life situation
  • They police inconvenient statements in the users' introductions as the political situation evolves - the day after the mass murderer healthcare insurance CEO got shot, the section in my profile containing (for months) "fuck the healthcare system - make a better one" was deleted without sending me a copy to edit

Avoid dating services owned by Match Group.

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[–] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 9 points 44 minutes ago

I lost the first messages my wife sent me on OK Cupid and I’m quite heartbroken about that, but I have my actual wife with me still and she adores me.

[–] Draces@lemmy.world 24 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I think it's much more likely they destroyed it because it worked and was free. It didn't keep users on the platform swiping endlessly and that's bad for it's more profitable apps

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 3 points 23 minutes ago

Yep met my wife on OkCupid. Been together for going on 12 years now. Sad to hear it's been destroyed. Why the fuck is this group allowed to monopolize the dating apps?

This shit is sick and needs to be torn down.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 80 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That is a real shame, I met my wife on OK Cupid. We liked it for all those features that are gone now. I've recommended it to several people over the years, guess I'll stop doing that.

As for being politically motivated, maybe? But my first guess would be that the changes were driven by immediate profitability factors. Because really, what is more important than quarterly and annual profit reports?

[–] v_krishna@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Also met my wife on there. Together for a decade now, 6 year wedding anniversary this spring. Iirc we were a 99% match. Which in hindsight is funny because even though our moral sensibilities and lots of our interests/hobbies are very aligned personality wise we are very different (but complementary for sure)

[–] IHawkMike@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

This almost describes mine and my wife's experience to a tee.

I feel bad for anyone trying to date online in this enshittified world today.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 57 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

That chart pisses me off, they have comodified companionship and exploited lonelyness in every single way.

This is not news, but for the first time made me realize how huge this is.

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 hours ago

They are a monopoly and should be broken up

[–] figjam@midwest.social 11 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

We should build a new service that does what okc used to do and then sell it to match for dollars. Repeat ad nauseum

[–] August27th@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 hour ago

Match owns all the patents

[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

This sounds good until you realise you're talking about building something good that people like and then setting it - and them - on fire for a few bucks. What would you really be selling to Match? User data of unsuspecting users who did not sign up for that.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 18 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Dating apps have never been compatible with their business models. Even without the politics, they’re motivated to keep you on the site and using it forever instead of finding a longterm partner and going on with your life.

The only actual business model I’m aware of that’s compatible with finding a partner is a traditional marriage-focused matchmaker, as often used in traditional Indian arranged marriages. These matchmakers work best as a lifestyle business where the matchmaker personally knows the families involved and relies on (usually her) reputation, so can’t just run off with the money if the marriage doesn’t work out.

[–] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Changing the business model from pay-to-play into escrow-held matching success reward would change dating.
If a user likes another, and wants more matches of the same kind, they must admit the dating company was successful, and the escrow pays them.
If you choose not to release the payment, it means the match was bad and the matching algorithm must be corrected according to your stated reason for dissatisfaction. If you hold on to the deposited money despite success, your matches get worse.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago

That sounds at least somewhat plausible but I’m still skeptical.

I think the core problem is the loss of trust in our society. This of course is not limited to dating but is everywhere, affecting almost everything, and it’s taken place over the past few centuries. We’ve gone from a village lifestyle (where everyone in a community knows each other and relationships of all kinds are lifelong and reputation is extremely important to uphold) to a metropolitan lifestyle where everyone is anonymous and mass media predominates, and by far most relationships are temporary transactions (even in retail stores).

This latter structure of mass anonymity does not foster trust in any meaningful capacity and so is not conducive to partnership formation, among many other things. News media has similarly suffered catastrophic loss of trust due to the erosion of the classified ad business model and the consolidation and cost-cutting which followed.

[–] DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 26 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

With how much of dating happens over these apps, it's crazy how much damage Match Group could make if they deliberately wanted to.

You could deliberately match everyone with only the worst possible matches, hide the gokd ones so no one has kids.

They could practice Eugenics breeding some master race.

They could empower sex offenders.

etc.

There is zero oversight or transparency. They could do all of these things already or more and we would have no idea.

You could probably destroy civilization by having that much control over the dating market.

Not that they are doing that, but I'm just saying, that's a HUGE moral hazard.

[–] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

If they got access to the DNA data that many companies collect to analyse heritage and health, the eugenics could work well.

[–] archonet@lemy.lol 17 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

are there any dating apps/sites that don't suck?

Everything is either paywalled to fuck and back or beyond useless. Mostly because of Match Group, but even the few I've tried not owned by them are also shit.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 6 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

No lol.

I use tinder to remind myself that there are still a lot of single people.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago

Someone asked this a few weeks back and there was a federated dating app. I don't remember the name but they are out there but keep in mind they aren't feature rich yet.

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago

There are a few where the app/website itself sucks. But they have a tiny userbase

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

They all suck. The few people who do have success are the exception, not the rule.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I would reconsider saying that out loud if I were you.

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 3 points 37 minutes ago

Why would I?

[–] ownsauce@lemmy.world 18 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Would it be feasible to make an activitypub based successor?

It was a great service to find people with similar worldview, values, and interests.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 10 points 4 hours ago

There's an open source dating app, I think its called alovoa? I think I remember seeing discussion on the subreddit about activity pub but I haven't followed it or used the app for quite a while

Pretty sure it's on f-droid though

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The problem I see in trying to implement it using AP is that a node on an AP network knows nothing about other nodes by default. Whereas a dating site wants to match people with as many other likely partners from the pool available. These two features aren't really compatible.

You'd need some kind of "master list" of instances, which isn't really how AP decentralisation is meant to work.

e.g. lemmy/?bin. A new instance knows nothing about other instances when first setup. It works like a standalone forum. However a user, if they know a community name and instance name, they can search for that combined value and their instance subscribes to the remote instance. After that they will receive all new content for that community.

So it's a subscription based system.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You could have location based instances as most people will be mainly interested in contacts geographically close to them. Federation would be more of a nice to have feature in that case for nearby cities that run their own instance for example.

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 2 points 3 hours ago

Yep. But then the need for federation at all is a question mark. I guess users could "subscribe" to whole instances or some categorical subsets. Like lemmy/?bin you'd be able to see those other instances/categories on your own instance if someone else specifically added it before.

That's about as close as you could get I think. Doing a full search on criteria could only match your own instance and others that are sending data to your own.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 hours ago

That sucks. Lost my virginity through it, had many good, safe and enjoyable hookups, met a number of friends through it and both my previous and current gf as well.

Only dating app I seriously used and it was amazing as a bisexual trans woman who didn't want the brainrot UX of Tinder.

Makes sense it no longer has a place in our current world. Fuck match group, fuck tinder, and fuck the rich.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Met my wife on pre-Match OKC. I've heard it got worse but I had no idea how bad.

Their system worked and was by far the most reasonable, user-friendly way to meet people with the highest chance of compatibility. It's a huge loss that it's gone and that most people now never will know how good it was.

Edit: Wow, any .com text is automatically linked? Removed...

[–] MissyBee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 hours ago

I was on there on and off for some years. It went worse everytime I came back. They all suck now or are irrelevant/not enough users. The hot new thing are app based dating platforms which suffer even more from attention seeking and manipulating you.

[–] Phen@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Some of those names are quite funny when read in other languages. In Portuguese, azar means "bad luck" and chispa means "get lost" (though spelled xispa). Both are not things I would expect a dating app to be named after.

[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 3 points 58 minutes ago

And yet perfectly describe my dating life

[–] moody@lemmings.world 1 points 3 hours ago

In French, hasard, pronounced like azar, is just luck or randomness, neither good nor bad.

[–] Senseless@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago

Tried OkCupid last year for about two months. As a slightly below average looking guy in europe I didn't have a good time. I like the diverse topics of questions and that you can compare them to other people but that's about it. Bait likes (same as on Bumble) that only appear once you're not paying because in order to see who liked you, you have to pay.

Hinge is also owned by Match, but that's the only App that ever brought me some actual dates.