Yep. it's essentially a ridiculous, yet somehow legal racket.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
585 points (99.3% liked)
Today I Learned
31277 readers
227 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
And they convinced several generations that using them is necessary for dating.
It somewhat is for some people. Like where are you going to meet people of the opposite gender? I don't think most women want to be hit on at work, gym, grocery stores, whatever. Men are starved enough for attention that many of us will appreciate any, anywhere, anytime, but I'm not into guys.
We need a real-life amulet of Mara tbh.
Except third spaces have been systematically dismantled by capitalist interests, and the dating app industry's astroturfing on social media has done a lot of damage to the perceived validity of meeting someone in person organically.
You can't just say dating apps are necessary because there's nowhere else to meet people and ignore the fact that that very problem is socially engineered. It's manufactured scarcity.
Like if nestle were to poison a town's water supply so that they could sell more water bottles. After buying out deer park, dasani, and aquafina. And patenting the idea of selling water in bottles. You wouldn't say "actually it's necessary to buy their water bottles," you would say "that's fucked up and should be illegal."
Agreed on third spaces, but it's mostly because of car-centric city design and everyone having to work 40h or more a week (leaves little time to even visit those spaces). The dating apps have capitalised on it, but the change has been happening since before them. And also drinking has fallen out of fashion with young people... Bars and clubs were a major place to meet new people in the past. If you look at the statistics now, Gen Z barely drinks at all. In my country, most clubs are shutting down because people under 50 barely go and people over 50 are starting to get too old to go. Bars are still fairly popular among younger people, but not as much as even a decade ago.
load more comments
(2 replies)
The wildest part is that all those apps in post basically useless, even if you pretty — girls there in free market basically, where they can choose anyone who messaged them, there no point for them to seek attention first.
And in just a minute after registering on grindr I got hit on multiple times. So yeah, I guess I'm gay now.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Absorbing other companies is illegal under anti-trust, but taking a company as a subsidiary is not, which is the workaround for anti-trust. It gives the false illusion of competition being available.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Federated dating app when?
When someone wants to moderate it.
Hint: ain't nobody want that
Moderation would be a nightmare, especially since Lemmy is used within many jurisdictions.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I think it can be replaced with the group chat in matrix.
There no point in making dating app for 5 users.
There is an open source one at least: https://alovoa.com/
From my tests, it is full of fake bot account, bugs (my account simply vanished, twice, without reason), and moderation is basically nonexistent.
None of my 30+ interactions was with a genuine human, all of them were crypto scams, or similar scams.
It comes from a good idea, but god it is badly done.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Makes perfect sense! How many companies would you expect to own all the popular dating sites? 5? 10?
Of course not! There should only be one company controlling entire markets, it's the American way 🤡
Here are all the sites the match group owns. All of the '* people meet' sites are making me laugh.
Archer Asian People Meet Babyboomer People Meet BB People Meet Black Christian People Meet Black People Meet Black Professional People Meet BLK Catholic People Meet Chinese People Meet Chispa Delightful Democratic People Meet Divorced People Meet Genxpeoplemeet Her Hinge Indiamatch Interracial People Meet Italian People Meet J People Meet Latino People Meet Ldsplanet Little People Meet Loveandseek Marriage Minded People Meet Match.com Match Japan OkCupid Ourtime Pairs People Meet Pet People Meet Plenty of Fish Republican People Meet Salams Seniorblack People Meet Single People Meet Sniffies (minority stake)[63][64] Stir The League Tinder Upward Yuzu
If you want each entry to appear on a new line, you need to put two spaces at the end of each line.
Line 1
Line 2
If you want a paragraph break, use two newlines
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2
Archer
Asian People Meet
Babyboomer People Meet
BB People Meet
Black Christian People Meet
Black People Meet
Black Professional People Meet
BLK
Catholic People Meet
Chinese People Meet
Chispa
Delightful
Democratic People Meet
Divorced People Meet
Genxpeoplemeet
Her
Hinge
Indiamatch
Interracial People Meet
Italian People Meet
J People Meet
Latino People Meet
Ldsplanet
Little People Meet
Loveandseek
Marriage Minded People Meet
Match.com
Match Japan
OkCupid
Ourtime
Pairs
People Meet
Pet People Meet
Plenty of Fish
Republican People Meet
Salams
Seniorblack People Meet
Single People Meet
Sniffies (minority stake)[63][64]
Stir
The League
Tinder
Upward
Yuzu
I tried Yuzu, but the only one who wanted to fuck me was Nintendo.
For a list of items like this, it makes sense to use either an ordered list
1. Item one
2. Item two
3. Item three
or an unordered list
- Item one
- Item two
- Item three
neither of which require extra spaces or extra newlines
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
and reminder, these places make more money if you don't find a match. they are actively disincentivized from doing their stated job.
same is true for companies like incogni. if mass data harvesting is made illegal, they're out of a job. and many of them are owned by companies that also own data brokers. the removal process is often just sending your data to a data broker and asking if they have it, which obviously just hands that data right over in the process. they will make more money from data harvesting staying legal and they know it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
the best way to avoid monopoly charges, is to create multiple companies that "compete" with eachother, that you own.
Luxotica learned this a long time ago, which is why they profit on almost any pair of glasses you buy, and why no one things its a monopoly
load more comments
(6 replies)
One giant corporation, profiting off of, and intentionally worsening the loneliness epidemic by buying up all the dating apps, pushing premium features, and matching you with bots... It's shit like this that gives me trust issues with government, big business, rich people, etc...
load more comments
(4 replies)
Are there any that are more independent?
Bumble is the only mainstream one I know for certain is independent.
It's not technically independent since Badoo (owned by Bumble) is a very popular dating app too. Those two apps/companies have a weird history (Badoo's owner funded Bumble), but Bumble was also started by an ex-Tinder employee.
And looking at their Wikipedia entries, Bumble seems to be publicly traded with Blackstone owning a significant portion of the company. Bumble also bought Fruitz (another dating app) a few years ago.
Fun fact about Bumble:
Initially, only women were able to start conversation after matching. This 'feature' was removed recently.
Lol. Lmao even.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Grindr is publically traded
And kept in business by a thriving community of convention-attending Republicans.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Twenty years ago, dating apps would introduce you to people you wanted to be with. In fact, there were no apps. They were websites.
That I actually had success meeting someone that I love and care about shows a flaw in their business model rather than a successful match. They accidentally lost two customers after extrapolating a lot of money from me without being helpful for more than a decade.
Is that why they all feel the same and suck equally?
OKCupid used to be great. Felt different. Less corporate I guess. Easier to talk to people. Was shit the last time I checked a handful of years ago.
Fun Fact: OKCupid used to be SparkNotes, which used to be a CliffNotes type site. Then they started doing user generated quizes. Which X-Men would you be? Then it was randomly a dating site one day.
load more comments
(3 replies)
and the other one, eharmony, is owned by a religious zealot
It's one giant database with different filters for each website.
Other than privacy concerns, I dislike the consumption aspect. I see them swiping and it looks like they're shopping. I know some people have found meaningful relationships on Tinder, but I can't get over it.
I wonder if so many using it almost as the default way of dating makes it harder to find someone for those who want to avoid it.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Probably with shared fake profiles, too.
And they have made the apps intentionaly worse, because a successful dating app deletes its users.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Pour one out for Okcupid. In its heyday it was such a fun site.
I met my wife there 14 years ago. I feel bad for people who are dating now. Seems bad out there.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Wait til you learn about local news.
Pour one out for the greatest dating website of all time, Craigslist Personals. You just posted a picture, wrote literally whatever essay you wanted, and you could subscribe to custom search results as an RSS feed.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's just a big game of Monopoly except they're allowed to trick us into thinking they haven't dominated the board yet. What a joke.
Could we have a fediverse dating app? What would it look like? How would we go about it?
Break them up. Fine them for anti competitive practices. Bar their leadership from working similar roles for life. The solutions are easy.
The solutions are easy.
The concept of the solution is easy. The act of carrying it out is difficult because humans like taking bribes from rich people. And corporations. Oops, I forgot corporations are people in America.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I wonder if they have an eugenics agenda too?
Knowing Epstein, he probably had a hand in this too.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›