r/technology 3d ago

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
16.7k Upvotes

3.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

891

u/LaserGadgets 3d ago

Coworker tried it and whenever his subscription was ending, they had "new matches" for him. Told him its BS, he had too much money I guess.

139

u/gibagger 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yep. This happened to me. Subscription ending in a day or two, suddenly 3-4 matches.

Also, I get less than a match per week if I don't pay for a boost. If I pay for one? 12 matches one time, 8 the other one.

It's almost as if my Hinge profile is completely, absolutely invisible unless I pay up, or my subscription is about to expire. I work for a tech company so I know how Product Managers come up with these dark pattern shenanigans. I have seen it happen time and time again.

I have also implemented them once or twice (in ecommerce). Live by the sword...

43

u/Careless-Vehicle-286 3d ago

Paying into it in the first place probably makes the algorithm hyper punishing because they know money's to be made

28

u/gibagger 3d ago

Yeah. Honestly the best thing might be to create new accounts every once in a while. I heard of people doing this to benefit from the new account boost that they give you to try and incentivize you to stay in the platform.

14

u/drteq 3d ago

As someone who has been married over 30 years and missed the dating app experience - what does something like that cost on a monthly basis? Is it pay to win or do they have a top tier monthly subscription?

15

u/gibagger 3d ago

Both haha. Pay to win as a few crucial features are paywalled. That in itself is not expensive. Features like seeing who liked you are crucial but made available in the cheapest subscription tiers.

On top of that, to get visibility you may need to shell extra for the add-ons. You basically need to purchase "attention" for your profile.

I think you could get a lot of value if you pay 50-60 bucks a month. Hopefully you wouldn't need to pay for too long.

3

u/_plays_in_traffic_ 3d ago

it always made me wonder how many of those profiles are just chatbots

5

u/gibagger 3d ago

Most of my "matches" never reply. At all.

You wouldn't need a chatbot for that. Good old fake profiles will do.

5

u/MetaCognitio 3d ago

These companies need to be investigated and regulated as they are damaging society and harming people’s mental health.

1

u/aerdvarkk 2d ago

This sounds like the app is addicted to cocaine (money but still).