What do you think about it? I guess that woman to men ratio will be something like 1:20
I checked it out for fun some time ago. I really appreciated how unmonetized and not emotionally manipulative it was. There’s like no people on there though.
Be the people on there that you want there to be
🙌🌈
is this the app for meeting local foss nerds?
everybody installs linux and kiss
I thought Lemmy was for that?
I’ve used it before. The bigger problem for me was the people to bot ratio was worse than 1:20
That’s interesting why so many bots
I can only guess but I think it’s a combination of a lack of effective anti-bot protections and it being a sort of dead platform (so the only users that remain are largely bots which never leave)
Hi everyone.
Then I guess isn’t worthy trying to use it. It’s sad cause sounded like an alternative for Tinder and the rest of meeting apps from the Play Store that have the Google infestation on them.
Unfortunately I think projects like this have extra challenges over even regular social media platforms. There’s also retromeet which seems even more dead (it may have not even made it to a stable release).
The idea is great but for a dating app to work, it needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect (there must be enough people globally, or in a larger region, to get other people interested in trying out the platform) and the local network effect (there must be enough people to match with in most users’ local areas to keep enough people interested). With corporate backing that’s easy enough to do with a dedicated team to market and develop, but FOSS rarely has that sort of manpower. Slow growth is hard too, since users tend to leave dating apps quite often.
There’s also the funny problem if the dev gets a partner usually the partner doesn’t appreciate them staying on dating apps. Developing a dating app could be even worse for the relationship… actually now that I think of it, maybe I should make start a similar project since I don’t like dating…
needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect […] and the local network effect
Sounds like a job for Fedi-date! If you could somehow hook a dating app into the fediverse, then maybe it could survive long enough to get sufficient users. If it also offers more general IRL meet-ups (like meetup.com but without the corpo rent-seeking), then it could perhaps begin to get popular that way too.
That’s exactly what Retromeet was trying to do :)
Though I do agree that having a broader scope than just the hot-or-not swipe thing would really help to attract enough people to join. Retromeet doesn’t seem to do that, though I haven’t used it so I could be wrong.
Local network effect is enough, even when it’s restricted to a specific demographic or subculture. Once a dating platform grabs a hold in a location and demographic, it can extend from there.
Of course to keep a project like this running, you need a way to pay for hosting and development.
Maybe we can agree to disagree because I don’t think a specific demographic is enough to overcome the negative network effect at the start. The problem, imo, is that the attrition rate of dating apps is really high and dating apps are only good if a lot of people are located geographically nearby. You either need broad appeal to avoid running out of people early on or a demographic that is unusually geographically concentrated and usurps the attrition rate (ENM comes to mind for the latter).
Of course, you could always make something for dating without the geo proximity, but I think most people won’t want to use something like that at all.
The beauty of new FOSS projects is that they’re quite often hosted and developed for free, so I don’t think that’s much of a limiting factor as long as the community is there. That’s also why I think it’s important to make it big quickly, because that’s the way to get a big enough community before the creator loses interest.
Churn is an issue you mentioned.
I was specifically thinking about men who have sex with men. Grindr and similar platforms are very successful. Most of it is about casual sex between promiscuous men. They are also a great target group otherwise. Travel between gay metropolises is common as. Pride tourism is big.
Yup, 1:20 seems like your average mainstream multimillionaire-backed dating app
The mainstream apps (at least the ones that have been around a while) have bot ratios which are much better. They also have active moderation teams which remove profiles that make it through the automated protections. I’d guess they have ratios closer to 20:1 than 1:20 (people:bots)
I think a lot of engineers underestimate the amount of non-technical effort that goes into running platforms with users.
It’s a shame I think there are some really interesting problems that a less profit driven dating app but currently anything without a big marketing budget isn’t going to have the userbase to support it.
This kinda app would need at least an attempt at a technical solution to the bot problem. An open source app can’t just pay people to kick bots out. And even the paid apps that can are drowning in bots.
Something cryptographic maybe. Tor is kinda magical, makes anonymity possible while the each machine knows who they are talking to. Maybe something where you can show that you are “a verified user” without showing exactly which one.
Other apps do have some good anti-bot measures which could be adopted for a FOSS project. The problem with a lot of cryptographic solutions for this is that often cryptography is usually more about proving your identity more than proving something about your identity. Tor is also focused on privacy from middle-men, which doesn’t really make sense for a dating app.
I think the challenge boils down to how to prove you’re human without biometrics or other PII. And I think the sad reality is that you can’t prove it. Though you may be able to prove you have unique PII with some sort of zero-knowledge proof…
Maybe it would need to draw on experiences of moderating chat rooms and forums - these are very often done by volunteers who put a lot of time and energy into it because they believe in it.
There is also the “Web Of Trust” concept, where, given that everyone can prove their identity, people can then vouch for each other.
I kind of like the idea. Open source everything.
Competing in a saturated market without a major disruptive edge is unfortunately futile.
These kind of apps rapidly hit a wall due to the “Chicken or the egg” problem. Conglomerates like Match Group have deep pockets for colossal marketing spend, as well as an army of behavioural economist and sociologists to throw at the adoption problem.
I respect free open source work but I think one’s time is better spent solving niche problems. Go reverse engineer DSPs or something, we need brilliant people who are running the opposite direction of the Forbes 500.
I built a few somewhat successful social platforms during my career. Let that be a kind suggestion to you from a stranger who learned the fact after setting a few million of investor dollars on fire.
M with Arch and Long Socks looking for that special self hosted someone with BPM>0, let’s meet at the abandoned factory and compare notes about brutalist architecture.
/S
looking for that special self hosted someone
lmao this is gold
I used it to chat with people and someone suggested what ended up being one my favorite albums. You won’t meet the love of your life, but IMO still worth to spend some time there, you can find very interesting stuff.
actually, the biggest ratio is human to bots being prolly something like 1:100…
But the idea is awesome tbh, could have been activitypub powered though!
craigslist posts
What is wrong with simply getting a new Lemmy account in a dating only, location specific, channel?
are there many dating only, location specific, channels on lemmy? or people using them?
Not yet. Craigslist was a great example of free to use dating site based on a generic platform.
Just make a channel for your city and advertize it. That’s probably all there is to it. If you build it, they will cum.
If you build it, they will cum.
The joke with the quote of that shit movie.
Perfection.
Thanks!
you are technically right, but easier said.
might as well try to build a community on an app dedicated to this, like the one advertised.
which is still hard because of network effect.
Well good luck out there. It hopefully works. I’ve always been bothered by the apps that require you to pay to make friends.
no need. this kind of individualistic approach to solve this problem isn’t being effective so far. we’d need to find a better solution to the network effect.
Is this app 18+ only or are children allowed to find older boyfriends? How are teens and children protected?
