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>For example, if every dating site in existence did this the world would be a better place. Instead, we typically see layers of opaque algorithmic shit governing human interaction. The platform's interests are then in effect prioritized, not the user's.

Doesn't that go against the less random nature of match-making in real life? People have preferences and biases, and these influence or even dictate the people they meet. They tend to frequent people in certain circles, and these circles have an imbedded bias (proximity, socio-economic, cultural, scene, etc).

>"Hey, this person could have been your significant other or best friend, but you never met them because some engineers at some tech company decided to get fancy. Fuck you." Or, in so many dating app cases: fancy and greedy.

You don't need engineers to do that. Match-making in real life is not that random. You hang around places your "could have been your significant other" does not go for any number of reasons. Even in medium sized cities (say 8 million people), the graph is pretty interesting.

Unless your real argument was that Chatroulette's raison d'être was to "break out" of the non-random nature of match-making in real life by introducing the randomness of a roulette, and that introducing match-making algorithms makes it more similar to real-life which defeats the purpose of Chatroulette, which I believe makes more sense, and thus, I believe is your argument.

>Doesn’t that go against the less random nature of matchmaking in real life?

No. Holy cow. Those are my biases. I can choose to act on them or not. I get pigeonholed after a few weeks on every dating platform, it’s brutal and very depressing. In the wild I can choose to go to a different grocery store, go to a different park, hang out in a different cafe, go play mini golf… whatever. I am very open minded, I go out of my way to talk to a lot of different people from every walk of life, despite having a healthy group of loving friends and not being particularly extroverted, but I can only talk to those who are willing. I can try to talk to those who catch my fancy, and believe me I do, but our “stranger danger”, dopamine addled, earbuds-in, narcissistic and anxiety ridden culture makes this a fairly poor strategy. Perhaps in another life this would have been how you meet people, but generally speaking as a male in the modern heterosexual dating culture of millennials and gen z, you aren’t going to have much luck meeting people “in the wild” because talking to people unprovoked —-if you even can, everyone is plugged in all the time— is either creepy, weird or annoying- or at least that’s been my experience living throughout Northern California and the Bay Area. And covid has made this phenomenon significantly worse. And I know what this sounds like, so I’ll just come out and say it: I’m conventionally good looking, tall, fit, well dressed and a good conversationalist, not a creep. In settings where it’s appropriate, like, say, a music festival or a party, I’m good at meeting people, so I really don’t think it’s me. But on apps it’s just the same people. With apps there’s basically two options, I give a lot of people a chance and my MMR tanks and I only see a certain kind of person, or I’m selective for people I think would be a good fit and I see a different higher MMR group, which eventually devolves into the first group as it seems MMR decays over time.

I’m currently single again and almost 30 and I recognize a lot of the women I get in my feeds from dating at other points in my life. I use many apps, have no filters and cast my net quite wide. If I didn’t understand that this is essentially to be expected from social media for profit, I’d be befuddled and confused, but it’s really just upsetting. Romantic love is a huge piece of the human experience being gate kept by mega corps.

OkCupid getting bought by Match Group was horrible; now it’s search functionality is gutted and it’s got the same matchmaking bullshit all the others do, and matches me with the same groups of people and inactive accounts just like the rest.

Anyway, what you wrote triggered me, and I felt quite compelled to scream into the void about it. Modern dating apps feel like I have overly aggressive parents trying to put me in an arranged marriage. Its downright suffocating and makes this whole messed-up-planet, extremely socially divided, and ethically bankrupt life feel that much more dystopian.

Rant over.

>No. Holy cow. Those are my biases. I can choose to act on them or not.

I know that you want to believe this. I know that I want to believe this. I'm not sure it's a good idea.

"OkCupid getting bought by Match Group was horrible"

OkCupid was seriously excellent at its job, and a unique jewel in the landscape. There was nothing like it before, and as far as I know there has been nothing like it since its destruction under match.com.

I think what OkCupid did was quite profound, even if they stumbled across the social mechanisms by accident at first.

It's ability to find uncannily good matches for friendship and conversation unexpectedly via free-form attitude common ground discovery, driven by people who joined curious about romance or sex, touches on something so much more important than mere romance and dating.

It was like an electronic assist for what people instinctively do in the offline world in a healthy community. Partnering instincts driving the interest, but emergent behaviour if you were up for it was friendship networks with light flirting and sometimes decent conversation. Not at all like the gate-keeping, manipulation and unhappy stress seen on other sites.

With people so affected by and dependent on social sites these days, and the apparent ever-increasing polarisation, we might need to reinvent aspects of OkCupid again.

We must've been on a different website. Outside of the forums (which were mostly full of trolls), I don't see how you could've been making friends on that website in the way you convey. I certainly wasn't and neither were any of the people I knew who used it either. Hell - even getting a date on it was quite difficult (I never got one but I know my female counterparts were getting 50+ messages/day and never complained for a lack of suitors). The stats they released backed that up too. After all it wasn't just an effortless swipe to see if you were physically compatible with one another before moving forward... You had to craft a message and pray whatever attempt you used worked. (And then do that a lot)

I never saw friendly messages going between same-sex people or anything of that sort.

Could have been different experiences, or could have been different timeframes. It has changed a lot. Last time I looked a few years ago, it was very offputting and not at all interesting. But I gather they do keep changing it, so who knows what it's like now.

In my experience, which was pre-2007, OkCupid is the only social media site where I've ended up meeting people and where I first encounted people who would become new friends. It was uncanny how it also ranked me very highly with people I already knew though.

I had many chats on there with both males and females. It's true that most didn't reply, and I did receive some unsavoury approaches, but some were interesting conversations, and as I said, I met a few people IRL. Nothing sexual though.

By comparison, Facebook is supposed to be social media, but I don't thikn I've ever struck up a decent conversation or friendship on Facebook with someone I didn't already know from elsewhere.

I've been thinking about this a bit recently, after watching one too many Dhar Mann videos about not judging a book by its cover of all things.

I think filtering out options through heuristics that are sometimes wrong but on average skew towards desired outcomes makes a lot of sense when you have more opportunities than you could ever follow up on.

Going back to your example of online dating, if attractive women had a conversation with every man that messaged them, let alone a date, they'd be spending 100+ hours a week talking to men on the off chance that someone surprises them.

Given that, it makes perfect sense from their point of view to completely ignore a guy for seemingly insignificant/unfair reasons like him wearing a Star Wars shirt in his DP or an algorithm believing there's a 24.8% chance that he's a creep.

She can only follow up on so many leads - might as well spend her time on the promising ones.

Heuristics like this make a lot of assumptions that are heteronormative. Tinder for example took years to finally come around, and in the interim if you were trans, bisexual, polyamorous, or otherwise different, you were basically garbage as far as their algorithm was concerned.

That said, I think it makes sense to just re-frame your argument as examining the merits of platforms catering to desirable users. I've seen arguments attempting to justify why this is necessary, most having to do with keeping the platform alive, else the platform experiences a flight of said desirable users and everybody loses. I don't buy it.

The real reason is monetization. If a platform takes steps to ensure only the most desirable users match with the most desirable users by making it a zero-sum competition, then it's essentially preying on users' psychology such that they keep dumping money into the platform in hopes of obtaining what's seemingly out of their reach. It's a really profitable albeit sick business model.

Tinder in particular is notorious for this. New accounts get good results until they don't, but suddenly do again once money is supplied. However, the amount of money users need to surrender to sustain those results keeps going up over time, and they'll fuck with your account visibility in a completely opaque manner in order to keep that money coming.

I haven't used online dating in almost a decade (OKCupid circa 2012), so aren't familiar with their predatory practices, but I don't think you need an algorithm or even any form of gatekeeper at all to lead to a situation where undesirable people have almost no opportunities and desirable people have more opportunities than they know what to do with.

This has been the case for basically all of human history (if not longer) across a broad spectrum of different domains.

If the platforms are deliberately fostering this dynamic or exploiting it for profit at the expense of their users' mental health, that's of course unethical. I don't think it's a new thing that they've created, though.

>If the platforms are deliberately fostering this dynamic or exploiting it for profit at the expense of their users' mental health, that's of course unethical.

They are. Some platforms do this, most notoriously Tinder. Did their engineers sit there and say "Aha, let's be evil!"? No, of course not. Things like this happen via a combination of apathy, and focusing primarily on business metrics. It's a black box with every aspect built for monetization. Whether its ill effects satisfy the definition of deliberate is semantics at that point.

The tragic part, is these dating apps have become so widely popular that they've nearly monopolized the dating scene. Most non-technical users don't care about the nuance of this stuff, so that's how they get away with it.

The crux is this: these systems have created conditions where desirable people fall into the cracks for reasons that are purely algorithmic, and there's nothing those people can do about it.

If you don’t narrow it down at all you have a dating site which is showing me a list that’s 50% men, when I’m only interested in women. By similar logic, it makes a lot of sense to further filter down to the types of people I’m likely to be interested in.

I'm not against users having the ability to explicitly filter, I should have made that more clear in my original comment.

The problems arise when this option isn't present because a matchmaking algorithm that makes many incorrect assumptions takes its place, with no ability to opt out.

Just to answer that point: people (academically) look at whether it is a good idea to match similar people, what such a social structure means and how preferences for homophily, imposed or intrinsic, may affect the social structure.

Do social media websites do think about it? I am sure some of then have. But then, their goals typically differ vastly from what you would consider good for society.

Thanks for this. Admittedly my tone was somewhat hyperbolistic, but you bring up an excellent point that I'd like to build off:

It pains me to think there's large bodies of deep academic research in the social sciences that could guide certain tech platforms in a much more responsible direction. Instead, the drive for market domination and profit ensures that a mangled society is left in their wake (ironically, economics is also a social science).

The hubris certain tech leaders have in making the decisions they do astounds me. Virtually every major tech platform has the money to have a veritable army of social scientists pondering the ethics of anything that company does with its platform. Certainly some of these companies do employ ethicists, though I can't help but feel more often than not it's a dog and pony show.

Reality seems to be that very few pairs of people have mutual interest in each other. Matching is just increasing the probability, but it's still random.

I find that it's also very possible to make concerted effort and end up fine in a relationship with relatively anyone: I've been with a student who spent her life in the same region as me, studied in the same class at uni and had exactly the same age for 6 years, a Pakistani 4 years younger, practicing muslim who was born and lived in Hong Kong, for 2 years, and ended up marrying a Chinese citizen 2 years older than me, and it's been 5 years and a child now...

So I think none of the match making matters as much as the capacity for patience in relationship as well as rational understanding you build a partnership not a lifelong burning passion :D

The problem with dating apps is that everyone hates a bad match. It's awkward, may feel like a waste of time, and generates a lot of rejection. People hate feeling rejected.

While a few apps have tried to do blind matching to get people in person faster, the fact they don't stick around implies that they weren't very successful.

There is some basic level of matchmaking thats required to get any relationship off the ground and for many people older than their early 20s this tends to involve some element of shared goals and shared lifestyle.

>There is some basic level of matchmaking thats required to get any relationship off the ground and for many people older than their early 20s this tends to involve some element of shared goals and shared lifestyle.

I think the key here is that the users should be able to decide what that is, and be given the tools to explicitly seek it out for themselves if they so desire.

Black box algorithms that apply to everyone are a far cry from that. Although I never had the privilege of using it, that's probably why a lot of people speak so highly of the old OkCupid.

> I thoroughly believe the road to hell is paved by matching users based on metrics such as projected compatibility or similar interests.

I have an anecdotal data point against this: my ex found her current husband on OKCupid, based on their question system.

Their questions ask what YOUR answer is, as well as what you want your MATCH to answer. Additionally, there is some leeway (you can choose multiple acceptable answers) and different importance levels for questions.

They have been married for 4 years, and I believe online dating can work.

OkCupid was good at that. It was unique though.

The GP liked OkCupid (until it was bought by match.com and ruined), so I think the GP is referring to the kind of corporate-monetising and "it's out of your hands" matching done everywhere else as the road to hell, with OkCupid's method being significantly different.

I believe the key to OkCupid wasn't just that it asked what you want your match to answer. I believe the main key was that OkCupid did not choose all the questions; the questions themselves were quite free-form, provided by users, and ranked by a statistical method to sift the most helpful questions. So they reflected real-life interesting factors that really affect people's compatibility, instead of what dating site designers think you should be asked.

And there were simply a lot of questions with which to build a rich picture without a prescribed schema. It was fun and thought-provoking to answer them because the system generally seemed to promote good questions. You felt like answering them revealed something useful that you wouldn't have thought of asking about. It promoted curiosity, and it seemed worth it to find out what non-obvious matching outcomes would look like.

Essentially, OkCupid's matching questions ended up being refeshingly honest and effective, it uncovered interesting characteristics that didn't seem obvious until they did, it had an air of curiosity rather than commercialisation, and it gave people a chance to find each other who would never had met under the schemas used by other sites.

And because you could see how well you matched with people and on which general axes ("selfishness", "inquisitivness", "religiousness" etc), and some questions, you were free to think about and reconsider your answers. They also gave you talking points.

For example, an emergent line of questions was about polyamory. Most sites don't ask, with the result that some kinds of poly people never find compatible people on those sites. Or, "are you bi" may be asked, but OkCupid's emergent questions would end up asking what kind of bi, the kind who must be with different people, or the kind who are gender-indifferent (and only want one person)? Those are distinct compatibility groups. Maybe you yourself only want one partner, but don't mind your partner snuggling/kissing/everything other people. Or you do mind, a lot. Or, are you asexual, or mostly so, but still want romance in your life? What kind of romance anyway, what does that mean for you in practice? These sorts of questions make a big difference to some people.

Then there were useful non-sexuality things such (making these up to give a flavor) as how often do you like to go on holidays, when was your last camping trip, what is your idea of a good Sunday morning, how tidy do you like your home to be, would you support a partner who wanted to go to college if you had to pay, have you lent money to a friend then been happy to write it off, which boardgames are best, should cheese on toast include onions, what's a good bedtime, do you support intervention in Afghanistan, would you bend the knee, spliffs, brownies or no drugs, how many children would you prefer, what about adoption, is black the only proper color for clothes, vi or emacs, rust love it or hate it, etc. So much that other sites miss.

>The GP liked OkCupid (until it was bought by match.com and ruined), ..."

I ain't your grandparent, nor did I say anything about OKC. :)

You're probably referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28256462

>... so I think the GP is referring to the kind of corporate-monetising and "it's out of your hands" matching done everywhere else as the road to hell, with OkCupid's method being significantly different.

Nonetheless, I'd agree with that.

>Most sites don't ask, with the result that some kinds of poly people never find compatible people on those sites.

Speaking from experience, this is a special kind of hell I'd wish on no one.

Swipe-based apps rank your desirability by how many people swipe left/right on you, and bin accordingly. Polyamory obviously isn't as popular as monogamy, so you get a lot of left swipes regardless of whether you're generally regarded as both kind and beautiful/adorable by people in real life. You could have looks approaching model quality with a hardcore commitment to physical fitness—the charm and personality to match—and none of that would matter because as far as the algorithms are concerned, you're not attractive.

So what happens is despite putting all of the effort in and then some, you rarely ever find other attractive poly people, and instead you're binned in with low-effort monogamous people that aren't even poly, and might even be homophobic to boot. Your dating experience is then beset by a mountain of self-esteem issues that shouldn't even exist in the first place, and you feel extremely alone and apart from society.

Why does this happen? Because the algorithm supposedly knows better than the user, and thus the users aren't supplied with the tools to match themselves in situations where edge cases exist.

This exact same scenario plays out not just with polyamory, but with queer orientations too. Bonus points if you're both. It's swipe purgatory, or at least it used to be (these days it isn't quite as bad).

> I ain't your grandparent, nor did I say anything about OKC. :)

> You're probably referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28256462

My apologies, you're right.

> -roulette. Burn the matchmaking algorithms...

Heh. True.

--

The road less traveled was foraging.

Prior to relevant search and recommenders, information science people (eg librarians) facilitated user directed discovery.

Instead, most effort has been put preventing user agency. We know what you want. We'll tell you. Leave the details to us; no need to worry yourself about our algorithms.

IMHO, web directories (eg curlie, neé DMOZ) are maybe the closest digital analog of foraging. goodreads.com was pretty good. I'm struggling to think of other examples. Maybe BBSs like craigslist and metafilter.