No good can come from letting a company become load-bearing in an activity humans were able to do for free since time immemorial - find a partner.
(Yes I'm aware some traditional societies had/have professional matchmakers)
(and yes, I found my wife by paying for a membership in a dating app. We wouldn't meet otherwise even though we lived in the same city)
That's just pedantry, sorry. It's obvious that forming a relationship has non-monetary costs. And the bar tab for the date is the cost of drinks and food. That's the value you receive for the money you spend. Not companionship, or the chance of companionship.
Dates can be a simple walk in the park or on the beach - no spending necessary. That may not land with every potential partner. Some of them will want you to spend, or even spend big, on dates. But then that's also a natural filter of its own, if you want it to be.
It's not pedantry at all. An app is just another option to find someone. You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one.
Spending on drinks and food is never required to have the date. It makes the date good but it isn't what makes the date possible. You're going to eat anyway, you may as well eat with someone.
> An app is just another option to find someone
And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence. Relying on apps to make dates possible is dangerous.
> You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one
We should examine why that is, or if it's even true. People have never had trouble pairing up before. Or at least, not troubles that have gone away in the dating app era. From the data it isn't obvious that dating apps make the process of partner-finding better - everyone sounds miserable, long-term relationship formation is down. Skepticism about technology that costs money, doesn't even work, and reduces happiness is warranted.
> And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence.
That's completely false. Courtship involved money since forever (and also paid dating apps are older than 15 years).
> People have never had trouble pairing up before.
People have always had trouble pairing up.
And dating apps have eliminated these problems? I posit that the old problems remain and dating apps have added new ones on top.
> Courtship involved money since forever
Courtship required, or at least benefited from, demonstrable financial stability. Because that's an attractive quality in a mate for many people. But that's no different from saying "Courtship involved looks|religion|health/fertility since forever".
Courtship didn't previously require paying an intermediary to engage in. There's a distinction here that you either can't or don't want to understand.
> also paid dating apps are older than 15 years
But only in the last 15 years have they taken over dating.
If we're saying dating apps are actually only hookup apps, that's a different story. However everyone, including the apps themselves, sees them as a way, or more commonly these days, the only way, to find long-term love. They are two different problems and the latter shouldn't involve apps.
Seems foolish to me to ban technology from dating given how much time people invest into it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In any case this is a non-sequitur. Recreational kickball isn't a dating app.
I don't think it's possible legally to "ban technology" from the dating space. "Dating apps should not exist" was aspirational, not a call for a legal ban.
Before swipes, before "buy Premium to un-hide these people who like you" paywalls, dating apps let you message people directly in exchange for showing some Google ads that were unobtrusive.
No surprise at all that an out-of-touch, billionnaire CEO thinks that the missing ingredient is AI.