2d ago

Tinder-alternatives for the Fediverse

Hey there!

Last year, I fell into the Fediverse-rabbithole and I really like it so far. We already have alternatives for Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and so on.

But today I realized, there actually isn't an alternative for tinder. But I think there could be a huge demand for it. This could also motivate people to change platforms, since no one wants to buy tinder premium for a lot of money.

But I think I'm maybe not the first one coming up with this idea. What do you think about this?

~ sp3ctre

56 comments

There's nowhere near a reasonable number of users on Fediverse to sustain a geo-local dating app. Tinder already has to rate-limit matches so people don't swipe through their entire dating pool in one day. You'd be better off turning to your geo-located communities on Lemmy and encouraging meet-ups or other ways to connect.

If I was goodlooking or a celeb, tiktok would be op, Druski was talking about how it is for him, and the algorithim is basically constantly showing him ppls hes interested in, and since he actually has the money and means to contact and meet them its been hella bad for his brain to know theirs always another options out there that tiktok can show him, that fits what he likes perfectly (more than he knows), because algorithim.

Dating is a numbers game, so ya gotta go where your preferences are.
- i have a preference for big booty goth latinas, where do i go for that??
  
  Brazil

Let's not clone trash. Tinder sucks because it has no matching mechanism to filter out incompatible people. To find one interesting profile on Tinder I have to swipe about 500 profiles. To get more matches, I risk some false positives and like ~2% of profiles. Then I need to filter the matches in person. Very inefficient, a waste of time.
The opposite of that was OkCupid before Match Group destroyed it.
- OKCupid was awesome. The questionnaire matched on a bunch of different categories and you could add clarification to the questions.
  Bummer it sounds like it's toast. I met my wife on OKC.
- This could be a symptom of being corporate-driven. They suggest you incompatible people, because they want you to pay (to get better results). I assume you only tried the free version. I never tried the paid one.
  I think this problem could be solved.
  
  Even if you pay they have no incentive to get you to stop paying (i.e. find a partner).
- What would the matching mechanism do? Look at your fediverse activity and match people who like the same things as you?
  Could be interesting but creepy
  
  Just like match and okc you'd have to take a quiz and match against core values. Social media data mining would be a terrible way of matching.

It has already happened to me. Too bad I can't afford a plane ticket to Canada.
EDIT: I didn't meant that part about the plane ticket seriously. And I didn't leak any DMs between us, because I never replied to her.
- Every app is a dating app if you use it wrong enough.
  
  A few weeks ago there was a screenshot going around "I met my wife in a github issue thread".
- Yep, "she" sent me identical, unsolicited messages from three different profiles. Seems it got stamped out though.
- I got this message too.
- I got that one several times too, and saw screenshots of it elsewhere too. Not in a while by now though.

I've heard of FediMatch: https://github.com/Lypsilonx/FediMatch I have not used it personally - might one day though.

There's a Foss dating app called alovoa, I think I saw something on the subreddit when I was taking a look at it again a while back about potentially implementing activitypub
- Looking at their github and they havnt merged a PR since October. Feels a like it might be dead.
- My last impression was that alovoa would need a lot of work still. It's also the best thing I've seen so far but it's very buggy unfortunately.

Not exactly federated, but open source: https://github.com/Alovoa/alovoa
- Looking at their github and they havnt merged a PR since October. Feels a like it might be dead.
  
  Last commit was two weeks ago.
- Cool, didn't know that one. Maybe it's a good first step. Since it's open source, people can work with it and develope it further.
  
  The trouble is that with this sorry of thing you really do need some form of moderation or quality control (of the users, not (only) the platform) because it will be inundated by fake profiles and nasty content.
  As much as I'm cheering for Alovoa I don't see how this is solveable. 🥲
- from the images on the front page, i get the feeling the userbase is tiny
  
  Haha, I don't think those are real users. But yeah, they could have done a better job selecting a pool of stock photos.

Every social media is dating App!
Why not instead make "meet" communities like reddit but on Lemmy or piefed or anywhere else, make community and let people meet that way, or you could use general conversation or whatever name is to engage in communication and that way find someone.
- Uh, h-hi~
  twirls hair
  
  Hi (with rizz)
- People are used to seperate apps for dating I guess. And the matching-concept like on tinder is nice as well if there wouldn't be a big profit-oriented company behind it. It could be a tinder with equal chances for everybody. At least it would be driven with an algorithm, which doesn't have profit as a goal.
  
  I understand that and I wish it wasn't the case, idk I feel like point of social media / or at least one of the points of using social media is to share your experiences, what you like or don't like and find like minded people and if lucky enough meet love of your life. Basically what dating apps are for.

I would have serious concerns regarding data privacy. You share intimate and very private details about yourself on these apps that could be used for blackmail. I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing that on a federated network. For example, how would you ensure data isn't logged by a hostile server operator. A company is at least forced to play lip service to privacy laws. The theoretical operator of fedi-date.ru can do what they want.
- There's nothing you can do for profile data, public key encryption is an option for DMs.
- How about doing some fine-grained control mechanism: you share little data publicly, then once somebody likes you, you can decide to share more with them. With some cryptography tricks should be possible to share this information only with the other person and not with their home servers.
  
  I don't think control features help much when one of the most basic question that you can ask is "What is your gender and who would you like to date?". As I have already outlined in another comment in this thread, this information has to be shared with the federated network and is already enough to get people into serious trouble should it get into the wrong hands.
  Alternatively think about it this way. Would you hand over this kind of information to a total stranger? Would you take on the responsibility of handling data that could literally kill someone if you make a mistake?
- But thats a problem with dating-networks in general because of the intimate character. I think if you want to do it, then it should be done in a safer way than tinder. And the security of your instance should be checked today already. The federation could be a safety advantage, because you can choose on your own, where you think it's the safest.
  
  No, data must be shared between instances for federation to make any sense and the operators of other instances don't necessarily share your views about privacy and security. Lets take for example a matching algorithm like the one OkCupid used to use. You answer some questions and based upon those people are recommended to you. If you want to see people from other instances as well, the answers to the questions must be shared between all federated instances; but at the same time these answers contain private details about you. I don't think a workable solution to this problem exists, even if you come up with an algorithm that allows you to make decisions on anonymized data. The danger of deanonymization due to a bug is too high.

There is a Mastodon frontend with a Tinder-like interface: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/fedimatch/id6503460577

I want to make an effigy out of the corpse of tinder. I would not use a FOSS version of it.
- Point of order, an effigy by definition would be a dummy/representation of the thing that you then symbolically destroy.
  As in, you make an effigy of Mussolini out of cloth and stuffing and burn it in a protest before lining him against a wall, killing him, and defiling his corpse. The corpse itself is not an effigy unless you then use that and make it look like Hitler, and then burn the Mussolini-Hitler corpse as an effigy of Hitler, which tbh would have some layers to it and seems like an innovation in effigy technology...

56 comments