Why don't governments invest in their own dating apps? Would you use one?
I've thought about this off and on for like a year.
It, as far as I know, seems well documented that populations are struggling with dating and marriages, especially in the younger generations. A lot of people attribute it to things like finances, working hours, cost of living, etc, but also the abysmal online dating circus. People don't seem to go out with the intention of meeting people as much, and so most turn to apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. But with these apps basically monopolized by the Match group, and none of the parent companies have an actual incentive to get people off the app, it seems like a ripe opportunity for governments everywhere to try and fill in the gap.
As they don't have the investor profit motive, but they do have a very strong motive for people to get together, have relationships, marriages, eventually babies. And this is just a baseless claim on my part, but I imagine it could be stimulating to local economies as more people go on dates. I know at least my ass doesn't go anywhere really when I'm single.
yikes would not want this, generally youre gonna disclose your orientation in a dating app, and all it takes is one really scary election...
I heard that if Kamala wins, the straights will all be sent to jail where they will have forced transgender surgeries.
Don't worry, it's just the concept of a plan.
They’ll then be force-fed dogs and cats.
Right, I forgot about the contract Taco Bell has with the prisons.
Still a better than private healthcare, honestly
Only if they're illegal immigrants!
My government wants to destroy:
They also want to:
So, the answer is a very strong no. Corporations are not your friends, but governments aren't either. In this context, they are the much worse option.
The problem with dating is not that the apps suck, it's that right now the people suck. And specifically, they suck because of the general social environment they are in. To be clear that has to do with economic factors, but it includes poor health and social attitudes. The US Surgeon General, for instance, is currently campaigning against lonliness (warning: long PDF report), and I would venture that improvement in that area would also help the relationship and dating problems for self-evident reasons.
Beyond that, it's something that is very far down in most people's priorities. When dealing with issues like climate change, healthcare, immigration reform, and labor law protections, a free government dating app doesn't even show up on the map.
Besides that, when's the last time you actually enjoyed using a government website? Government tech is decidedly unsexy.
I think there are some cultural trends independent of economic factors that have led to people sucking more on average.
Social media (TikTok, Instagram) plus years of traditional media pushing reality TV shows (The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Meet the Kardashians, etc.) have done a huge number on contemporary culture and social attitudes. Narcissistic tendencies have been continually on the rise.
Is this really true? At least as a man dating women I've only had one "nightmare" date with a problematic woman. And, to be fair, as someone that is not at any physical risk of assault the worst of the date was feeling uncomfortable a few times.
The most common red flag trend would probably be alcohol abuse. I literally had a woman show up at noon, hung over, and describe to me straight-faced the wonders of binge drinking that she discovered with her roommate during the pandemic. Others are a little more subtle, flip-flopping between "oh yeah I don't like alcohol much either" and "here's the list of expensive supplements I buy monthly to try and counteract the negative effects of alcohol".
It's certainly one of the problems. I agree, it's not the biggest problem. But Match Group, Inc. does not really want you to find your soulmate and get married. It wants you to keep looking at your screen, swyping more people, and it wants you to start paying (to see who liked you, to keep searching) as soon as possible. It sends you notifications to keep swyping (no matter how your date went), its built to be as adictive as possible.
If you'd want to build an app that gets people into long term relationships as soon as possible, you'd probably include mechanisms that stop the swyping as soon as possible.
3 matches? No more swyping, no more "NEW MATCH!" dopamine dump notifications. Talk to them or unmatch.
Or more invasive: Encourage users to tell the app when they've scheduled a date, gamefy it, reward it, it's not hard. The app goes into lock down until you unmatch your date (which nontifies the date - it also notifies the date if you haven't told the app about the date).
Ugh, enforced monogamy sounds horrid.
I mean nobody is talking about making Tinder/Bumble/Hinge/Grindr illegal.
But if you are a state actor, and you're worried about fertility rates, the quickest way to fix that is to get as many people into stable long term relationships as possible. In the current cultural climate, assuming (and encouraging) a preference for monogamy makes this a whole lot easier.
Sure but that would absolutely turn me off of it immediately.
This is why I wouldn't have any interest in an app, I'm not planning to have kids, and if I don't have value outside of my fertility, I don't need to be engaged with that.
State actors can keep their hands off my fertility. Ick.
Yeah, the good thing is that then the feeling between you and the state is mutual! But there are people who'd like to be parents, but they lack a stable partner. Tinder is probably not helping very much, and that's what the discussion here is primarily about.
I disagree that this is a good thing.
The government should care about its people beyond their ability to make more people. It's some real dystopian shit to only care about how many babies someone can or will make. There could be many other compelling pro-social reasons to run a dating app - from protecting privacy vs private companies, to happy and healthy relationships being a social good and even that those are better for raising children than abusive or unhappy ones.
Particularly given the impact of pregnancy and childcare on women, it reeks of the kind of conservative government Project 2025 wants. The discussion here is why someone would or wouldn't use this kind of app. Those are many of mine.
I think in the course of editing you reversed the meaning of this sentence.
Yeah, the government isn’t quite that inefficient.
Government tech very much depends on the nation. gov.uk for example is very sexy if you find standardised easy to use layouts with all the information and services you need and want online.
Short version is this:
People REALLY don't want the government involved in their personal lives. Having to give out financial info is bad enough, and there's a reason why HIPAA is a Big Deal in the US for health. Dating is also very personal... So getting gov't involved is a Big NO.
Perhaps something the government COULD do that might be accessible is fund a lot of Third Places. Of course, then people would cry about wasteful spending (as if there isn't already a ton of wasteful spending, like in the military).
The Tokyo government actually did make their own dating app, which worked about as well as you'd expect it to: no one used it. One thing every government will have to get out of is that they are all fundamentally considered LAME, which is uniquely a problem here.
Moreover, I think a lot is attributed to "profit motives" which is actually just the bad sides of human nature, as a coping mechanism. In particular, this conspiracy theory that dating apps try to get people into short-term relationships. Match.com companies WISH they had such deep insights into the human condition as to be able to thread the absurdly thin needle of "match people with other people that they will text and maybe bang for a bit but will ultimately fall out of favor with". Have you read a dating app profile? Do you think it even contains enough information for a omniscient super AI to do that kind of matching?
With respect to government dating apps, I think it may be possible to do so via local municipalities as long as the stars align. Federally? No way.
It doesn’t require a sophisticated system to push people towards hookups. Push notifications and addictive gamified mechanisms for matching, always reminding you that maybe you could do better so why not check out some matches instead of investing more in the person you’ve already met?
I can see it now. Gym Battle and rare Mons happening at the local (state funded) love hotel! Find a random (opposite sexed and fertile) partner, add to the community/team high score. After the hookup, Poke-Mon-Go-To-The-Fertility-Clinic in 4-6 weeks for a chance at the Ultra Gacha for the Ultra Rare SSR prize of the month!
I mean, again, a push notification is not why 99.999% of tinder hookups don’t go anywhere. They don’t go anywhere because the people are just not compatible. It’s going to be a crapshoot. This would not change if a government is running the dating app.
It's sad that I feel the need to start a rant with a Jose Mourinho quote, because that's exactly how I feel when I want to vent about my dating woes online. People on Reddit are particularly dickish about labelling you an incel and talking crap about you when you open up.
Anyway, here goes.
Sixteen months ago, I met a lady on Facebook Dating who I grew very close with. The main reason she wouldn't date was that she had ME/CFS and doesn't have the energy, which is fair enough. During this time I've been as respectful and supportive as I could be, but it's unfortunately one of those conditions where there's little research, no cure and people just think you're lazy. Last week she dropped the bombshell that she was seeing someone who confessed his feelings to her and she felt the same way, and that made me both upset and angry. After the whole sixteen months I got to know her, I feel like she led me on big time.
Another lady dragged me into relationship drama that eroded a 10+ year friendship with a close friend (her ex.) To cut a long story short, used and guilt tripped into changing plans because she wanted to be with him, they kissed, his girlfriend found out, all hell broke loose. I feel like he's been blaming me for all this and he's been avoiding me ever since. This is the same woman who once jokingly asked if I would date her during a night out, before laughing in my face and telling me she would never go out with me because I'm autistic and remind her of her abusive ex.
My actual ex (met on Tinder six years ago, didn't even so much as kiss during our 2.5 year on/off COVID relationship) got in touch with me a few months back. She was happy to trauma dump on me about how other guys treated her bady and tell me that she came back because I'm such a lovely and genuine guy, but when we met for a meal and I insisted on splitting the bill, I saw her face drop, and I was blocked after we parted ways.
Where am I going with this? Online dating is depressing, from the perspective of a 33 y/o virgin. Above were three examples of what happens when I do find a match once in a blue moon and they don't ghost me after the first message, but also a big part of it is that the dating app market is an oligopoly run by two or three companies with predatory business models that don't care about you finding love and are only concerned about their bottom line.
People in this thread are calling this idea authoritarian and a data protection nightmare but I care more about whether it works. It's clear that Tinder, Hinge, Zoosk, OkCupid, POF, etc don't and that the FTC need to break up the monopoly that has formed around these apps.
Speed dating in person is becoming a trend in some cities. I think more and more people are rebelling against the apps.
With all due respect, how's your personal health and fitness? I don't want to pry, but I'm curious because I've had a couple friends that your stories reminded me of. One guy got in shape then took some decent photos and found success.
The dating scene varies a lot depending on sexuality and whether you're cis or trans. Without knowing you personally, being a 33 year old virgin is also a red flag for cruelly ironic reasons. I'm also curious whether you live in a highly populated area since that dramatically affects the dating app experience.
If I were single, straight, cis gendered, AND I have decent faith in my government, yeah I would welcome the development of a state sponsored dating app and I would probably use it. It doesn't have to be just dating either, it could be used to connect baby reading circles or organize milk swap or veggie trade or book clubs or afterschool play dates. That'd be really swell. It might also give the impression that if an interaction goes wrong, the police would have something to go on. I like that. Again, only if I trust the government.
As a petit woman yes I would absolutely use a government dating app for the perceived safety.
I would very very much want a government version of Facebook, twitter, everything.
Just want to comment, I would be shocked if there isn't a young adult dystopian novel based on this concept. The Matched trilogy is fairly similar, in that it has the government dictate exactly who you're "matched" with, but it doesn't even give the illusion of choice like a government-run dating app would.
On top of disclosing details like sexual orientation and other personal information others have mentioned, I could see governments using this to try to manipulate certain demographics to grow. Like making sure people of certain economic statuses or races would be able to find each other's profiles but not "mix" with others, and maybe push down people who are flagged for certain political ideologies so there would be less chance of them influencing others. Seriously, having the government involved in a dating app feels like a major step towards the full-fledged dystopias we see in fiction. Even if it's not the original intention, I don't trust governments to never try to use a state-sponsored dating app to their advantage and try to solidify power.
That probably all sounds ridiculous and like I'm a conspiracy theorist, but given other things the US government has done to its own citizens in the past... Yeah, just don't want to take any chances.
Been a while since I read it, but if I recall correctly, such an app was actually a plot point in Unnatural. In the comic, an authoritarian government uses the app as a tool to maintain racial purity in its population.
I probably wouldn't use such an app if it was made by the US/Chinese/Russian/Saudi/etc government, but I would probably give such an app made by the EU a try.
That’s an interesting point. I wonder if a state run app would run into issues since it is generally prohibited from various forms of discrimination. Could it run into challenges from various minority groups if it turns out that one group has greater dating success than another? What kind of reporting requirements might come up?
In addition to stuff other people have pointed out, this would be an astonishing waste of government money given how many far more important things, like healthcare and public transport. I would be legitimately angry if even a government I wholly trusted with running such an app decided to do so because of how extraordinarily bad a choice of prioritizing which problems need funding it would be.
also, since it's government owned and operated the police could probably access the records without a warrant. Right wing state governments would absolutely use the data as evidence when prosecuting abortion cases.
Right, haha, if they invested heavily in making cities walkable and in public transit, folks would already organically be able to meet others, rather than sitting in a solitary metal box 2-4 hours a day.
It seems like the politics would be pretty dicey. People can have politically controversial dating preferences, plus there are bad people out there, and policing it too much or not enough are both politically fraught.
A company or non-government organization is going to have more flexibility to say "we're just trying to serve our community, not everyone."
Maybe a non-profit could do it? The problem is that they need a minimum scale.
I know it's not as straight forward as this, but another thing I thought of is that a government run app would have more or less easy access to background checks for people who sign up.
That would help in more clear-cut cases, but I bet there are lots of Internet trolls who would pass a background check.
I think the shallow algorithmic kind of matching that dating apps encourage would cause a lot of secondary problems even if it was capable of tipping the scales of the loneliness issue. I would prefer to see a government focus on creating time and opportunity for people to engage with community third spaces where they can meet people in person organically.
Dating? They can't even build a website to match people willing to get employed with employers or build something like Craigslist to be able to find a decent plumber in your city!
To be clear on this front, governments care about birth rates, not specifically dating and marriages. I suppose there's "family values" folks but that's more culture war. The economics is what's important.
This recent video from General Knowledge breaks this down pretty good for the U.S. with possible solutions starting at the 11:28 timestamp. The baby boom happened before dating apps, so I don't think they're essential or the key to overcoming this dilemma.
If there is a way to do it without the government collecting data, sure.
You could probably run it like the German health insurance system. You have a few tightly regulated semi-public healthcare insurance providers that do not share personal data with the government, but they are partially funded by the government and partly by the employer/employee. Just replace the words „health insurance“ with „dating platform“ and it seems to make sense.
Honestly, I already assume the government collects data on everyone all the time. Better them than Zuckerberg-likes.
(edit) Hah, I misread your post and assumed you were focused on the birth rate, not on only finding companionship. My response is off-base, then; apologies.
I’m not an economist, but as far as I know, the high income countries that see declining birth rates as a problem also see widespread immigration as the standard solution. “Make more babies, you entitled $generation_name” is often the refrain of populist movements which also tend to have strong anti-tech sentiments in the American/European cultures I’m familiar with.
I suppose this could make sense in Japan or South Korea? A quick Google search shows that this isn’t a unique notion, either. I just doubt it could take off in the NA/EU cultural climate.
They seem to already be working on such an app in Japan.
Japanese officials push dating apps in effort to boost birth rates (CNBC)
There's also major liability concerns.
Granted those concerns exist for a corporation too, but in theory if a corporation screws up bad enough it's a hell of a lot easier to do something about it than to do something about the government (and yes I know how miserably hard it is to do anything about a large corporation).
Also, honestly, it's just easier to solve the other problems. Creating incentives for group environments/products/whatever is much more the speed of government.
They'll ALSO spend 10x as much on development and be hellishly slow because of all the usual government tech issues.