Tinder-alternatives for the Fediverse
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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.rucan do what they want.There's nothing you can do for profile data, public key encryption is an option for DMs.
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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. 🥲
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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. -
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.But what about defederation from malicious/insecure instances? Couldn't this solve these kind of problems?
Of course, there will still be a risk. But isn't it a step in the better direction?
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But what about defederation from malicious/insecure instances? Couldn't this solve these kind of problems?
Of course, there will still be a risk. But isn't it a step in the better direction?
You already lost the data at that point and you really don't want to play roulette with data that has the potential of killing your users. Just imagine what could happen if a gay man from Saudi Arabia joined your instance and that data leaks.
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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...
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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.rucan do what they want.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.
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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
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.
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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?
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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. 🥲
Solvable by requiring verification of every user by government ID?
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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.
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
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Solvable by requiring verification of every user by government ID?
Then you’d need some organization with resources to store this data? You’d still need to trust someone to do this correctly.
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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
I've heard of FediMatch: https://github.com/Lypsilonx/FediMatch
I have not used it personally - might one day though. -
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Dating is a numbers game, so ya gotta go where your preferences are.
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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.
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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.
I actually think observing your actual behaviour would be a better more honest way of matching.
And technically it's all public info so it's not technically a privacy issue; they'd get it over activitypub the same as all fediverse platforms already do.But it feels wrong to do.
