I was trying to explain federated websites to a friend and she asked if there is a federated dating app. She recently went through a break up and the apps are dreadful as I’m sure many of you know.
It’d be hard to launch a dating system on the fediverse because it the type of service that relies heavily on network effects. People want to be on the dating app with the most people. However, I think there is an opportunity because the mainstream apps are so notoriously awful, monetized, and enshitified.
It could be a community within an existing network or it could be its own website. I don’t know, I’m just putting the idea out there.
Probably very difficult due to network effect indeed. Also privacy would be a challenge I guess?
This could be used for privacy.
https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid
There’s also a new technology that allows sharing of proximity data without sharing location. I’m not finding it now, though.
Ps. I tend to think that NOSTR is a far better protocol for this type of idea for the same reasons I’m looking at NOSTR instead of Pub/Sub for my federated inventory idea.
forgot about DMs lmao, thanks blaze for correcting me
Isn’t privacy basically irrelevant to a dating app? you’re giving your own info (headshot, name, hobbies, location i think?) voluntarily. Do correct me if i am wrong though.(There is some information that is sketchy for the company to be collecting though, such as app usage and contacts)It’s more how to keep the information between two people, such as messages. As we know, messages on Lemmy can be seen by admins
Right. I forgot about those. E2EE is probably especially necessary for a dating app.
Not everything needs to happen in the Fediverse. E.g, you can have the messaging part delegated to email, xmpp, matrix… Then you add a system where the other party needs to send a “request for contact info” separate from the public profile.