Discussion
If there was a Fedi-Dating platform...
1. what features would you find most valuable?
2. what features do you like from existing dating sites?
3. and what features do you dislike from existing dating sites?
4. what safety features would you need in order to feel safe on the platform?
Update: see https://lgbtqia.space/@alice/117152273187914760
@alice Any updates on the fedi dating app idea?
I still think itβs a fabulous idea.
@alice ping @renatolond who was working on something in that area
@alice@lgbtqia.space I think @cubicgarden@mas.to was working on something like this as well. I believe he discussed it during an unconference.
@ozoned @alice
Indeed I am, happy to talk, share or collaborate.
I started the online dating manifesto - https://datingmanifesto.cc/
Very much looking to create a distributed matching system which support human values
@cubicgarden hiπ
Exciting! I'm catching up on a million messages since I've been gone a couple days, but I'd love to see what you've done so far, and potentially collaborate on something! π©·
1.2. I think the questions system from OkC is great, you can set what's important for you and sort profiles based on that, allowing each instance to set their own questions and use questions from other instances would be nice
3. So many people ghosting and treating you like you're just a consumable :x
I think it's by design I'm a bit too tired to articulate why
3. Don't ever require a phone number or a phone at all.
4. Good moderation?
@alice I would love to see Mastodon-style prompts for alt text anywhere you can post images.
To be a Fedi dating app, it should include the best parts of Fedi.
@alice I talked with some people a couple of years ago about setting one up. One of the huge problems that I see is that the sort of governance and safety you really want on a dating site, especially one that deals with 2SLGBTQIA+ people, is not really compatible with a federated model.
I have given a few interviews where I say that I am expecting the concept of dating sites becoming past history, it's much easier these days to just start adding a way to identify that somebody posting to existing sites you use are willing and interested in being contacted for dating or friends purposes. Rather than answering 3000 binary questions with limited answers, people can see all you post and repost, and see for how long you have been around to give you credibility and substance. A summariser would be useful here.
You can see it happening on things like TikTok where people are hashtagging that they are available for dating. So say for example you are a Swiftie, it's immediatley obvious there that the person who is messaging you, who has been posting Swiftie posts for the last 5 years, is not some astroturfed predator profile.
It doesn't solve ALL the problems by any means... For example TikTok isn't going to remove a profile because you met in person and they assaulted you because that's not a thing that TikTok's safety teams deal with (sadly).
@alice Iβm still quite proud of the research I did on tracking dating app users by inferring distance and getting some of the apps to fix it.
@alice I get the feeling that ActivityPub wouldn't support the kind of data privacy I'd need to feel comfortable using it for a dating app.
@alice Yes, but I think, at least for me, not the only one. E2EE helps with keeping data secure in flight, but I don't want the party at the other end of my dating-related ActivityPub traffic to be a bot or malicious user, either. Most dating sites I've used in the past at least made you sign up for an account before you got to read my intimate details. I'd want visibility only to some kind of authorized and vetted counterparty.
@kurau The jokes wrote themselves. π«ͺ
@alice i don't really need any features besides the common profile tags that are location and flirting (yes/no).
tho i can imagine some beings would prefer to hide one or the other from most users unless they match
or mayyybe a very simple first step to implement would be profile descriptions that change based on wether you're mutuals or not 
@alice the dating scene is a distant memory for me and I hope it remains that way for as long as possible. But since people are discussing more generalised meetups I may be entitled to an opinion here. Radius is a useless metric in my area and I'd guess many others. Within 7 miles can mean on the other side of town or the other side of the estuary. It's the difference between a cycle ride and a two hour train journey. The term I learned about when I complained about this to a developer in the family is isochrone. They allocate the "nearest" agent to a property based on upon estimated driving time. (Though equally possible to select public transport in the api) The boundaries created by a fixed travel time are called isocrones.
Re #1 & #2a I'd love to see an app with virtual cores, like Feeld has (had? I ditched it years back when TOS changed radically for the worse), where you have a virtual location and can connect with anyone who opts into that, too.
Re #3: Data harvesting and unencrypted messaging.
Re #4: @Em0nM4stodon wrote a brilliant article a while back about safety issues with dating apps. I have saved it in a million places and yet somehow can never find it. Em, could you add a link here? It really lays out the issues clearly and is worth consulting for anyone looking to build something new and non-abusive of users.
@AdaraAstin @alice I'm glad you liked the article! Thank you π Here's the link to it: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/06/24/queer-dating-apps-beware-who-you-trust/
@alice 1. I think the most most most valuable feature would be if the app could filter based on your sexual preference and exclusion based on it.
If I say lesbian, it shouldn't recommend men, in fact, it should disallow men from seeing my profile. If I select bi/pan, both/all genders, and gay, just men.
That would prevent 90% of unsolicited requests (especially from the men->"every other gender and queer people"-side).
@alice Don't vibe code it. Maybe it makes sense to use ML-based tools for semantic understanding and matching, something like Word2Vec but for profiles, something that is well-contained, and not the core semantic of the site.
Maybe offer both an Images-forward and a Text-Forward experience? I suspect the latter will result in better matches... 7/
@alice I liked OKC back in the day, under its original owners. But after I answered a bunch of questions, it turned out that I knew everyone it wanted to match me with, because even my major metropolitan area still was a small town for my specific subculture. There's no clear fix here. 5/
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