@alice
All I need is a safe little ace playpen where no one makes overly sexual commentary. However, I've always thought it would be cool for a dating site to have an option to link accounts for polyamorous people so they could basically have a polycule page where you can meet everyone if your interests match.

That way, everyone could have their own account as well as a shared page, letting them date within or outside the polycule as they wished. I know that's pretty much just what inviting someone to a group chat is, but it would be nice to have without giving out any emails, social media or personal info.

@alice you mean it's not already a dating platform???

@alice a huge problem with any dating service is catfishing and romance scams.

Given how hard it is for any amount of community moderation to scale, and the difficulty you'd have attesting peoples' IRL identities, it might be a good idea for there to be eBay/trustpilot style ratings & feedback that both parties can give each other.

It's not a perfect system, but people with a longer-lived profile and higher star ratings would be the most trustworthy. It would be understood that if you interacted with a fairly new account or one with not that many reviews you may want to take more precautions before emotionally investing in that potential relationship.

@alice

1. The ability to temporarily turn my profile invisible. If I find someone very interesting, I'd like to focus on that person and not keep beeing flooded with messages, either having to deny people or engage with 5 people at once.

2&3. Haven't been to many, so can't comment.

4. An optional (!) ID check with a mark on a profile. I get some people want to stay anonymous. But when it comes to IRL meetings, knowing someone is known by ID would make me feel safer.

@alice since "every queer nerd wants to do this", here is a jumble of ideas from various conversations:

1)

* decisive privacy strategy
* non-clique matching
* interaction form diversity
* matching diversity

2)

* community-rooted ones are the ones that detract me least

3)

* fixed formats
* wrong dating culture
* clique matching
* pretend privacy

4)

* "informed to consent" perspective
* knowing nerds, dating explainers help more than people think sometimes

@alice I kinda miss the old okcupid style online dating site where you just have whole conversations based on profile interests that may or may not lead to actual real life dates.

I never ended up in anything (romance, hookups, fwb) off of that site but I made a bunch of friends over time and met people who led some really interesting lives/lifestyles. Not sure why they succeeded in having actual 'something for everyone' where other sites seem to fail.

@alice No freemium stuff at all. Either free with the possibility of tipping or paid for everyone.

Disable geopositioning after matching, ideally don't rely on it at all. When I was online dating if I opened a profile after matching, their position would update. This can be used for stalking, at best that's creepy and at worst it can cause real safety concerns.

Possibility to enter words or hashtags in a filter bar to prioritize or exclude profiles with them in their description. To make it easier to find profiles with similar interests or values.

No AI text generation, image filter or profile suggestion whatsoever. It goes without saying.

@alice it’s a great idea.

1. Maybe a way to signify that you have a chronic illness or low energy.

As others have said, it would be good to be able to meet friends too.

@alice
I think in the default view of ones profile or even profile picture, it should be very clear what they are looking for and who they are, to avoid the RSD of later discovering a misalignment on expectations.

Finding friends should be a first class feature and maybe also support the travel use case, without having to change one's home base location.

@alice
I like filtering with sexual orientation, gender, relationship types, smoking, trinking and eating habits, kink orientation and of corse distance.

I despise the looks voting.

I love profiles that describe what's important to you.

1. matching based on advanced search criteria, filters to include/exclude profiles, for dating but also for meeting people w/ similar interests

2. can't tell, don't use

3. monetization probably (including selling data, feeding algorithms) - that's exploiting peoples desire for a bit of love, tenderness, and happiness

(1/2)

@alice

@alice okay I'm loving all these replies, when are we building this, y'all?

@alice A system of "soft"-blocking people based on their network. If someone regularly interacts with someone who has been reported as unsafe often, or who you yourself have blocked, they should be moved to a kind of "archive" as well.

Dunno how well this would work in reality though. Needs testing.

@alice 4. Covid safe as a filter option.

Love it if you can come up with a was to disambiguate "athletic" into "people capable of treating a bicycle ride as the precursor to a date" and "people with a BMI under 100" because oh boy did that one get me down.

3. mandatory app and links to antisocial media (I don't *have* meta, tiktok or shitter accounts to link)

2. OkCupids endless quiz format.

1. website-centric, privacy compatible and the ability to express both preferences and rules.

@alice What I think is particularly interesting about a fediverse approach to dating is that I've never seen a dating site use the existing social connections between people to help. For example, I want to write public recommendations for other people ("hey, I think this person is cool and here's why you should date them"). Horrifyingly, I think the easiest way to describe what I mean is "LinkedIn for dating". (Maybe Fedi-Dating and Fedi-Hiring should be the same protocol, but with different profiles?) I think it's often easier for people who know you to talk you up than it is to promote yourself.

That said, safety is already difficult in both social networks and dating sites, so identifying the right safety features for a combination of both is particularly intimidating.