Thirty-one theses on dating capitalism
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PART ONE — THE PORTFOLIO
I
Revenue up, payers down
II
Success ends subscriptions
III
Manufactured scarcity
IV
One owner, many brands
Hidden ranking, patented swipe
VI
Volume produces refusal
VII
The app is the destination
VIII
Demographic pricing
IX
Fabricated interest
X
Safety became an upgrade
XI
Intentionality drives growth
XII
Queer platforms consolidated
XIII
Contraction intensifies extraction
XIV
Free users are inventory
XV
Global risk, concentrated revenue
XVI
Health data as telemetry
XVII
Data as national security
XVIII
Membership reveals identity
XIX
Identification without breach
XX
Profiles sold as commodities
XXI
The platform remembers more
XXII
Community versus its workers
XXIII
Extraction is optional
XXIV
Refusal is not innocence
XXV
The grid is optional
XXVI
Filtering is not sorting
XXVII
The applications work
XXVIII
Lifeline and trap
XXIX
Loneliness is the market
XXX
Companionship without reciprocity
XXXI
Named, not stopped
THESIS VIII
PART ONE — THE PORTFOLIO
Price is set by demography.
The same country. The same subscription. A different price.
Mozilla and Consumers International found Tinder operating up to thirty-one distinct price points for the same subscription within a single country, a spread of up to five times for identical service: $4.99 to $26.99 in the United States, $4.45 to $25.95 in the Netherlands. Across six countries, users aged thirty to forty-nine paid on average 65.3 percent more than users aged eighteen to twenty-nine. Tinder settled age-pricing claims for $17.3 million, and again for $60.5 million, the latter covering some 260,000 Californian class members under the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
EVIDENCE SNAPSHOT
31
PRICE POINTS
Distinct prices offered within a single country
5×
PRICE SPREAD
Maximum spread found for an identical subscription
+65.3%
AGE EFFECT
Older users paid more on average across markets
6
COUNTRIES
Countries included in the international pricing investigation
KEY FINDING
Mozilla and Consumers International found Tinder operating up to thirty-one distinct price points for the same subscription within a single country, a spread of up to five times for identical service: $4.99 to $26.99 in the United States, $4.45 to $25.95 in the Netherlands.
IMPLICATION
Pricing reflects inferred willingness to pay rather than product value alone.
Source apparatus
SOURCE 01
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CONSUMER INVESTIGATION / COURT RECORD
Mozilla Foundation & Consumers International. (2022). A consumer investigation into personalised pricing.
SOURCE 02
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CONSUMER INVESTIGATION / COURT RECORD
Kim v. Tinder, Inc., No. 2:18-cv-03093 (C.D. Cal. 2019).