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 X
PART ONE — THE PORTFOLIO
Safety was withheld from the free tier and later sold as an upgrade.
One group of users received screening. Another received exposure.
A joint investigation by ProPublica, Columbia Journalism Investigations and BuzzFeed News established that Match Group screened for registered sex offenders on the paid Match.com service and not on Tinder, OkCupid or Plenty of Fish. A company spokesperson, on the record: there are definitely registered sex offenders on our free products. Reporters reviewed more than 150 incidents of sexual assault connected to dating platforms over roughly a decade. A House Oversight subcommittee opened an inquiry in 2020. The company subsequently moved toward offering background checks as a paid feature.
EVIDENCE SNAPSHOT
Match.com
SCREENED
Sex-offender screening applied to the paid Match service
3 apps
UNSCREENED
Three named free apps lacked equivalent screening
150+
INCIDENTS
Reported assault incidents reviewed by investigators
Paid
LATER MODEL
Background checks were later offered as paid functionality
KEY FINDING
A joint investigation by ProPublica, Columbia Journalism Investigations and BuzzFeed News established that Match Group screened for registered sex offenders on the paid Match.com service and not on Tinder, OkCupid or Plenty of Fish.
IMPLICATION
Safety protections were unevenly applied and later repositioned as purchasable functionality.
Source apparatus
SOURCE 01
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INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
Flynn, H., Cousins, K., & Naismith Picciani, E. (2019, December 2). Tinder lets known sex offenders use the app. It's not the only one. ProPublica, Columbia Journalism Investigations & BuzzFeed News.