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Have you ever tried an open source dating app? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by CorrodedCranium@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I recall hearing about Alovoa a year ago and while it sounds nice with no ads or paid features, being open source, and private data being encrypted I have to imagine the userbase is incredibly small relative to other services. Google Play lists it at over a thousand downloads but it's also available through F-Droid so that may not mean much. I have to imagine the userbase is mostly men which might prevent some users from joining or sticking around.

Either way (TL:DR) I'd be curious to see what your experiences are with open source dating apps or even apps designed around making friends.

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[-] NoughtE@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago

Dating apps are toxic as it is, and the fact that most of them are basically days mining operations at this point makes it even worse (this also heavily impacts the overall ux). I have a friend who has worked for multiple dating app companies and it sounds awful.

I think an open source one that respects user privacy would be amazing, but honestly would likely be useless, as barely anyone would use it because people don't really care about privacy, and select dating apps purely based on user volume.

In addition, and although this is gradually changing, tech and therefore tech-related interests such as data privacy and FOSS are still overwhelmingly dominated by cishet white men, so I can't imagine such an app having even the most basic, binary requirements in terms of diversity.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

I was with you until the unsourced claim that tech is dominated by cishet white men. In California nothing could be farther from the truth

[-] NoughtE@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I'll admit it's anecdotal, but it is absolutely my experience having worked in tech for 15 years.

Maybe "dominated" is an extreme word, but I would put money on "over-represented".

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Having worked in tech in California, I would say the opposite. Most of my coworkers were immigrants, and only happened to be white males if their origin country was in Europe (and only if their ancestors happened to be from there as well, my boss was Persian Swedish)

But I also worked with people from East Asia and South Asia as well, a lot of women and LGBT people.

It must be a regional thing, where other states are just a lot more white so you see more white people