Though I have read a few things that indicate that dating sites have helped increase the number of interracial marriages and made it much easier for gays to find a mate. If you are gay and not out to your family or whatever, you can go on a dating site and admit that you are gay there and it vastly simplifies navigating a complex situation like that. Some gays still pretend they are straight and their lover is just a roommate to help make life in the big city affordable or whatever.

> So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to

Not in the casual case. You simply say, "Only looking for hook ups, something casual, etc". No one's time is wasted. When my Bumble push notification comes in, I know it's someone who finds me attractive based on my honest photos and okay with something casual. It's the perfect filter for all involved.

Disclaimer: Still have a Facebook account, but rarely log in.

Courtship typically requires one to also sort out how you fit into the larger social fabric of each other's lives. In contrast, hookups or casual flings typically are looking to cut you out of the fabric of their social lives. People generally don't want to introduce casual sexual relationships to important people in their lives, thus expressions like "The kind you don't take home to mother."

Facebook is a social network. Their value position naturally readily aligns with the idea of courtship and they are apparently going with that.

I don't use either dating sites or hookup sites. I'm not the target market. I'm just making observations based on reading up on how asymmetrical markets work and this is a standard thing that you run across. I have read that it is why you see "Ladies night" at bars. The guys are going to be there anyway. You need to find some means to entice the women to show up.

(Disclaimer: I also don't drink, so this is just stuff I have read about working with asymmetrical markets and developing a service when you have a chicken-and-egg problem.)

Social networks are part of the problem, but people not knowing what they want is also part of the problem. People are hard, and cannot be solved with engineering.

I just realized this was the force behind it the whole time, when I read the line about casual versus long-term relationships that made an eyebrow arch up, what you just said is what made me so skeptical.

Reading everyone else's thoughtful responses: of course Facebook doesn't want to adjudicate dating choices, Facebook employs engineers who need $stuff to work on. 'Dating' is another feature for a tech company that sells ads.

Shared Google calendars solve the logistics issue.

I've never used Bumble before but my understanding is that males in the top 20% of physical attractiveness get nearly all of the requests and that males in the bottom 80% get nearly none. Does that sound accurate?

I took myself out of dating for a long time because of that set of beliefs combined with stats like the one you've posted. The truth is that different people find different types of people attractive. There are a few people who are just attractive (ironically a good number of those people are rather lonely because their good looks are intimidating) but the vast majority of people are attractive to some and not to others. Also, even how you present yourself matters a lot. Making yourself appear attractive does require some effort but it's not something you're stuck with.

If you're into long term relationships, you really only need a handful of people to find your attractive. The odds are actually in your favor when your sample size is large enough, which on a dating app it usually is.

1. They don't want underage nudes on their servers, even if they are exchanged between consenting 17 year olds.

2. They got feedback from some focus group who said the worst part about other online dating apps is being given unsolicited pics or being asked for more pics.

This "casual encounter" bit is their chosen marketing-approved euphemism to explain this, or maybe it tested the best. I honestly don't think they care how this gets used, but I'm sure they tested all kinds of language and this did the best.

Made me realize this is a good reason to have end to end encryption on for everything as a chat provider, since it reduces your liability.

The friend-links allow you to verify the target human yourself (ask your chain how they are), it limits misbehavior (you’re sending dick picks to your friend’s best friend, not a random stranger), you’re naturally liklier to share a social circle or taste or whatever (you’re friends with the intermediate person for some reason).

So it has to be marketed and tuned towards something that is palatable to your broader social circle, because they are, more likely than not, going to find out.

And while you might accept casual dating, and people often don’t care, its still a broadly negative thing to be going around with. The general expectation (at least in the us) is that eventually you’ll stop, and have a serious relationship, and you don’t really go around showing off your casual relationships (at best, you pretend externally that its possibly serious until the day you break it up), and you certainly dont go around telling people you’re currently looking for a fuckbuddy (and your friend might be the one!), at least not directly, and certainly not broadly.

You don’t want to find your teacher on tinder/grindr, and you really don’t want to find your friends on it. (As always, in general, and especially post-teenage, and a US opinion)

Probably PR and brand optics given their recent public mis-steps.