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.