I have never used an online dating app, but I have to imagine that requiring mutual likes based on a public profile eliminates the strategy of guys who have a really good pitch tailored to a specific woman. They have only one public blurb and a picture, so I could imagine it devolving to a filter that only selects for profile pictures in practice.

Not saying that’s not worth the trafeoff though, I don’t have a better idea to fight spam.

I sort of agree, although I'm skeptical of how prevalent it ever really was for a guy to make an unsolicited pitch tailored to the woman that was accepted even though the woman would have declined based only on his profile. After all, women look at the profile when they receive and unsolicited messages, often before they even bother to read the message (especially the long ones).

I can only speak from personal experience, but all my messages are tailored. When I do get a reply, I'd say only around 50% of women look at my profile before replying. For the rest, the message is good enough to get started.

> I can only speak from personal experience, but all my messages are tailored.

It's clear that all messages need to be tailored to expect a reasonable reply rate; otherwise the woman has no way to tell you've put in any effort (so it might be copypasta spam). That doesn't mean that women are replying to unsolicited messages from men who they wouldn't even swipe right on.

> I'd say only around 50% of women look at my profile before replying.

How do you know? What app are you talking about? I estimate that >95% of women on mainstream apps look at a guy's profile before replying to a message.

Before the change, I sometimes got responses and even a first message or two on OKCupid (!). Since the change, nothing, zilch on the site.