While you can't guarantee a good date, you can at least eliminate the worst and unsafe-est dates by a little messaging.
I dated for a while on various services before choosing OKCupid and sticking with it. I talked to and dated several women before I met the woman who is now my wife.
That included some chat up front, then picking a safe, public location to meet and do something. I'm lucky to live in Orlando, so it was very often a theme park. If either of us were unhappy, we could just go our separate ways and be done. (Thankfully that never happened to me.)
Creeps have a hard time hiding the fact that they're creeps. If I'm talking to a guy on a dating app and he immediately tries to steer the conversation towards sex, my body, how horrible women are, and shows zero interest in actually getting to know me then I know he's someone to avoid.
Even taking a shower, putting on decent clothes, and showing up in person to a bar is a massive filter that dating app conversation doesn't have. This is one of the fundamental trade-offs of meeting people online vs in person.
As an added bonus, you also get to screen out all the people that don't really care enough about their potential date's feelings to exchange a few messages, and all the people that are saying yes to too many dates to even notice conversation threads never mind show up.