If the paradox of choice is actually true (as with anything in psychology, it needs further research to be sure), then this could be a major negative instead of a major positive.
1. Be unattractive.
2. Don't be attractive.
It enables a habit of bailing at the first sign of trouble.
I think the issue here isn't one of what does a person wants, but what they benefit from. Sometimes people are harmed by what they want. In many cases this is obvious (think any addictions), but in others it belabors the mind as we struggle to see how something that looks harmless and helpful is actually harmful.
I've lost the attribution, but someone said that "dating is a numbers game. The goal is to go on as many first dates as possible, to get in front of as many people as possible. At this, tinder (and associates) absolutely excel. There is no other way to reliably find a lot of single people to go on dates with."
Most people commit to one person eventually so you'll need to make a choice.
Go online, suddenly the pool is so large that you see dozens of 9-10's and swipe right on them, suddenly the 6-7s seem less attractive so you start swiping left when in a social setting you'd probably at least talk to them, you become more picky, and you end up getting fewer matches because the wealth of choice leads to you being pickier about physical attractiveness than you'd otherwise be IRL.
Sure they are. Good photos, filters, Photoshop, sometimes even fake pictures, make a huge difference.
Though eventually you could upload any image.
Either way, I don't think it's such a big problem. Most people know that the feeling of betrayal is the last thing you want your date to feel when you walk into the room. It's just not a winning strategy.
Even if they started from another reason, they'll at some point want to grab the data.
OkCupid's problem, and the problem at Match Group in general, is that you learned something about 100% of OkCupid users instead of 0.01% of randomly-sampled real world people, and maybe that something that you learned was 200% wrong. And then, you think your answers are 1,000% more correct because 100% - 0.01% = 99.99%.
Granted that logic is great for equity investors. It just isn't necessarily great for users.
Nobody pushed back on the assumption that online dating was a representative sample. Nobody pushes back on whether the right questions were being asked. Match didn't even choose the right engagement metrics, choosing things like message reply rate which can rise while active users fall. The style of how these metrics were chosen and what analysis was done papered over serious issues. And all the people who would have, by now, the maturity and tenure to admit they were wrong are gone.
I worked at OkCupid 8 years ago
Photos reveal potential likely chemistry
If there were a drastically better solution, then it would take over the market. The last major innovation was when Tinder invented swiping and went mobile-first, a genius move which drastically cut down the spam women deal with and made it actually feel like a fun game instead of a chore.
The fact is, despite all the work of psychologists and technologists, nobody's come up with a better, more efficient way of matching people. Personality profiles and questionnaires are a poor predictor of chemistry -- they can help with filtering compatibility in basic ways, but they're not going to find you your soul mate.
Photos reveal potential likely chemistry more than anything else. Swiping works. Messaging works. The apps can't perform magic, though. If you're looking to find more success on them than you would with the same group of people at a bar or meetup or wherever, that's not gonna happen. They're not changing whether people are attracted to each other or not.
What they do do is give you a pool of users far larger than you'd ever encounter in a single night out, and you know they're mostly all single, also different from when you go out. And they're honestly pretty good at that.