The author makes that point, but follows up with a more important one: this is what you can expect from "the algorithm", whether it's Tinder, Facebook, your email service, or your bank. A few false positives are acceptable collateral damage, and it can be a serious inconvenience or worse. Tinder, he's out 12 bucks, but we've all heard of people with thousands of dollars in Paypal limbo for years.

I bet he could get back that $12 and more for his time and effort if he went to small claims court in the US. Or tell their card’s issuer to do a chargeback.

So don't have your livelihood or material comfort depend on greedy and uncaring megacorps?

Evergreen xkcd: https://xkcd.com/743/

That's probably a good idea. If you want social media, go to the local mom and pop social medium in town here. Their artisanal activity feed is the best!

More seriously, at this point the options are:

    - ethically-challenged social media full of relatives and friends
    - unintuitive federated platform with no family but plenty of otherkin furfriends
    - being left out of conversation and events you care about

I can't say to most people that choice 1 is excluded without being written off as unrealistic.

Other bars don’t have Swipe Night

I jest but has anyone used Tinder recently? They have interactive choose your own adventure movies now, and then match you with people that made similar choices, instant ice breaker! But actually a decently fun episodic game with moderately high production value.

I’m surprised because Tinder was like the worst of all the mobile-first dating apps from my recollection.

Not quite that simple depending on the country and city. Even more with the pandemic, Tinder might be one's only way of meeting potential partners.

How many Tinders is there? In my country they's pretty much only it, none of the other apps have any users (especially in my age range).

I'm also "kinda" banned on Tinder btw - or rather, my account got in an unusable state due to some bug, or an interaction between multiple bugs. The app literally barely works. How pathetic for a company this size. I feel sorry for anyone who has to work on their code base.

Really?

In my area, single people also use Hinge, Bumble, CoffeeMeetsBagel, OKCupid, POF, Match... I'm fugly as hell but even I was able to find someone on a non-Tinder platform.

Other than Coffee Meets Bagel which I've not heard about before, those are all - like Tinder - owned by Match.

So while they may be options in some market, I'd be curious how long before they share bans between services.

I don't think the author is claiming to be banned from every dating app, and I don't think Match Group connects the profiles of users across its owned platforms, so it's not really relevant that Tinder is owned by Match Group for the purposes of what happened to the author.

Did you read my last line? I did not suggest they do so now, but I do genuinely wonder how long until they do. It's a big issue that they have been allowed to control this market the way they do. It's somewhat tolerable today because they've avoided taking steps to call nsolidate them . But also only for that reason.

> It's a big issue that they have been allowed to control this market the way they do.

I don't think that's true. Tinder doesn't control the dating app market, nor would it be a problem, per se, if they did.

Tinder doesn't control it, but Match as a whole definitely does in a whole lot of markets.

And yes, it'd be a massive problem if Tinder controlled it in that it'd put an unaccountable company in control of whether or not people get access. And one with a history of refusing to engage people who feel wronged.

If Match expands that to its other properties then it becomes a problem even if Tinder alone doesn't dominate.

ok

-Hinge: Seemingly the only viable competitor in the college scene

-Bumble, OKCupid, POF, Match: 40+ only.

-CoffeeMeetsBagel: ?

Bumble is definitely not 40+ only at least here in Chicago.

> Hinge, OKCupid, POF, Match

All of these are owned by Match Group, the same parent company as Tinder.

Why not delete and recreate your account?

And get actually banned? The app is so bad that I'd rather not use it at all. Anyway, I'm in a relationship now, so thankfully I don't need it.

Years ago there were a lot of active dating sites but there aren’t nearly as many any more. Where exactly are you supposed to go?

Getting banned from Tinder is getting banned from 1/3 of the bars in the city. Hope he doesn't slip up on Bumble and get banned from another 1/3.

No, it's more like getting banned from _all_ the bars.

It'd be like that if most of the bars where you lived were owned by the same company and all shared a ban list.