the dating market is drastically different depending on the country. In general, I get way more interest in Europe, asia or latin america. In latin america, I'd get a respsonse 3 out of 5 tries with 2 out of 5 ending up in an actual date. by comparison, my hit rate was more like 1 in 100 when I'm in america.

tldr: the dating market in america is trash.

Not sure if Chad agrees

I'm not in America

Ok, but

Example: on a dating app, change your zipcode to Manhattan from any other

Ok, but your response rate will also contain some people motivated by the passport, visa or standard-of-living discrepancy. It's not trivial to weed those out, unless you put something like a canary in your profile ("Message me with your favorite color"). There will also be scammers, fakes, catfish, pig-butchering/cryptobunnies, AI fakes.

Example: on a dating app, change your zipcode to Manhattan from any other US location, and you'll get tend to get flooded with matches from eastern Europe and central Asia [if you turn off the distance/country filter]. You can A/B test how much zipcode affects your response, it can be huge.

It can be difficult to weed out scammers for sure. Just don't send money and see who sticks around. theres still a reasonable signal to noise ratio. Meet in person and see if you vibe in person. Same rules wether you're talking to someone in your own country ir another.

That said, if you're just talking for language learning, none of these things matter. langauge pracice is language practice.

You had said "the dating market" so I was talking about dating apps.

Language-learning apps don't broadcast your zipcode or filter suggested friends by zipcode or distance.