r/technology • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Sep 11 '26

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
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248

u/waterstone7474 Sep 11 '26

Good. It's self-inflicted. I had a classmate who openly admitted she was paid for every message she sent to guys (she wasn't even interested, just to engage and then disappear). I guess this is before bots took over. This is just so wrong. It's like making money from people's lonelineess or at least need for connection.

93

u/maimeddivinity Sep 11 '26

What the fuck ...

70

u/Simlish Sep 11 '26

Yeah red hot pie got busted for having their staff create fake accounts and message people to get them to pay to read the message.

3

u/fascistclownbabies Sep 11 '26

not redhotpie!

60

u/pinkpugita Sep 11 '26

Ashley Madison was an infidelity website where it was found out 99% of the female population were bots/fake accounts. The traffic is mostly male driven and they gotta keep the illusion of having women.

11

u/Worldgonemad_yall Sep 11 '26

That there was such a thing as an infidelity website shows how far we have gone.

And that site was founded in the early 2000s

Remind me what the internet was initially intended for again?

9

u/Daegoba Sep 11 '26

It was invented for communication & logistics, but it was intended for porn and fucking.

1

u/lost_send_berries Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

One of the first proposed domains was .xxx which would have gone right next to .com, .org, .gov, .mil and .edu . It didn't end up happening though.

Edit: OK, I guess not. It was rejected in 2007 then approved in 2011. mil was in 1984 so there's quite a gap. By the time xxx was added, they had already added coop, info, name, tel and travel.

2

u/Maladaptive_Ace Sep 11 '26

eeeh these are an extension of the classified ads that have been around as long as newspapers have. Ashley Madison billed itself as an infidelity site but it was actually a useful app for sex workers to find clients and vice versa - again, something that has been happening as long as publication has existed. The only new development here is the dark tactics/gamefication and infinite scroll that make the apps addictive and not productive