The beginning of the end
Being single is not always all the fun it is meant to be
Why I started looking for something else
I am not enjoying being single and since my divorce three years ago-ish (who's counting?), I have been on basically most dating apps known to man... Well.. at least the more popular ones and less of the cheesy ones.
What struck me most was the utter monetization of the most of them. Only one was truly free (Facebook dating). You otherwise have to pay, if you want to basically do anything; and when you pay, you dont really get anything else than more muck.
Paying to see the Likes
Tinder promises you have a lot of likes just waiting for you to pay to get access to all those wonderful girls behind the profiles that just happened to send a like your way! You only get to see their blurred out photo, so of course you think. "Yeah, sure. I'll buy a month worth, because they are also giving me 50% discount, if only I take their offer now!"
But as you pay using your credit card, you instantly feel the cold fingers of regret sliding up your back, because all those likes? Yep... are from foreigners, who are just hoping you'll jump on their sticky honey stick and they get to scam you out of more money. (Not really sure that's true; there are probably some hopeful women among them, but it feels like it!)
You might be lucky there is one or two real actual likes in between them.
Now, I am talking from the point of view of a user, who is slightly picky and live on an island of less than 3800 people. So the chances of getting matches is already low just based on those two details, but it still does not negate all the bullshit you have to endure as a dating-app user.
Each dating app has their own irregularities and inconsistencies that just irks me.
So a Saturday a few weeks ago, I got this idea to just build my own, but ... oh boy ... does it require a whole lot of thinking, if you want to do it right.
The three most defining traits of my dating site idea, are these:
A free dating site
- Completely free! No subscriptions or other payment plans!
(maybe considering opening up for donations, but nothing is required) I'm simply too old to care about earning a good buck on the back of people finding dates. The site will just run on my personal server at very low cost to me and you just have to accept if it runs a bit slow sometimes. I'll of course put various protections in place (like cloudflare in front) and build all sorts of security into the site too (I work in IT, so I know a thing or two) and AI can help with the rest, like doing all sorts of penetration testing, database assholery and trying to break the site and so forth, before it becomes releaseable)
Why I want MitID
- MitID is required.
Now for the non-danes, that is a government issued electronic ID. Meaning, you can only have one profile; thats it (well, three, but read the notes to understand that nugget). I really hate all those garbage- and scam-profiles and just decided, that without verification, you can basically do 'not much'. You can create a profile and view other non-verified profiles, but no verified profiles... for 5 days, no pictures except your own are visible to you. After that you have to verify or just muck around on your own little profile all alone. Once you are verified, you can only see other verified profiles, none of the muck profiles! I believe this separation will weed out all the junkers.
Where AI fits in
- EVERYTHING is vetted by AI.
Images, chats, profile-texts, you name it, but AI also helps users out with filling in information and helps finding potential matches (most of that will still be done by simple algorithms and database searches, but AI still plays a part)
Writing about the idea
I've gathered a few of my ideas here on this website, while the rest is tucked inside the project notes back home. Currently the public version here is horribly AI written (sorry CODEX-SOL 5.6, I know you did your best, but...) and it fails to convey the ideas in a "normal" human way. So I'll be spending some time rewriting those public parts, probably tomorrow, and republishing the site. I'll only be writing the English texts, the Danish version will be AI translated. Not that I couldn't myself (being Danish), just lazy!
Time for bed!