1 yr. ago • 97%

Have you ever tried an open source dating app?

I recall hearing about Alovoa a year ago and while it sounds nice with no ads or paid features, being open source, and private data being encrypted I have to imagine the userbase is incredibly small relative to other services. Google Play lists it at over a thousand downloads but it's also available through F-Droid so that may not mean much. I have to imagine the userbase is mostly men which might prevent some users from joining or sticking around.

Either way (TL:DR) I'd be curious to see what your experiences are with open source dating apps or even apps designed around making friends.

42 comments

I know I'm open for your source 😘

43
I'd settle for an open source friend app but I doubt it would be better than bumble for friends.

you get the same issue anywhere, no one is serious about meeting up in person.

I have enough online friends.

34
- The problem is most of us techy people that care about open source are introverts ....
  
  Try meeting some normies via websites like meetup or local hobby communities.
  
  I've had good luck meeting fellow computerphiles because we're in the same circle of friends and we even have our own events now IRL (LAN parties, retro arcade nights, programmer trivia nights etc)
  
  11
  
  I miss hanging out at bookstores, with comfortable seating areas and coffee shops and maybe a quiet musician on weekends... met some really smart and educated people that way.
  
  I recently wandered into an old Borders like that where I used to spend a lot of time years ago, which is now a Books-a-Million. It was like being in a K-Mart. Dirty, dimly-lit, product stacked randomly everywhere (including just left on stocking carts abandoned in the aisles), hot because they had the A/C set to barely run at all (everyone inside was sweating), all seating gone, the kitchen area just ripped out and bare plumbing left exposed, with hardly any staff or customers in there at all. The book selection was gutted down to be mostly romance, horror, manga and self-help. I guess that's what the few people still coming in buy.
  
  It was pretty depressing.
  
  3
- Have you thought of frendica? I think it's kinda what you're looking for but it doesn't seem too popular. Have you used bumble for friends? I thought bumble was for dating, I'm not sure how that would work for friends.
  
  1
  
  Friendica didn't use activitypub until it was too late which might explain the lack of popularity.
  
  Bumble for friends is a separate service from bumble.
  
  1
I checked it out a few years ago, there were like 4 people within 10,000km radius and they were all dudes

30
You have a better chance of meeting people inperson than an open source dating app

20
I used one called The Real World™. It's free to use but, like most open source apps, the UI is confusing and configuration is complicated.

18
- Real world is open source now?? Where?!
  
  6
  
  Compiling it from source is pretty much impossible, but the frame rate is insane.
  
  11
- Free to use? I use a version that forces me to have subscriptions for the most basic things :/
  
  6
- Yeah, that one's expensive. Microtransactions and such. Very sneaky!
  
  3
- Ok boomer
  
  3
- I tried to use this app, but it seems to have a lot of users who are not interested in dating at all. There is an experimental feature called “engagement rings” that's supposed to show an indicator of who is interested, but it seems to be very unreliable.
  
  1
Dating apps are toxic as it is, and the fact that most of them are basically days mining operations at this point makes it even worse (this also heavily impacts the overall ux). I have a friend who has worked for multiple dating app companies and it sounds awful.

I think an open source one that respects user privacy would be amazing, but honestly would likely be useless, as barely anyone would use it because people don't really care about privacy, and select dating apps purely based on user volume.

In addition, and although this is gradually changing, tech and therefore tech-related interests such as data privacy and FOSS are still overwhelmingly dominated by cishet white men, so I can't imagine such an app having even the most basic, binary requirements in terms of diversity.

17
- I was with you until the unsourced claim that tech is dominated by cishet white men. In California nothing could be farther from the truth
  
  10
  
  I am not sure how reputable Zippia (or other sources) are when it comes to statistics but if accurate and similar 2022 the tech industry is still mostly men and caucasian.
  
  I wasn't able to find statistics on sexual orientation. There are a lot of companies vagluely bragging about how inclusive they are and not much in the way of stats.
  
  11
  
  I'll admit it's anecdotal, but it is absolutely my experience having worked in tech for 15 years.
  
  Maybe "dominated" is an extreme word, but I would put money on "over-represented".
  
  3
- With more and more people leaving mainstream sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook I could see not having to login with another social media platform being what drives people towards a privacy focused dating app even if the actual privacy portion is more of an after thought for most users.
  
  5
  
  This is really what I'm hoping for. Threads has not launched well, Twitter is on the brink of collapse, Reddit is in the midst of enshittification, and Facebook is only used by old people.
  
  Tiktok, Snap, and Insta are still absolutely huge, but there is a definite pick up in pace of people adopting the fediverse. There is hope.
  
  0
- But there are only a handful of apps out there and they are basically the same ones owned by the same company. These apps are shitty for all genders, albeit for different reasons, so an open source, non-profit app could be an actual alternative for those who are disappointed by the existing apps if it manages to address these problems.
  
  2
IRC

7
- a/s/l?
  
  11
- Not sure why you're being downvoted. Lots of dating happening on IRC. had my first date there as well
  
  4
Nope, but I didn't know they existed and I've been in a monogamous relationship for years. Broadly speaking, I think it's cool that they exist.

6
I used that app and there are very few users. You'd think that people who do use it are more likely to engage with you, because you don't find too many near you, but they don't. Maybe I'm just too ugly Idk

5
No experience but I'd be open to using one.

4
- Hey FARTYSHARTBLAST, wanna grab a coffee sometime?
  
  10
  
  Plot twist: Coffee is the origin of their username
  
  4
  
  I do like coffee...
  
  4
I think the latest 'date me' docs are an example yeah?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/style/date-me-docs.html

3
- I say let's make this a thing in the fediverse!
  
  3
Any of the closed source ones I've used left me in an infinite loop where I'd get so far and end up back at the flicking through profiles stage. Maybe with open source I could figure out the problem.

2
- That would be nice. If it got popular enough it might be a platform where you can assume someone is somewhat tech minded because they use it.
  
  It could be a baseline for something in common.
  
  2
It is nonesense, at least for now. I'm trying to avoid online dating with common apps. They just have insanely creepy telemetry while at the same time they would be highly influential on my romantic decisions. So I installed Alovoa. I think the closest person matching my criteria was around 200 km from me, most people suggested not living on my continent. It might be a cool idea but I doubt that it will ever be successful. When you're serious with dating and you want to go beyond personal networks, I think there is no way around commercial dating apps.

1
I tried that app but it crashes all the time on my phone from the moment it asked me to upload a photo.

1
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