Evan Prodromou
Hacker, speaker, entrepreneur
Dating on the Open Web
How do we make on-line dating more open?
Etherpad
https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/Dating_on_the_Open_Web
(Enter "Dating on the Open Web" in Mozilla Etherpad text box)
http://x.co/dotow
Hashtag
Please be aware
Women ✔️
LGBTQ+ ✔️
Sexual safety ⚠️
Shaming ❌
What?
Why?
How?
...is on-line dating?
...is it broken?
...can it be fixed?
What is on-line dating?
An on-line software service that is designed to help a person find other people to love, date, have sex with, or be friends with.
1. Create a profile
- Pseudonym
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Self-description
- Avatar photo
- Other photos
- Social media links
Beautiful faces, Thomas Merton, 2011, CC By 2.0
2. Define criteria
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Religion?
- Smoker?
- Pets?
- ...
3. Search profiles
✔️
Faces, mfrissen, 2003, by-nc-nd 2.0
✔️
Nurse, Walt Stoneburner, 2009, by 2.0
❌
Beauty lady, Alan Barrington, 2008, by-nc-nd
4. Mutual attraction
5. In-band Messaging
6a. Out-of-band ("IRL")
6b. Canceled
Monetization points
- Create a profile
- Search
- Match
- Messaging
Is it popular?
13% of American adults are registered for an on-line dating site at any given time.
For comparison: 50% of American adults are unmarried.
Does it work?
35% of American couples married since 2005 met using on-line dating systems.
Is it important?
Yes. Romance, sexuality and partnership are an essential part of the human experience.
Why is it broken?
Let's compare against the five pillars of Internet health
Digital Inclusion
OK!
Pros
- Many sites
- International
- Specialized for POC
- Specialized for LGBTQ+
- Specialized for interest
Cons
- Ghettoisation
- "Wholesome" sites disallow same-sex
- Fixed-value form fields (gender, preference)
- Racism, ageism, looksism, transphobia...
Privacy and Security
Barely OK!
Pros
- OK pseudonymy
- OK messaging flow
Cons
- Mostly for monetisation
- Huge target for hacking (~100M users)
- Credit-card numbers
- Jilted daters blame the dating site
- False sense of security
Decentralisation
Bad!
Pros
- Hundreds of services
- Many countries
Cons
- One company (IAC) owns Match, Tinder, OKCupid, POF
- All silos
- No heterogeneous networks
Open Innovation
Bad!
Pros
- Anyone can start their own dating site
Cons
- Monetization depends on managing flow
- No APIs
- No macros
- Can't change algorithms
- Can't change profile fields
- Can't tinker
- Can't improve
Web Literacy
Bad!
Pros
- Concepts like "publish" and "search"
- Worst case examples about security and privacy
- Can date people who are Web makers...?
Cons
- No modifications to Web technology
- Single authoring tool
- No hacking
How do we fix it?
tl;dr I don't know.
Replace apps with The Web
- Decentralization
- Open Innovation
- Web Literacy
- Digital Inclusion
- Security and Privacy...?
Soft requirements
- Web technologies
- "Easy" to implement
- Security and privacy
1. Create a profile.
This part is easy! We have the tools for publishing free-form, media-enhanced, structured rich content on the Web.
A profile = a Web page, a few Web pages, or part of a Web page.
But...
-
Protected information
-
Gradual disclosure
-
Publication ➡️ Information
2. Define criteria
OK! We also know how to do this. Structured data on the Web is easy to publish, either in structured markup or some kind of data format like JSON or XML.
3. Search
Well, crud. This part is harder. We have well-known solutions, but they're mostly re-centralizing.
A Web crawler can find profiles, index them, and then let people search the available profiles for matches.
Hopefully (?) a diversity of search engines helps with decentralization. Or, p2p search. Ugh.
4. Mutual attraction
Hmmm. Some kind of exchange of tokens? Cryptographic signatures? Just an email?
This is a tricky problem, theoretically unsolvable!
http://x.co/getbyz
General 1
General 2
Byzantine Generals
"a/s/l?"
"u wot m8"
5. In-band messaging
One-on-one private messaging! The Internet has lots of this. Signal protocol, Email, XMPP. Make up your own!
But...
- Pseudonymous
- Revocable (so we can cancel)
- Disposable
- Difficulty ➡️ Re-centralization
6a. Out-of-band
By definition, this is not our problem.
Get outta here, you crazy kids! Have a great time.
But...
- ...but?
- relationship management
- learning
- statistics
- feedback and ratings
6b. Cancelation
If we do step 5 correctly, this should Just Work.
Unless it doesn't.
Other applications
- Friendship
- Job search
What next?
Let's try it.
Let's see.
Dating on the Open Web How do we make on-line dating more open?
Dating on the Open Web
By Evan Prodromou
Dating on the Open Web
How do we make on-line dating more open?
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