ActivityPub for Open Web Dating
How do we make on-line dating more open?
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
https://internethealthreport.org/
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.
- A profile = an ActivityPub account
- Pseudonymous
- Possibly linked to your "real" AP account
But...
-
Protected information
-
Gradual disclosure
-
Publication ➡️ Information
2. Define criteria
- I am looking for...
- I am definitely not looking for...
- I would prefer...
- I would prefer not...
3. Search
Well, crud. This part is harder. We have well-known solutions, but they're mostly re-centralizing.
A 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
A special kind of activity?
"Like" activity?
Request to start a relationship?
Just a directed note to someone's inbox?
5. In-band messaging
One-on-one private messaging!
Can work easily with directed notes in AP
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