This is the best summary I could come up with:

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Over the last couple of years, dating app companies like Match Group and Bumble have learned that, like love, their business is a battlefield.

Morgan Stanley found that dating app users who choose to pay end up spending “between $18 and $19 per month on either subscriptions or a la carte purchases.”

In its mission to make money, it has been using tricks and schemes — like, she says, putting desirable matches “behind a paywall” — to convince more of its users to pony up and use premium features.

Basically, Doctorow says tech platforms start off trying to make their user experiences really good because their first goal is to try to become popular and achieve scale.

It’s possible that new apps are failing to rise and topple the reigning ones because of monopolistic strategies of companies like Match Group, which has been systematically acquiring rivals, including Hinge back in 2018.

Over time, the earnest daters go on a bunch of bad dates, encountering people who have no interest in real relationships or whose profiles are completely misleading.

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