
Older men charged more for using Tinder's premium service - rstuart4133
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-12/tinder-price-setting-more-expensive-for-older-people-looking-to/12549186
======
skocznymroczny
OKCupid also charges men, especially more than women for their premium
service. It's common on online dating apps.

Not much different than real life... in many clubs women can go inside for
free while men have to pay entry ticket fee.

~~~
qshqwudhoquc
My issue with this is that these decisions aren't necessarily being made
because of operating costs. It doesn't cost more to host a man than a woman.

~~~
gambiting
Having too many men can impact the experience women have, and if they leave
then the entire platform collapses. The cost to "host" a user is the same
regardless of gender but platforms like these work only if the gender ratio is
at least somewhat balanced - the fee seems to help with that, just like it
does in a physical club(where it also doesn't cost any more to host a man than
it does a woman).

~~~
insickness
Gay men are charged $8-13 while gay women are charged $7. Gay men and women
aren't dating each other so this has nothing to do with gender imbalance.

~~~
theredlion
Gay men can choose not to pay if they are unhappy with the price

~~~
gambiting
Well yes, but at least in some places companies introducing different prices
based on things like gender or race are not legal. Recently in the UK there
was a case where a pub had a promotion where men paid more for drinks on the
International Womens day, and someone took them to court over it and won - the
court agreed that such pricing based in gender is not legal in the UK. On the
other hand, clubs do this all the time without a fuss, but I suspect it's
because no one challenged them legally on it yet.

In general I'm not a fan of the "gay people can just chose not to pay"
argument - it sounds too similar to the one where some companies argued they
should be allowed to deny gay people service, since they can simply go
somewhere else.

------
clusterfish
Charging people different prices based on factors they can't control, and in
secret to boot, is just wrong. Whether it's age or race or eye color, it's
wrong. Why are people so greedy that they need to push against such simple
principles so hard?

~~~
gaff33
What about car insurance? Is it ok to charge more to insure teenage drivers?

~~~
gambiting
No, it isn't, I've been making this argument for years. In all of EU it's
illegal to charge more for insurance based on gender, it should also be
illegal to charge more based on age. Only your actual driving record, type of
car being insured and possibly location should be taken into account when
calculating the premium.

~~~
DanBC
> Only your actual driving record,

In practice this argument leads to insurance companies charging thousands per
year for all new drivers, and then giving discounts to drivers willing to
install surveillance devices that report all aspects of the driver's driving.

[https://www.confused.com/campaign/car-insurance/black-
box](https://www.confused.com/campaign/car-insurance/black-box)

~~~
asdff
I don't see how an insurance company could judge your driving without
telemetry unless you've been wrecking cars and racking up points on your
license.

~~~
gambiting
And I don't see how it's a problem, unless you make a claim on your car
insurance, the car insurance provider should assume you drive like a saint.

After all, you would never agree to have trackers in your house just so the
insurance company can judge if you're a safe home owner and lower your home
insurance premium - why agree to it in cars?

------
00deadbeef
Not just straight men. Gay men too. I complained to Apple about this and they
didn’t care.

On iOS at least you can get around this. Create a profile aged 18 and purchase
a subscription. Now sign out and create your real profile and use the “restore
purchases” option.

~~~
tomp
I never used Tinder myself but based on what I’ve come across on Reddit, if
your profile is “premium” you can just hide your age? I guess that could mess
up your target matches but you can presumably still set your own age range
filter.

~~~
EE84M3i
To anyone that knows anything about tinder having age hidden implies that you
have premium implies that you are desperate. Only a fool would use the hide
age option.

~~~
tomp
Haha I haven't considered that. Damn, the economics & related behaviours
(signalling, honest signals, supply & demand etc.) of dating are _brutal_! I'm
fortunate I'm off the market (currently).

~~~
Cthulhu_
Dating apps, specifically; honestly, personally I can't be fucked to play that
stupid game. I'll leave that to the extroverts.

------
nom
Adjusting prices by demographic is so common in many industries.

Charging less for children, families and the elderly is the same thing.
Charging less for women in clubs. Same with booking hotels and flights, based
on browsing history, IP address, cookies and the extrapolated demographic.

Even a repair contractor adjusts his prices up for someone who lives in a
mansion with expensive cars in the driveway, and down for a single mother with
three young kids running around her.

Of course Tinder charges more for older men, why wouldn't they. Every industry
ever wanted to be able to do this, and some can now automate it easily with
all the available demographic data they collect.

~~~
M2Ys4U
> Adjusting prices by demographic is so common in many industries.

And often illegal.

Discrimination based on sex/gender or age is (usually) prohibited in Europe,
for example, unless there are very compelling grounds to do so.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
If we reverse the _" expensive for older men"_ and call it _" discount for
younger men/free for women"_ is it still discrimination?

~~~
a_f
Of course. The issue lies in the difference based on gender/age, not the
weighting to either party

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polote
Tinder has two goals:

\- make the most money from vulnerable people

\- make non vulnerable people behave like if they were on a social network

Having different price, per geography, gender and age is just a consequence of
the first.

It is not surprising that you can't see anymore the instagram handles of
people on tinder. Instagram is a direct competitor to tinder for most of their
users ( the non vulnerable ones).

Actually that's very smart, Tinder is probably the only big social network
(tinder is not a dating app) which didn't require ads or a lot of funding to
get big, only because one small portion of their user are willing to pay to be
part of their community

~~~
NestedLoopGoBrr
Tinder removed the IG handles more likely because men were stalking women’s
instagrams and it wasn’t immediately obvious connecting to instagram was going
to display your username for all to see.

~~~
polote
Bumble did it for that, probably not tinder. Most people who put their insta
expect others to be able to add them on insta. This is the whole point of
insta, it is to have the most people as possible watching at you. Tinder has
always struggled to keep users in their app, which is the most important goal
when you are a social network

~~~
AjithAntony
Tinder is still there for the "discovery" of the people to add on Instagram,
that is not going to change. Tinder doesn't make any extra money after people
match, whether they continue to chat in or out of the app. Once connections
are made and the users move out of the app, they still come back to Tinder for
more discovery.

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sasaf5
Not only this, at least last year (when I abandoned Tinder for good) they were
charging women more for the "daily picks" feature (it selects top ranked
profiles).

~~~
aspenmayer
What does this feature do? Does it basically stack your match deck so high
ranks are top pull every time? Really makes Tinder seem like a one-armed
bandit. Either you pay and get quality folks on balance, due to ratings and
such washing out the boys from the men, or you play your hand on randos. And
people actually _pay_ for this privilege?

What a world.

~~~
username90
Not really, men don't want high value women since men rarely get matches even
when they reject nobody and get the less selected women. Women get matches all
the time so they reject almost every candidates to get to the good ones, so to
them the feature to remove results they would probably reject anyway is more
important. However even for women with this feature you only get men who has
plenty of options and is still looking, do you really want that? You are very
unlikely to get a long term relationship that way.

~~~
sasaf5
> you only get men who has plenty of options and is still looking

plus people that are ranked on a single dimension, so you only get the same
kind of polished person that is liked by the majority.

Now if Tinder would offer some sort of selection by categories like
activities, tastes etc, that's a feature I would happily pay for. Other apps
already have that.

~~~
NestedLoopGoBrr
They’re actually adding interests now as part of their matching algorithm, but
the top picks are unique to each person, based on a number of different data
points.

------
xd
I've only done a quick bit of research but can't seem to find a clear list of
protected characteristics in Oz like we have in the UK, age being one of
them.. I don't use tinder but just looking up their pricing model it's £3.99
for under 28yo and £14.99 for 28yo and over in the UK... how is this not a
breech of the Equality Act 2010?

~~~
qshqwudhoquc
I'm the last person to defend old men from discrimination (mostly because it's
uncommon), but yeah this doesn't sound right to me.

~~~
gambiting
Did you have to add the "white" in there? Was it definitely necessary or
adding anything to this discussion?

~~~
qshqwudhoquc
I took it out just for you

~~~
Joeboy
Maybe take out the "old" too? Or do you _really_ think age discrimination is
uncommon?

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EE84M3i
They should be more transparent about their pricing, but it seems to me like
they offer different demographics fundementaly different services so charging
different amounts isn't unreasonable.

~~~
theelous3
> fundementaly different services

Like what?I went through tinders sales page for their tiers and can't see
anything that would offer a different experience based on any demographic:
[https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115004487406-T...](https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115004487406-Tinder-Subscriptions)

I get the feeling you may respond telling me that people over 30 are looking
for a different type of relationship, to which I say that no type of
relationship has a feasible monetary induction price, and even if it did, it
is impossible to know which users are looking to have a fling and which are
looking for an SO.

~~~
yladiz
To add to this, as someone who has used the app before I'd be genuinely
surprised if the experience they are given was in fact substantially different
enough to warrant some people AU$7 while charging others over AU$30 (!!). The
paid version allows you to change your swiping location (meaning you can match
with someone in a different city), have a few more "super likes", and a couple
other features. It's possible there are things I don't know about, or that
some of the shoppers also added on the extra "gold" membership[1] in the
article, increasing the price, but considering the experience already I think
they're just doing differential pricing based on demographics and not actually
giving a different experience.

1: The paid membership gives you a lot of features, but one thing you can
additionally pay extra for is the ability to see who has liked you directly,
so called "Tinder gold".

~~~
NestedLoopGoBrr
As a woman that uses Tinder, I can say first hand that the experience for
women on the app is completely different. Paying for Tinder Gold lets you see
the likes, infinite swipes, etc. like it does for men, but the value of that
data is less useful. I buy Gold because I liked the features nonetheless, but
the list of likes is useless - I’m constantly pegged at 9,999+ likes, the list
freezes every five seconds, and there’s no meaningful way to sift through it.

------
Razengan
Dating apps are probably one of the best examples of conflict of interest:
Your purpose is to help people stop using your service!

When money comes into play, you obviously don't want your users to leave.

Honestly, at this point, who is to say that the good matches are not paid
employees acting as real users, or that "ghosting" (ending matches or blocking
messages) isn't forced by the service, to induce an addiction? Clearly they
can get away with scummy tactics, so why not milk all the money they can?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Plenty of dating sites have been proven to have fake profiles, or being rife
with bots trying to sell premium chat- or cam services and scams.

Example from a quick search: [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2019/09/ftc-s...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2019/09/ftc-sues-owner-online-dating-service-matchcom-using-fake-
love)

------
madballster
Single, old men are charged more in swinger clubs. Maybe that's where Tinder
got the idea.

------
hatedatingapps
I used to work for the third largest online dating company in the world, and
we had a tedious 150 questions quiz even before user were allowed to login in
the app. And guess what: this test was only used to define a pricing bucket
for the user depending on their past dating experience, how desperate they
are, location, device os and other factors. There were some psychology related
questions and a decision tree to dig deeper in one's soul.

~~~
hatedatingapps
And their whole business model was built around an idea to trick user into
paying yearly subscription for the first year and then do whatever it takes to
make them pay for the second year. Cancelling subscription was a quest itself,
and given that couple of company's brands are targeting >50 years old people,
it was relatively easy to scam them and not return the money

------
gridlockd
I doubt this is (potentially illegal) age-based discrimination, more likely
it's sexual-market-value-based discrimination. It's easy for Tinder to
determine who is or isn't attractive - older men just happen to be at a
disadvantage here. It's not Tinder making that choice, it's _the women on the
platform_.

Charging more in this case is arguably in the interest of older straight men.
The experience of a woman on a dating platform is to get bombarded by hundreds
if not _thousands_ of messages. Do you, an affluent man in his best years,
want your profile to be drowned by out by hundreds of losers that never stood
a chance? One way to mitigate that is to limit exposure to people willing to
afford a modest amount of money.

Let's face it, if you are old _and_ you can't afford 30+$/month for something
as significant as dating, you are not going to find a woman anyway, might as
well take you out of the game so as not to annoy the women on the platform
with your unsightly presence.

------
hellisothers
To the people complaining this isn’t fair, let’s agree that:

* they’re not doing this to make more money off the higher charges cohort as that doesn’t make sense * they’re trying to make they most money, period, and that is done by attracting the most people overall * in order to do that they’re trying to maintain a ratio that attracts all cohorts of all sexes, ages, and orientations * because there is some non-reciprocal demand among cohorts (more older men like younger women than vice versa)

So if they just charged everybody an equally low rate you’d wind up with a
lopsided population that none of the cohorts want and people would leave.
Nobody wants this.

So arguing it’s not fair because discrimination isn’t fair as a rhetorical
argument feels intellectually dishonest since the state you’re advocating for
is a failed one.

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aspenmayer
I don’t agree with discrimination in pricing or any other kind in that sense
on the platform side. Never paid for Tinder either, but for what it’s worth I
did meet my wife on there. And she’s amazing, so there’s that.

------
ryandrake
To me, this isn't a discrimination thing as much as it is simply different
prices for different products. Dating sites offer men and women wildly
different products. Men (especially older men) are paying for volume--a steady
supply of potential matches, since matches are extremely rare. Women are
paying for a filter, since otherwise they would all be inundated with matches
all the time. Totally different products. I'd imagine the product for men is
likely a lot more difficult to provide, too, hence the higher price.

------
Jestar342
Wow they seem really hell-bent on implementing this given they lost/settled a
suit in California for it, and now have been "found out" in Aus, too.

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55555
They've always done this, no?

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dschuetz
One more reason not to use online dating platforms.

~~~
Razengan
Or create better ones.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Great in theory, in practice you'll land in a hugely competitive market and
you'll be struggling to find enough people to sign up.

Actually you'll likely find plenty of men, but women - actual, genuinely
interested women, not bots / scam accounts - is a lot more difficult.

Personally, I think one should create social communities and have things
develop from there, not dating sites where the only reason to go there is to
find a match.

Source: met my girlfriend via gaming forums. I mean sure it took over ten
years between first seeing each others' usernames on there and her moving in,
but still.

~~~
bradlys
Genuinely curious - do you think such a mechanism like yours is really
relevant to the rest of the population?

I'm not sure what you were doing in those 10 years leading up to you two
getting together... but most of us want to be dating someone in that time -
not waiting 10 years for a single match.

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reallydontask
> It found that queer females aged under 30 were charged the least, at just
> $6.99 per month, while city-based straight men over 50 were charged the
> most, at $34.37 a month.

Any Australians care to comment on the use of queer?

It's pretty derogatory in the UK (in the context of sexual orientation)

edit:

added, in the context of sexual orientation

edit 2:

looks like my knowledge is outdated then :)

~~~
ictebres
I am not a native English speaker, but queer is repurposed by the LGBT
community to include everyone, under a single name [1]. It can even include
heterosexuality [2]. I definitely do not read it in any derogatory way, and
would identify myself as queer.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_heterosexuality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_heterosexuality)

Edit: formatting

~~~
schemy
It's an American term and like usual cultural imperialism means everyone else
must use it too.

