Show HN: DATING WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A TRANSACTION

[ryandority]

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pop-social-dating-app/id6618112225

For years, the dating industry has forced us into a system that treats human connection like a numbers game—swipe, pay, repeat. The same faces. The same rules. The same dead-end experience. But what if dating wasn’t about chasing matches behind a paywall? What if it was about access? About seeing the people around you, meeting who you actually want, and experiencing dating the way it was meant to be—social, spontaneous, real? That’s Pop. We’re not another app. We’re a social experience. Post. Chat. Follow. See every single person at your university. No barriers. No limits. Studied at Stanford and moved to New York? Why not find people in New York who went to Stanford too? On Pop, that’s not just an idea—it’s reality. But we’re not just for university students—and dating shouldn’t be limited by location. Why confine connection to a five-mile radius? The world is bigger than that—and so is Pop. Scroll the feed. Search by interests. The possibilities are endless—because connection should be too. The monopoly mob had its chance. Now, it’s ours. The freedom to date has finally come. Pop is the future.

[jfengel]

I have wondered why there wasn't a bare-bones dating site. The basic CRUD app shouldn't cost too much to host, and could probably be run on an ad-supported model (perhaps with a subscription for a no-ads version).

But moderation is not cheap. Women won't show up if they're going to be harassed. And men will harass women if you don't provide some kind of tools for preventing that.

Bumble did a lot by the simple expedient of requiring women to make the first approach. That's not perfect, but it least it prevents women from being barraged with dick pics from every rando.

Men get their own version: spammers and scammers. Which only gets worse now that chatbots can string men along cheaply. More openness is not a feature when it opens you to worse people.

You need to think about these problems and build some kind of solution in from the ground up. You can't just leave them as problems to be solved later, or the jerks and criminals will ruin your app's reputation before it has a chance to get off the ground.