A dating app should gently guide you through processing your childhood bonding experiences, less helpful core beliefs (easy to quiz you about and refine a local analysis; no need to collect/share), reprocess previous relationships and towards healthy behaviors around conflicts and emotional regulation of partner and self, paired with local real life group experiences around boundaries and touch, and family constellations type sessions sprinkled with gamification aspects. You could show short clips of real world conflicts in relationships and parenting and quiz users how they would react - not because it is about parenting but because how you treat children is a useful indicator for how you deal with stress and power dynamics and emotional distress in those close to you.
Most dating apps exist to milk socially-unsuccessful people for as long as possible as a simulacrum for developing friends and social skills. These are instead a logical business model extension of technofeudalism mediation and commodification of all aspects of life with pay-to-play technological intermediaries. If any of the social media or dating apps were honest and prosocial ventures (orthogonal to profits), they'd instead focus on social skills improvements, positive social leadership/initiative, connecting people, and being secondary to encouraging expediency, reckless behavior, outrage exploitation, and superficial interactions simply because it counted as engagement and ad impressions. Community and reconnecting people would be the "killer app" that would make dating apps more/less pointless except for flings.
Meeting people in real life sounds ideal, but it's often inefficient, limited by proximity, and shaped by chance rather than intent. Whether you're socially skilled or not, real-world interactions don’t automatically lead to meaningful, long-term relationships. Most people aren’t walking around advertising their values, goals, or readiness for commitment.
Tech, when used thoughtfully, gives everyone the ability to filter for what truly matters: long-term compatibility, shared outlooks, and aligned goals. It's not about replacing human connection. It's about helping people connect with the right ones.
I agree that commodification and profit motives have corrupted much of dating tech. But the answer isn’t to get rid of the technology. All we need to do is remove the for-profit incentive.
Incentives matter less when the app doesn’t control your matches. That’s why we created Fynd, a nonprofit dating app where you’re in charge of your search. With a powerful set of filters, you choose who you see, giving you full autonomy over your experience. Try Fynd at https://fynd.one or check us out on Product Hunt. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fynd-3
I like the idea of scientist-run dating apps, although it does create its own potential conflicts of interest: the purity of the experiment and publishibility of experiments vs the needs of the participants.
I do think overall part of the reason dating experiences are so bad is that people aren't that good at identifying what traits are actually important in a partner for them, nor determining whether an individual has those traits.
Definitely seems like a space ripe for disruption in any case.
See for example the Global Dyads project.
https://www.globaldyadmeditation.org/