I have worked online for more than 15 years and learned one simple thing: people buy from those they trust. An online store with no real reviews, no contact details and catalogue photos lifted from other sites will not sell, however much it spends on ads. Trust is the real currency of the internet.
For a few months now, out of pure entrepreneurial curiosity, I have been looking at a market where that currency seems almost worthless: dating apps. Millions of people use them every day, yet a lot of them say the same thing: you no longer know who is real, who is honest and who is only there to waste your time or take your money. When your product is about meeting people and your users no longer believe in the people they see, you have a serious problem.
Fake profiles, bots and one constant question: “Is this real?”
Every large platform attracts fake accounts. Some are bots pushing links, some exist to promote something, and some are simply people pretending to be someone else. The last one even has a name, catfishing: using another person’s photos and identity to build a relationship that does not exist.
The problem is not just that these accounts exist. It is that suspicion spreads everywhere. After two or three bad experiences, users start treating every profile with distrust, including the real, well-meaning people. That is how a market breaks down: not all at once, but through small disappointments that pile up.
Romance scams have come out of the shadows
Romance scams are nothing new, but the pandemic poured fuel on them. People spent more time at home, more time alone, more time online, and scammers took advantage. Authorities in several countries have reported significant increases in this kind of fraud over the last two years, and in the US the reported losses for 2021 were described as a record.
In February, the Netflix documentary “The Tinder Swindler” brought the topic into everyone’s living room. The story of a man who posed as a wealthy heir and borrowed money from women he met online showed how convincing a carefully built fake identity can be. Plenty of people laughed, plenty were outraged, but I think the real lesson is a different one: the platform had no mechanism to stop the story in time.
Not just scammers: old photos, filters and ghosting
Not all the distrust comes from fraud. A good part of it comes from small behaviours that have become almost socially acceptable. Photos from ten years ago. Filters that reshape a face. Heights rounded up generously. None of this is a crime, but every date where the person in front of you looks nothing like their profile chips away a little more at trust in the whole system.
Then there is ghosting: conversations that simply stop, with no explanation. And on top of everything comes swipe fatigue. When you have hundreds of profiles to flick through, people turn into cards. You rush, you judge by a single photo, you drop conversations. The paradox of choice is very visible here: more options do not mean more connections, often fewer.
Safety and personal data
For many women, a dating app is not just a question of wasted time but one of safety. Aggressive messages, pushy behaviour, meeting people who are not who they claimed to be. The fact that a woman has to run her own little “background check” before a coffee says a lot about how little the industry has done here.
And there is a topic people talk about far too little: data. A dating app knows very personal things about you: where you are, what you are looking for, who you talk to, what your preferences are. A few years ago I wrote a practical GDPR guide for online stores (GDPR being the EU data protection regulation), and there the data was about what you buy. Here it is about your private life. The bar for protecting it should be much higher.
The business model works against the user
This, I think, is the heart of the problem. Most apps make money from subscriptions and paid features: more visibility, more likes, seeing who liked you. Which means that, in purely financial terms, a user who finds a partner and leaves is a lost customer. A frustrated user who keeps hoping is a paying one.
I am not saying anyone does this out of malice. I am saying that when financial incentives are not aligned with the user’s interest, the user can feel it. Paywalls that pop up exactly at the moment of peak curiosity feel manipulative, even when they are not meant to be. We have seen this before: when algorithms decide what we see based on time spent in the app rather than on what is good for us, the outcome is rarely a happy one.
What platforms have started to do
It would be unfair to say nobody is doing anything. In recent years the big apps have introduced selfie-based photo verification, with a blue tick for confirmed profiles. In-app video calls appeared, especially during the pandemic, so you can see someone before meeting them. Some have added safety guides and tools, filters for inappropriate messages and more visible reporting buttons.
These are steps in the right direction. But almost all of them are optional. Verification is a bonus you choose, not a condition of entry. And as long as you can be on a platform without proving you are real, the blue tick remains the exception rather than the rule.
What would really rebuild trust
If I looked at the problem like any other digital product, I would start from a few principles:
- Mandatory verification. You cannot get in without proving you are the person in the photos. A bit of friction at sign-up is a small price for a clean community.
- Real presence, in real time. A short live video says more than ten edited photos. The sooner you see the real person, the less room there is for lies.
- Transparency. Knowing clearly who is verified and who is not, how active a profile is, and whether you are talking to a human or an automated account.
- Serious moderation. Reports should have fast consequences, and suspicious accounts should be stopped before they find victims, not after.
- An honest business model. Earn money when users find someone, not when they stay stuck forever.
- Less pressure. Features that encourage real conversations and a calmer pace, not the chase for one more swipe.
Trust as a product, not a slogan
Marketing taught me that you can say “we are trustworthy” in every ad and convince nobody. Trust is not communicated, it is built into the product. You see it in the sign-up steps, in what happens when you report someone, in how the subscription is designed. I saw the same thing in the pandemic’s lesson about trust and fake news: people do not believe messages, they believe experiences.
The app that understands this first will not need huge campaigns. Users will recommend it on their own, because they will finally feel that the person they are talking to actually exists.
I admit this is a problem I have been thinking about a lot lately. I believe someone will build a better solution, and I believe the market is waiting for it. Until then, I am curious: if it were up to you, what would you change first about dating apps?