Mathieu Lajante

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Dating apps.

They claim to promise love at your fingertips.

But what if they're actually optimizing for your loneliness?

Let us swipe past the potential romance on these apps and dive into their business model, which shapes how and whether you end up connecting with someone.

I'm here with Mathieu Legend, a marketing professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, who's recently researched and written on this.

Mathieu, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me today.

You would think like Tinder and Hinge and all these apps are trying to get me to find the love of my life.

You'd think they would be optimizing for that.

But things aren't so simple with these apps, are they?

You're producing value for the platforms.

And why would I use my monthly subscription to a dating app if I'm no longer dating?

So there's this perverse incentive for these apps to sort of get you to think you're going to find true love and de-platformed.

But in reality, they may not want to do that.

Now, if you're a theoretical CEO for a theoretical dating app and you're trying to come up with a business model, would the goal be that users never actually delete it while tricking them to think that they will?

There's even, and I'm not accusing any particular dating app of doing it, but there's this perverse incentive for them to keep my ideal mate away from me, right?

Like they could use AI and stuff to figure out who my ideal partner was and not give them to me because they would rather me get mediocre partners, go on a date, have a pretty good time, but then go back on the app.