OkCupid

Dating apps are proving to be a surprisingly loud voice in the fight against hate, harassment, and cruelty.

First, Tinder spoke out for animal rights by asking users to remove photos taken with tigers, which are often mistreated in the name of letting tourists take selfies with the world’s wildest inhabitants.

Then, OkCupid took a stand against harassment and unwanted, sexually explicit messages by introducing a Member Pledge to remind users to treat each other with kindness and respect.

Now, following the violence and tragic death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, dating services are again stepping up to ensure their users can meet in a safe and welcoming space, free from hatred and discrimination.

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, two dating app companies have stepped forward to ban white supremacists from their platforms and offer donations to organizations that fight against hate groups.

OkCupid has offered a donation to a Charlottesville victim relief group, which is helping support victims of the attacks that shook the community in early August. Bumble has also stepped forward, announcing its partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, pledging a “zero tolerance policy against misogynist, abusive, and inappropriate behaviour.”

Bumble stated it will use the ADL’s “research and terminology” to identify and categorize hate symbols, and prevent people who use hate speech and symbols from using the dating platform.

It’s been a whirlwind week in the online dating world.

First, Badoo launched a feature to help singles hook up with their celebrity crushes… well, almost. A new search feature uses facial recognition technology to match users with dates who look like their favourite celebs. Among the most searched-for famous faces so far are Kim Kardashian West, Justin Bieber, and Robert Pattinson.

“People are looking for quick, fast, easy ways to start connections,” said Badoo's Miles Norris to the BBC, “and if the way someone looks is a good onboarding to that, then we want to make it easy for them.”

See All Dating Apps on Map

With the amount of media attention Tinder receives, you’d think it was the only dating app on the market - or if not the only option, at least the most popular one.

But the numbers tell a different story. Technology company Quantcast reviewed over 480,000 searches from January 6, 2017 - February 5, 2017 to discover which dating services singles in America prefer. They found that not only do different states have different preferences, preferences seem to come in clusters. And they’re not always what you’d expect.

Overall, old-school dating service PlentyOfFish won the most states with its free app. It may not have the hype of its newer, fancier competitors, but in this case slow and steady won the race. POF was especially popular in the south, southwest, and midwest.

Consumer Reports has decided to get into the love game. The non-profit organization has been around since 1936, and typically reviews consumer satisfaction with products and services, but now it wants to know about dating apps, and how satisfied customers appear to be.

We all know where this is going. Well, maybe not.

Consumer Reports found two interesting and diametrically opposed results. First, consumers hate online dating with a passion, even more than tech support services, which are notoriously poor performers. Those surveyed didn’t rate any service as more than average as far as overall satisfaction. OkCupid got the best ratings of all online dating services, including Tinder, but it got a reader score of only 56. (Tinder was second with a 52 rating.) Reader scores were evaluated by a number of factors, including messaging and search features, privacy settings, the ease of use and sign-up process, as well as quality and quantity of matches.

Is this the most unconventional dating advice ever?

While most experts encourage you to put more effort into your online dating messages, OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder suggests doing exactly the opposite. And he has the research to back it up.

“OkCupid has records from the pre-smartphone, pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram days — hell, it was online when Myspace was still a file storage service,” he wrote in an article for New York magazine. “Judging by messaging over all those years, the broad writing culture is indeed changing, and the change is driven by phones.”