I liked OkCupid’s question system, but since that place has become unusable there is no good way of meeting people online without investing considerable effort sifting through discord servers and whatnot. I had high hopes for Matrix, but Matrix turned out to have a fair share of rooms full of really mentally ill people set on evading moderation.
I’m not talking about romantic or sexual dating, that is not the aim. So far I’ve only met one person online who proved to be a consistent friend.
The whole conundrum is so troubling to me that I have started thinking about building a crude matching algorithm and using that for a FLOSS chatting site that doesn’t have pictures, bios, searchable profiles and all that jazz. Just: ‘yes’/‘no’ and 6 pt scale questions. Maybe also a contrast mode to discover radically different people. The biggest obstacle here would be certain legal questions (especially around liability.)
Before I start doing that I want to ask if anyone here knows of a decent site to meet people.
For friendships, meetup is a nice way to meet people and do activities together. There’s a bunch of different groups that focus on different activities (board games, hikes, book clubs, etc.)
Dating wise, unfortunately the big popular apps are the way to go. (Tinder, hinge, coffee meets bagel). The problem with making your own is that you’d need users, ideally nearby. Not saying it’s not possible but it would take a long time, while the above apps already have that.