>>81510553Touched on the real important part.
In the past, if you needed to pay for a service you were basically paying out the material and labor cost of R&D and maintenance with a margin of profit. Shit like this just artificially limits the extent of the service without the associated cost also being reduced, in other words it's fraud. Such is the state of an industry (if you can call it that even) where competition is suppressed to the point it's non-existent, options are faked to fool the average consumer (all big dating apps are owned by the same company LOL, talk about monopoly)
>b-but the maintenance cost is actually the cost of the highest tier subscription, you're actually getting a more cost-effective service especially if you're a free userFucking bullshit that, they do that because you are the product, doubly so in the case of dating apps, without a userbase they wouldn't have the appeal. It would unironically be better for everyone to have all online dating behind a flat paywall. It still wouldn't solve the inherent problem of it being against their financial interests that you succeed, thus dropping out of the paying userbase, but it would be one step better. Also don't get me started on the privacy-disrespecting data-mining of the userbase.
There's just so much wrong with dating services as a whole, and they're allowed to get away with it because we're collectively regressing in social skills and are lonelier than ever before, so this dangling-the-carrot-on-a-stick that "you might find love here" without getting good at reading people actually clouds normies vision. It's pathological mass manipulation, and they're perfectly aware of it.
Anons, do not fall for this exploitative trap, keep trying at third places, I tried dance classes as a 25 year old khv, and it did get me an 18 year old gf in just a few months, unlike the thousands of hours wasted online chatting randos (including /soc/)