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.

      • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 hours ago

        it’s surprising that you’re not meeting anyone from hookup platforms – all of my friends were once sniffies hookups that morphed from fuck buddies to platonic friends.

        • distal@lemmy.mlOP
          3·
          8 hours ago

          I’m not in that scene really. I have a fetlife account but it’s not really going anywhere because my fetish is much bigger on Reddit and I refuse to use Reddit for sexual matters.

          • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            8 hours ago

            I refuse to use Reddit for sexual matters.

            VERY smart – the epstein people specifically mentioned reddit as a high priority platform and their “business model” is using sex-based kompromat to control you.

            this is literally out in the open; in writing; and vetted by the federal government – yet people continue using reddit like it’s not true anyways… it’s SO confusing to me.

            • distal@lemmy.mlOP
              1·
              7 hours ago

              Interesting. Too bad I’m very open about my sexual likes. There is hardly a way of using that as an avenue to blackmail me. My political activity is much more interesting and even that is public.

              Not saying blackmail is fine. It’s crazy though how effective it is against most people. Where in the files is the kompromat thing btw?

              • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                6 hours ago

                it’s all public and highly valuable if the way that the american gov’t gave grindr the tiktok treatment when the chinese bought it a while ago is any indication.

                Where in the files is the kompromat thing btw?

                the maxwell court case documents.

                you’ll need to jump through legal hurdles to get it and it’s all just as piecemeal and difficult to understand as the epstein files themselves without the context to give you an understanding of what any of it means, so getting a copies that are still floating around online or following a social media influencer who put in the work to explain it are your best bets to see it yourself – presuming that tiktok hasn’t shut them all down by now.

                • distal@lemmy.mlOP
                  1·
                  7 hours ago

                  you’ll need to jump through legal hurdles to get it and it’s all just as piecemeal and difficult to understand as the epstein files themselves without the context to give you an understanding of what any of it means, so getting a copies that are still floating around online or following a social media influencer who put in the work to explain it are your best bets to see it yourself – presuming that tiktok hasn’t shut them all down by now.

                  I guess I’ll have to do my own research