I was trying to explain federated websites to a friend and she asked if there is a federated dating app. She recently went through a break up and the apps are dreadful as I’m sure many of you know.
It’d be hard to launch a dating system on the fediverse because it the type of service that relies heavily on network effects. People want to be on the dating app with the most people. However, I think there is an opportunity because the mainstream apps are so notoriously awful, monetized, and enshitified.
It could be a community within an existing network or it could be its own website. I don’t know, I’m just putting the idea out there.
As others pointed out, there’s little infrastructure cost recuperating possible with an on-off service model.
Lemmy is among the worst places for this, but there could be something like a standard tag (looking for dates/sex/friends etc) that is hashed against geodata on more personalised accounts (like Pixelfed or Mastodon or Friendica(?)).