I recall hearing about Alovoa a year ago and while it sounds nice with no ads or paid features, being open source, and private data being encrypted I have to imagine the userbase is incredibly small relative to other services. Google Play lists it at over a thousand downloads but it’s also available through F-Droid so that may not mean much. I have to imagine the userbase is mostly men which might prevent some users from joining or sticking around.
Either way (TL:DR) I’d be curious to see what your experiences are with open source dating apps or even apps designed around making friends.
With more and more people leaving mainstream sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook I could see not having to login with another social media platform being what drives people towards a privacy focused dating app even if the actual privacy portion is more of an after thought for most users.
This is really what I’m hoping for. Threads has not launched well, Twitter is on the brink of collapse, Reddit is in the midst of enshittification, and Facebook is only used by old people.
Tiktok, Snap, and Insta are still absolutely huge, but there is a definite pick up in pace of people adopting the fediverse. There is hope.