Online dating is in the trenches, but is a state-owned alternative the solution?
Banseka Kayembe
In today’s polarised world, there might be one thing we can all agree: dating is in the trenches. Reasons as to why forming a romantic relationship seems so difficult now vary - but dating apps almost always feature. Putting our love lives in the hands of algorithms has left many feeling unsatisfied; lots of us are consigning a newly added phone number into the deleted bin in what feels like every 5-7 business days. Meanwhile, dating app owners continue to generate ever higher profits, keeping more and more of us on a permanent doomscroll, whilst we stack up more revenue for owners.
But what if you weren’t browsing a dating app owned by a private big tech company, but one created by the state? The government in Japan's capital Tokyo is launching a dating app in an effort to promote marriage and boost the falling national birth rate. So is state ownership the solution to modern dating’s failures in the digital age? Or do we have as much to fear from the state imposing itself in our love lives?
Why does the government care about our love lives?
The state showing an interest in marriage and birth rates is not new. According to sociologist Carol Smart the Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753 marked the beginning of state involvement in marriage in the UK; previously the rules about what constituted a legally binding marriage were left to the church. In 1836, shortly after non-religious marriage became legalised, the state also started keeping national statistics for marriage.
Recent efforts to facilitate marriage and births, include state sponsored speed dating events in South Korea, a campaign in Denmark called “do it for Denmark" and French President Macron last year called for a “demographic rearmament” offering all 18 to 25-year-olds free fertility checks to combat falling birth rates.
Declining marriage and birthrates have been occurring for some time in Japan; births fell for the eighth consecutive year by 5.1%. In 2023, Japan recorded more than twice as many deaths as new babies. Last year the Tokyo city government decided to do something about it, and reportedly allocated 300m yen (£1.5m) to promote marriages through apps and other projects. Named Tokyo Futari Story (Futari meaning two people) each user has to provide certain personal information, such as height, educational background and occupation following a mandatory interview with the app's operator.
Keep calm and doomscroll on
There’s lot of potential benefits to the concept of a state-run dating app. Total revenue for dating apps has grown continuously since 2015 and is estimated to have reached almost 5 billion USD in 2022. Privately-owned Hinge’s slogan “designed to be deleted” normally receives a heavy dose of eye-rolling, precisely because most people’s experience seems to be that they are permanently trapped on it. This is what economist Yanis Varofakis has described as technofeudalism. Every time we log onto a big tech app, our scrolling converts into profit, whether that’s through advertisement or collecting data about our behaviour. In effect, we are labouring everyday on digital feudal land to enrich the broligarchy.
If the goals of the app do not include generating profits, there is no incentive for the app owners to keep users endlessly scrolling. So you’d think Japan’s state-owned solution there’s no need to keep dangling the carrot that a user just *might* meet someone great if they just keep swiping. Sadly, it’s not that simple. Whilst Tokyo Futari Story has been developed by the Tokyo state, a private contractor has been commissioned to operate it. The app is more of a collusion between the state and private sector, meaning it’s not totally immune to the whims of corporate greed, nor have there been any assurances about what they will do with user’s data. Technofeudalism is eroding our freedom, and leaving us little option to divest from profit-driven digital apps.
The privatisation of intimacy
In Marie Bergstrom’s book The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy she outlines how consigning our love lives entirely into a private realm - cut off from spaces where in the past we’ve met significant others, such as the workplace, third spaces or through friends - has had a significantly negative impact on dating. Today, the problem is not so much access to a wide enough pool of people, but that the incentives to treat people well are fairly non-existent. It’s easy to give up on people, ghost, or just generally behave poorly when you have no connections in common. Dating largely total strangers has made it easier than ever to abdicate any sense of responsibility, or even persistence in committing to getting to know someone. How will a state-owned app be able to counter this influence of online anonymity on our dating behaviours? What's to stop strangers meeting via the app only to end up engaging in similar behaviour patterns.
A huge part of what makes dating apps depressing for many is the idea of “optimisation”. The lie dating apps sell people is that they make your search for love more efficient. We’ve trusted algorithms to tell us who is a good match, more than we trust our friends or family's opinions. Online dating incentivises users doubling down on flattened constructions of what they think they want in a partner, reducing the possibility of experiencing unexpected romance with someone who doesn’t fit within that box of specifications.
TFS has some level of “optimisation” as well. AI is reportedly being used, and there is a mandatory step for users before they get access to the app: an interview with the app’s operator to “enhance credibility”. Whilst it’s a relief to hear that human beings rather than just AI bots will be more involved in the selection process, users are still trusting that agents of the state can accurately filter users, and won’t be following organisational policies that discriminate or draw unfair assumptions about who is a “worthy” candidate. To deal with the volume of candidates they may be making use of private AI technology to assess them, which then creates similar problems.
A return to offline dating
To complement the app, Tokyo city has also promised a raft of things in real life: sponsoring events where singles can meet, couples can get counseling on marriage and where couples can have their stories of how they first met turned into manga comics or songs. Some of this might not be your thing, but cultivating community spaces beyond an online algorithm does seem to be a real alternative to having your love life relegated to the increasingly AI slop filled online world. It could genuinely incentivise better behaviour out of users by taking dating and romance outside purely the realm of the private and making it a more communal act.
Have we got much to fear from a state dating app? Under the current systems we live in, any form of technology carries risks, but it doesn’t seem worse than the apps we’ve already entrusted with our love lives. At least it’s not going to get us any further into the trenches than we already are.
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