When my long-term relationship came to an end last year, I was morbidly curious to see what dating apps were like. I knew things weren’t good out there — I’d been reassured that I’d effectively got the last chopper out of ’Nam by getting into a relationship before dating apps really went to the dogs — but a small part of me wondered: how bad can it really be?
Very bad, it turns out. I received vanishingly few matches after setting up a new Hinge profile — hardly any, in fact. Suspicious, I decided to try something I’d seen other women of color do online: I changed my own ethnicity from ‘other’ (I’m half South Asian, half white) to ‘white’. Almost instantly, I began to see — and receive likes from — people who seemed better matches for me (by which I mean: people who had at least some pictures with friends, people who didn’t make misogynistic jokes on their profiles, etc). It was hard not to wonder: was Hinge hiding these profiles from me before? I’d heard rumblings that dating apps’ algorithms could be racist, but with so much mystery surrounding how they actually work, could that be the case? Or was something else at play? How exactly do the algorithms choose whose profiles you are shown?
Other women of color have had similar experiences. Natasha, 22, also believes that her experience of using Hinge has been impacted by her ethnicity. “I’ve found that my white friends find it a lot easier to get matches and go on dates [through Hinge],” she says. She adds that she rarely matches with people who aren’t Desi like her – something I also noticed during my brief stint on Hinge. “I haven’t set my preferences to show my profiles from a certain race, but I definitely do get more matches with Desi people,” Natasha continues. “Even the majority of the ‘most compatible’ profiles I see are Desi.”
Like me, Natasha has a sneaking suspicion that Hinge’s algorithm tries to match you with people who are the same race as you. “These algorithms make it harder for people to find partners, especially if what you’re looking for is different to how you appear on the app,” she says, making the point that “Hinge already lets you filter by race and religion if it’s a non-negotiable for you.”
What’s going on here? It’s difficult to tell, given that dating apps are often maddeningly opaque about how their algorithms work. “Hinge is built on creating love and meaningful connections for everyone [...] We show you who you are most likely to match with based on predicting mutual compatibility,” a Hinge spokesperson tells Cosmopolitan UK, adding that they try to match users who meet each other’s preferences on “age range, distance, family plans, vices, and more”. Similarly, a Bumble spokesperson stresses that their algorithm “does not use a member’s race or ethnicity to match them with other members”, and instead uses “a range of factors, including interests and characteristics a member has shared with Bumble, and the way they interact with the app, and the profiles that are shown to them”.
So far, so vague. Still, it is possible to make reasonable assumptions about the nitty-gritty of how dating apps operate. Dr Luke Brunning, a lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds and co-director of the university’s Center for Love, Sex, and Relationships, points to work by Dr Apryl Williams, author of Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, which suggests that algorithms often attempt to match similar profiles together. “There is some evidence from studying patent applications of dating app companies [including Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge] that their algorithms might [automatically adjust match selection] on racial grounds,” he says.
Of course, the ways in which dating apps could be exacerbating racism and colorism in the dating pool has been a longstanding problem. But it’s an issue that’s only growing more urgent, as online dating apps are continuing to monopolise the business of finding love in unprecedented ways. According to researchers at Stanford University, 61% of all couples now meet online — a sizeable leap from 33% in 2015. It’s a huge cause for concern if more and more people are finding love via an algorithm that could be racially biased; some have even suggested that it’s time for governments to scrutinize dating app algorithms more closely, given how much they can shape the future of our societies.
Dr Natasha McKeever, also a lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds and co-director of the university’s Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships alongside Brunning, says that if apps “make us even more likely to date people who are similar to us in race, class, social background, and so on, then this could increase social divisions”. There’s evidence this is already happening, with some research suggesting that dating apps could be contributing to inequality by encouraging homophily (that is, the tendency of individuals to be attracted to people who are similar to themselves). Further research from Cornell has found that dating app algorithms can “reinforce racial divisions and biases”.
Moreover, it’s unlikely the cold logic of algorithms like these is really conducive to lasting, mutual love (2024 research found that couples who meet on dating apps have less stable marriages). It’s also been widely reported that dating apps’ popularity has nosedived in recent years, with millions of users deleting their apps; and it’s likely women of color, thwarted in their attempts to find romantic partners, make up a sizeable proportion of those dipping out of online dating for good (personally, I permanently deleted my apps on account of how pessimistic they made me feel about my romantic prospects). Brunning believes that greater transparency surrounding how their algorithms work could help quell the “doubt and cynicism” which permeates people’s perception of dating apps.
Granted, there are some setbacks to offering transparency. Brunning points out that finding out that a dating app’s algorithm ranks you as unattractive or undesirable could result in a “range of negative mental health implications”. It’s a valid point — I worry about how self-professed incels would react to having access to this kind of information. Brunning also highlights that increased transparency could “make it easier for people to explicitly try to ‘game’ the system”. Still, he stresses that “the reasons in favor of transparency outweigh the negatives”.
Breeze, the dating app du jour (if you’re unfamiliar, users on Breeze are banned from chatting to each other ahead of their first date, which the app organizes for you), is one platform trying to be open about the shortcomings of their algorithm. “Our algorithm might be portraying discriminatory behavior,” the app’s matchmaking researcher Thomas Crul candidly told the audience at a tech conference in Amsterdam in 2024. Worse still: their algorithm, Crul suggested, could even be exacerbating existing biases. “Users of dating apps in Europe are biased towards profiles of ‘European ethnicity’, and we have evidence that we predominantly have users of European ethnicity on Breeze,” Crul explains to Cosmopolitan UK. “This means that our userbase is strongly biased towards itself, and any user of non-European ethnicity therefore won’t be liked very much.” While he admits Breeze is yet to resolve the issue, he stresses that the team are working to fix it using an “innovative approach”.
It’s worth acknowledging, of course, that this isn’t an issue that begins and ends with algorithms either. As McKeever highlights: “Research has shown that Black people are much more likely to initiate conversations on dating apps with white people than white people are with Black people, and white people are much more likely than Black people to state a preference for a same race partner.” It’s possible that algorithms are trying to push same-race partnerships because, unfortunately, that’s what a lot of people want (or think they want, at least).
While sexual racism like this isn’t something that can be stamped out overnight, dating apps have a unique power to help combat it by ensuring their algorithms don’t make the problem worse. “I think that the least that can be expected of dating apps is to not strengthen existing racial prejudices,” Crul surmises. “We believe that society at large can benefit if algorithmic discrimination is mitigated in general.” For McKeever, the real tragedy is that algorithms which encourage homophily can result in us “[missing] out on opportunities to meet people that we might have had a great relationship with”. After all, no app or algorithm will never be able to predict or understand logic-defying, head-scrambling chemistry — the kind that can take you completely by surprise.
