Share

Share this

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook Tweet Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

By OIHANA IGLESIAS CARRILLO

Through Tinder, flirting becomes disembodied, and the touchscreen of mobile phones is replacing the lips and hands of many young people. The massive use of this app, compared to other online social platforms, is due, firstly, to its free nature; secondly, to its practical real-time geolocation feature—that is, it allows you to contact active users near you; and thirdly, to its distinction from matchmaking agencies by claiming to offer all kinds of encounters. At first glance, Tinder seems to be an effective , harmless, and universally accessible technological matchmaker. Is that really the case?

To access this vast repository of potential partners, users must first accept the platform's terms and conditions (without reading them, of course). They must also agree to a set of incredibly polite rules of conduct, which, I believe, whitewash the company's ethical code. Only then can you edit your profile. Creating a profile requires selective introspection of your name, age, appearance, a brief description, your interests, lifestyle, and values, but also your education, work, favorite music, gender, and sexual orientation—all of which will constitute your public image. When we talk about the public (audience) in the digital world, we must understand it as an abstract collection of connected, private selves. To begin with, it's curious that this subjectivity is destined for absolute objectification: the profile is a self-product displayed in a free, 24/7 affective-sexual marketplace. Of all the possible expressions, the one that acquires paramount importance, occupying almost the entire screen, is physical appearance: the photo. Despite the digital condition being one of physical disembodiment, the constantly exposed image of the body remains the primary source of social—and economic—value. The second most important expression is the content of the description, your personal label, where users have the opportunity to describe what makes them unique.

Once you've created your profile, you enter the marketplace. It works incredibly simply: your potential matches appear on the screen, like products, as if they've rolled off an assembly line: other profiles that you evaluate and swipe left or right, like a deck of cards. Your options are: like (swipe right), dislike (swipe left), or superlike (swipe up). There's no option to abstain; the user must consider all their possibilities. Two of the platform's innovative features are the emphasis on instant attraction and the elimination of rejection : if two profiles like each other—it's a match!—an animated window appears combining the two profile pictures, and a chat window automatically opens for interaction. If not, no one receives any further notifications to interrupt the swiping, and that other profile disappears into the Tindersphere. The superlike feature is genuine; if someone really likes you, it will appear on their profile.

Given this immediacy and the acceleration it fosters, Tinder knows you can make mistakes. That's why they provide a Rewind button that lets you go back and undo your last dislike, allowing you to reconsider your decision. On the other hand, given the enormous capacity of this platform, the list of potential matches and competitors is extremely long. The platform itself develops facilitating techniques: the Boost button allows you to be one of the featured profiles in your area for 30 minutes, thus increasing your chances of finding matches. Naturally, the use of these features is not unlimited. The free version of the app allows you little more than a limited number of likes or dislikes and a single Super Like. However, with a modest monthly fee, you can gain an advantage over the rest and join the elite group known as "TinderPlus." With a Tinder Gold subscription, you can see everyone who has liked you and break the mystery. “There are only 24 hours in a day, so you have to prioritize,” argues the website description (Tinder.com). This subscription also offers the Passport feature, which lets you chat with people from all over the world, wherever you are. It provides unlimited likes and rewinds, a single boost, and several Super Likes per month. Going a step further, the Tinder Platinum subscription prioritizes your likes by promoting the immediate display of your profile on other users' screens. With the Top Picks feature, it selects 10 featured profiles exclusively for you each day. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy more possibilities: now also for your romantic encounters.

If we want to be critical, in addition to the internalized sexism that doesn't disappear in virtual relationships, we must pay attention to the modus operandi of platforms like Tinder that we use to meet people. Since Judith Duportail, in her book *The Algorithm of Love* (2019), finally revealed the darkest secrets of the Tinder sphere, it's well known that the level of desirability and hegemonic attractiveness play a crucial role in this platform's validation system. We're warned from the start: the app assigns a score to each of us! Yes, Tinder has a cryptic attractiveness ranking in which all participants are evaluated based on the data they generate. The classification is commonly called the Elo score. The author says, in an indignant tone, that when your profile is shown to someone, you're not matched with them, but against them. In short, if the person in question has a higher level of popularity and success—that is, more likes and matches—and they like you, you gain points, and your ranking rises. Conversely, if they have a lower level and swipe left on you, meaning they don't like you, you lose points: your position falls. The ultimate expression of affective capitalism, wouldn't you say? Competition, erotic capital, confrontation, and (de)evaluation.

The data that Tinder stores

We live in the age of Big Data, and everything we do—every gesture, every opening, every click—is spied on, monitored, recorded, and directly influences our online activity, even, as we will see, our desires. Tinder is a far-reaching, privately held American company that, as such, uses personal data not only to sell it to advertising agencies—another topic of broad interest that will not be explored here—but also to design algorithms and optimize its internal workings, its influence on our subjectivities—has anyone considered the potential political consequences of the elimination of rejection from the user experience?—and its conscious manipulation. This ranking system conditions the possibilities for users to appear and interact. Let's see how.

It should be clear that one is a private product exposed to consumption, classified on a specific assembly line, mind you. Tinder's own artificial intelligence uses machine learning to study our profiles and our courtship behavior. An initial analysis of your profile picture places you in a ranking position. After that, your fate is tied to the interaction with the algorithms. An algorithm called Eigenfaces gathers the photos of the profiles that appear to you and, based on the likes, dislikes, and matches you give, creates a phantom profile as a yardstick for comparisons , ordering, and predictions that determine the products you see on screen. In other words, your access to other people (geolocated near you) is not as free as it seemed. For example, if you've had a considerable number of matches with bald men in the past, will the app suggest profiles of bald men? Let's leave the jokes aside. Profiles appear on screen based on what you've liked or disliked before. The expression “be careful what you wish for” seems more relevant than ever. To make matters worse, the platform's phantom hand isn't just based on pretty faces or bulging biceps. Furthermore, the possibility of a virtual encounter is also influenced by users' vocabulary. Word2voc is an algorithm that suggests users who share the same form of communication and expression, be it languages, dialects, or slang… Everything matters. Everything is determined. Our private lives are frozen in clicks. Even the neoliberal myth of free choice fades away!

Biases and discrimination

The ranking thus forms dimensions, castes, classes, districts of desire whose borders—or abyssal lines, to use Vasallo's term—are difficult to cross. Heaven forbid a low score should be paired with a high one. We're talking about a quantum Tinder: not all users exist in the same virtual space-time. A kind of social stratification that separates differences becomes evident. The vector behind each swipe or tap carries associated information about virtual activities and user experience, interests, environments, educational level, professional trajectory, but also age, religion, social class, culture, disability, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, and countless other identity markers. And although Tinder sells us a false, yet again, freedom of opportunity with its rhetoric of "everyone is welcome" or "you'll meet all kinds of people," the platform is riddled with biases and discrimination. If we're packaged into identity classes, the demands of difference can hardly be heard. On Tinder, difference doesn't coexist. And without coexistence there is no communication, no knowledge, no advocacy.

Algorithms, however, are not spontaneous, they are not autonomous. An algorithm is not, per se, racist or sexist because it has no consciousness or decision-making power. I'm not saying that technology is neutral by any means; I'm saying that we must direct our criticism at the people responsible for that technology. The presentation options, the filtering, the sampling—not only on Tinder but throughout the entire virtual world—contain biases that directly or indirectly favor privileged identities. For example, in general, facial recognition image processing algorithms can identify a person's gender—binary—from a photograph, incidentally, with greater reliability in Caucasians. And we're talking about recognition. We're not falling into the diversity trap; we're falling back into the trap of the same old stereotype. What an unfortunate coincidence. No, the moral and social failings are the responsibility of the machine's owner, of the people who own it. In honor of Cathy O'Neil and her book Weapons of Math Destruction (2016), I appeal from here to the algorithmic responsibility that concerns those who design, produce and promote these platforms.

This is merely a glimpse into Tinder's dark side. A glimpse that threatens affective intersectionality: the perfect playing field for unconscious alignment and ostracism, without us even realizing it. A fundamental stage for techno-political de-democratization. Personal. The fundamental stage for the end of love à la Eva Illouz. Before you download the app, think about how this entire frozen and biased universe can transform our ways of relating sexually and emotionally. Not only with respect to accelerated and immediate consumption, to self-objectification and the fluidity or obsolescence of contemporary sociability, but also with respect to the hidden mechanisms that operate, constraining our freedoms and our care. Of course, it's easier to turn a blind eye. Here's my warning: be careful how you desire. If you desire through Tinder, you accept that the app dictates who you desire and who you don't. How far could the cryptic power of the digital reach? What else could it limit? I'll leave the answers to the writers of Black Mirror. Hang the DJ!