Dating in the time of “relational filter bubbles”: exploring imaginaries, perceptions and tactics of Italian dating app users

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we address algorithmic imaginary, perception and tactics of Italian dating apps users. Little attention has hitherto been devoted to the ways in which the algorithms employed by mobile dating platforms (to rate users, to manage user visibility, to arrange results) might contrast, or enhance, people’s homophily. Our goal is to explore whether and how mobile dating algorithms modify the perception of what we define as “relational filter bubbles”; and whether, and how, users believe dating algorithms reshape (extend or limit) the heterogeneity of their intimate interactions. The paper builds on literature addressing online dating, the datafication of society, the rise of the so-called quantified self, and of the algorithmic culture. We organized 4 focus groups involving Italian dating apps users, who reported a variety of sexual orientations and of dating apps usage. Overall, while dating apps’ algorithms operate in an opaque way, participants developed an “algorithmic imaginary”. Moreover, they appreciate the role of mobile dating apps in reinforcing their relational homophily (their tendency to like people that are “similar” to them), whilst, at the same time, mainly using these apps for increasing the diversity of their intimate interactions in terms of extending their preexisting networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Dating apps
• filter bubbles
• algorithmic culture
• algorithmic imaginaries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Premium account features vary according to different apps, and change over time. Generally speaking, users with a premium account can personalize their profile and get a wider visibility; moreover, they can acquire additional information about other users (i.e. being able to see who liked you first, “extend” the localization of their search).

² Indeed, “each user has an individual attractiveness score, which is opaquely computed on the basis of popularity and user behavior indices”(Kosoff, 2016).

³ Indeed, even in the case of apps that allow you to connect to Facebook, the levels of app connection to Facebook change over time (as is the case for Happn, for instance, which used to require a Facebook connection to set up a profile in the past that is no longer mandatory). We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who drew our attention to this.

⁴ Vasco Rossi is a very popular Italian singer, who is perceived as being cheap, or too mainstream, by the participant.