The people who can innovate in this space either don't have the mental and/or capital bandwidth to do so, or don't want to deal with the absolutely massive amount of moderation that it would require.

I met my wife on OkC in 2006, years before the Match acquisition. I have long been furious about what Match did to the site after they bought it in 2011, and have long fantasized about creating something that could return to what it offered. Problem is, I don't think you could do it.

OkCupid in its heyday was a product of the golden age of the web, when social networking was new. It thrived because it predated doom scrolling, so taking quizzes and answering surveys was still a fun way to use the web. Now we're in a post-twitter landscape, where dopamine comes from a flick of a finger.

OkC's forums were one of the first mainstream online spaces for conversations about sexuality and non-monogamy. That role has now been subsumed by subreddits and facebook groups.

When OkC was independent, the majority of moderation involved keeping things pg-13 and enforcing the terms of use. You could crowd-source it all right within the site itself. Today you have AI agent swarms bombarding any site with a userbase, just hoping to get eyeballs. You have age verification laws, payment gateways that will stop processing if they get even a whiff that sex workers might be using your site to advertise, and bigots who will DDOS you if you dare to cater to the needs of minorities.

And all that to wade into a battle with a billion dollar juggernaut.