Facebook announces new dating feature because romance isn’t dead
Facebook will soon include a dating feature among its services, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s F8 Developer Conference in San Jose, California on Tuesday.
The feature will sling Facebook into a domain in which it has long played a behind-the-scenes role but never entered directly. These days, many digital matchmaking services like Tinder require users to sign up for the app through their Facebook accounts. In this way, Facebook’s pivot to online dating makes sense, as it has long served as the critical ingredient for people to begin swiping.
Today, nearly 2 billion people worldwide use some source of online dating, according to a 2012 study by the Association for Psychological Science. That number has likely increased over the past six years.
But in the wake of movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, and concerns about user privacy, the way the world views relationships, specifically online dating, is shifting, making it more difficult than ever to understand the already tricky realm of sex and romance. As a result, online dating and relationship platforms are finally facing – and perhaps avoiding – difficult questions: How do we make our platforms safer? How do we eliminate harassment or other inappropriate behaviors that users experience?
Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Salon
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