Facebook’s Dating Service Is, Unfortunately, Made by Facebook
Brian Feldman, writing for New York:
It’s a seemingly useful service that also acts as a Trojan horse for the company’s existing interests.
Seeing as I am one of the single-est people I know and also one of the only people I know who doesn’t have a Facebook account, I really hope this doesn’t catch on. Facebook has no interest in helping people find love; they have an interest in collecting and monetizing user data, and this is just another iteration of those efforts.
Easily the most ironic part of this is that they’re marketing it as a safe and private option. They say that Facebook Dating won’t collect personal information to be used for advertising purposes, so that’s great (assuming they’re not lying, but that’s far from a safe assumption). However, you can’t JUST use the dating service—for the sake of “authenticity,” they’re requiring that users who want to use Facebook Dating also maintain an active Facebook profile in order to use Facebook Dating. So while the Facebook Dating service will allegedly respect your privacy, the primary Facebook service makes no such promises, and they’re mandating that you use it.