If you get a message from someone you never matched with on Tinder, it’s not a glitch — it’s part of the app’s expensive new subscription plan that it teased earlier this year, which allows “power users” to send unsolicited messages to non-matches for the small fee of $499 per month.

That landscape, in fact, is largely populated by apps owned by Tinder’s parent company: as Bloomberg notes, Match Group Inc. not only owns the popular swiping app, but also Match.com, OKCupid, Hinge, and The League.

Match Group CEO Bernard Kim referred to Tinder’s subscriptions as “low-hanging fruit” meant to compete with other, pricier services, though that was before this $6,000-per-year tier dropped.

    • garrett
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      91 year ago

      Yeah, this whole thing is gross but this post summarizes it best.

    • TheSaneWriter
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      81 year ago

      It truly is disgusting that they’ve made this model. Tinder has always been severely flawed in my opinion, but this makes it several times worse.

    • @theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz
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      21 year ago

      I totally agree that it’s a ridiculous thing for them to implement, but saying that consent is required to say ‘hi’ is a bit over the top. I’m assuming the receiving party will still be able to block the sender of course since I’m pretty sure that’s required by Google and Apple.