I'm old enough to remember pre-internet matchmaking services. They were the butt of endless jokes, laughably bad, and anyone who used them tended to keep it a secret. People generally thought of you as a pathetic loser if you admitted to using them. They varied wildly in quality from service to service. And yet, they may have been better than the apps millions of people use today on their phones.

Using those old services, you might go on some lousy dates back in the day, but at least you went on a real date and tried to be your best and act in good faith (rather than lazily swipe past everyone in rapid-fire judgement mode).

Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but I think it was less cynical. An actual human being was in the middle of the process to try and help make the matches. The old system was highly flawed, and perhaps a waste of money. But maybe better than a profit-focused algorithm written by socially awkward coders and tech bros.

I thought the original point was the casual encounters, for the obviously self-defeating nature of the algo otherwise. It became a hellscape when people got on "just to meet people"

The issue with this feature is that it's predatory, and it preys on the user's desperation. If you swiped left on somebody, that's because you weren't interested in what you saw on their profile to begin with. But by showing you that the other person swiped right on you, it plays on that anxiety of FOMO and loneliness. It's telling the user "Hey, give us a couple bucks and also lower your standards and you can maybe have a conversation with this person".

This feature isn't targeting users who are seeking any meaningful connections. It's targeting users who are desperate for any chance with a potential partner, even if it's one that they weren't even actually interested in.

In isolation, sure, being able to access your swipe history and change your mind, would be just fine. On a dating service that actually cared about helping people find each other it would be a no-brainer to provide such a feature in terms of the very basics of the system.

But the way it's actually used is to get users to pay for FOMO fuelled micro-transactions to go back to match with profiles that may or may not even be real.

Seems like a fine feature to me?

Except you have to pay for rewinds. They probably give you one or two freebies, but then you're screwed if you legitimately made a mistake swiping in the wrong direction.