I recall hearing about Alovoa a year ago and while it sounds nice with no ads or paid features, being open source, and private data being encrypted I have to imagine the userbase is incredibly small relative to other services. Google Play lists it at over a thousand downloads but it's also available through F-Droid so that may not mean much. I have to imagine the userbase is mostly men which might prevent some users from joining or sticking around.
Either way (TL:DR) I'd be curious to see what your experiences are with open source dating apps or even apps designed around making friends.
I'd settle for an open source friend app but I doubt it would be better than bumble for friends.
you get the same issue anywhere, no one is serious about meeting up in person.
I have enough online friends.
Have you thought of frendica? I think it's kinda what you're looking for but it doesn't seem too popular. Have you used bumble for friends? I thought bumble was for dating, I'm not sure how that would work for friends.
Friendica didn't use activitypub until it was too late which might explain the lack of popularity.
Bumble for friends is a separate service from bumble.
It is nonesense, at least for now. I'm trying to avoid online dating with common apps. They just have insanely creepy telemetry while at the same time they would be highly influential on my romantic decisions. So I installed Alovoa. I think the closest person matching my criteria was around 200 km from me, most people suggested not living on my continent. It might be a cool idea but I doubt that it will ever be successful. When you're serious with dating and you want to go beyond personal networks, I think there is no way around commercial dating apps.
