DII: Architectural Essay: Platforms as Market Makers

The decisive change was not digital communication itself, but the insertion of platforms as intermediaries. Modern dating systems operate like financial market makers: they profit from liquidity, volume, and continued participation, not from successful resolution.

In such systems, interaction is never free. Each message, swipe, or delay generates value for the intermediary. The platform therefore imposes a transaction tax—not always monetary, but temporal, cognitive, and emotional.

Critically, this cost is detached from individual actions. Users pay subscriptions or tolerate advertising regardless of whether any single interaction advances toward meeting, closure, or commitment. Cost becomes ambient rather than specific.

This breaks a fundamental feedback loop. When cost is detached from action, priority becomes invisible. A message sent to a casual hookup and a message sent to a potential life partner carry the same marginal cost. The system cannot distinguish value because it has removed the mechanism that once expressed it.

The result is a market optimized for signaling rather than settlement. Like high‑frequency trading, speed and optionality dominate, while long‑term coordination becomes structurally disadvantaged.

This is not accidental. It is how intermediated markets function.