An open letter to Feeld

“I always remember the story about the day Jake and Rosanna met…”

Dear Sirs/Madams and everything in between.

I logged into Feeld today to find a very welcome performance and design update. When I’m browsing for new people to meet, I want to be able to navigate quickly; having clearer buttons and screens, coupled with quick loading content makes it fun as well as fast. Unfortunately this update came coupled with either a policy or tech flow update that boldly announced and exacted that conversations from which one person has disconnected disappear.

The intention behind the feature must be the ‘pro’s. I don’t mean people like me who are ex-platform designers now working as relationship theorists and counsellors in the non-mono space, literally making a living helping people to connect and stay safe whilst achieving their carnal desires in and out of romantic relationships. I mean the ‘for’ arguments for cordoning off a transcript that has been composed by the user such as eliminating the ability for mismatches to ignite into conflagration. There’s also an argument from a clean design point of view. But the positives end here.

However there is a multitude of issues that this flow presents users with. The policy creates several serious problems that affect usability, emotional safety, and user protection, outlined here:

Lost info.

More than once, I’ve had a user share their contact details to move onto a more fluid and messaging-specific platform, and then disconnect (before I’d managed to note down the details) because they wanted to tidy their interface. The result is that they are gone. Depending on the nature of the connection, this can cause mental stress for both. People use dating apps for more than fleeting conversation. Users also exchange locations for planned meets, travel details, and event information that they and their counterparts may genuinely need to revisit later. Deleting an entire chat history because one person has what THEY need means important information disappears permanently without warning.

Lack of accountability.

I spend increasing amounts of clinical time wrestling people back from the situation of bouncing between connections, failing to connect and learn from having explored the full spectrum of good and bad things about new acquaintances. Once one wrong thing has been said nowadays and rather than living with the consequences, the negligent party is invited to run away and try again.

Ghostee distress.

We learn from within not without relationships, which includes smaller interactions at drinks parties. I see plenty of clients who have been particularly affected by blindsided discards. In fact my whole entry into the mental health space has been based on a distressing, depressing and life threatening discard by someone WHO I MET ON FEELD in March 2023. My Feeld connections have shared resources, emotional support, and meaningful discussions that I’d cause to revisit multiple times. I had one client that is missing the first lines that they said to their fiance which they wanted to reference at their upcoming wedding. Now? Impossible.

Dating platforms are emotionally-charged environments. Users are invited to form attachments, and are currently being punished for doing so, especially the vulnerable, isolated, neurodivergent, traumatised, grieving, rejection-sensitive, and abandonment-fearing users that mistakening match fellow users who, in their chat-deleting unmatching, prove their incrogruence with the ethos of Feeld, which is one of acceptance and respect. Unilateral removal is personal erasure. Even Uber makes riders pay a price for cancelling on a driver.

Failure to preserve privacy post unmatch.

Chats can be photographed, even screenshotted on the devices (unlike the one-time-only photos) so this argument it moot.

Failure to give users control over their digital presence.

I thoroughly support the ability on Feeld to make one’s profile dormant or deleted. And wether this should mean that the user’s chats are inaccessible is another question. I think not. Only under the same pillar as Lost Info above. It’s far more important to keep the relational history of those that connected with the absentee intact, as the mental health impact on those still-active connectors is so devastating.

Evidence collection

The current system creates loopholes that make harmful behaviour harder to report. If a user sends unsolicited explicit photos, coercive messages, threats, manipulative content, or other abusive material and then immediately disconnects, the evidence can disappear with them. That leaves recipients unable to document what happened, unable to review usernames or identifying details, and thus unable to make an effective report. It weakens moderation and protects bad actors more than vulnerable users.

Look around you

On more messaging systems than not, if userA self-terminates or blocks userB, the conversation remains visible to the recipient even if future communication is impossible. This preserves continuity and protects both parties from sudden data loss and dismay.

You can can learn from this.

A reasonable compromise would be to preventing further messaging after disconnection, while still allowing the remaining user to retain a read-only copy of the conversation. A possibility would be a timed retention system where chats remain available for 30 days for safety and administrative purposes before deletion. But again, I don’t do product design anymore.

I also propose that you adopt, if not a publicly viewable disconnection/ connection percentage over a sensible moving time frame, than at least a covert algorithm that brings the metric into account to inform how visible their profile is. In fact the platform would be a lot clearer and useable if more metrics were made visible in people’s profiles such as impressions, incoming likes, incoming dislikes, pings, matches, outgoing likes, outgoing dislikes, conversions started, conversions openers responded, vouches (like wearex have), logins per month, and confirmed meets (must be submitted by their matches). In fact, if such a dating platform does not exist then in 12 months from now, I put it to you that I will have created it under the working title “Ryan’s Open Season”.

Feeld has built a reputation as a progressive and humanistic platform. But emotionally aware design also means recognising that abrupt digital disappearance can have real psychological and practical consequences which I hope I’ve argued into clarity. Find the difference between: ‘I no longer wish to speak to you’, ‘This interaction never happened’, and ‘I just want to tidy up my interface’.

This letter will enter deletion in… never… because I stand by my words, every last one.

Yours sincerely,

Premium user since 2016, Ambassador, and Original Mastermind behind Constellations,

Ryan Minti 37, Relationship Theorist & Counsellor