Totally agreed. I didn’t mean to say that it’s a failure if it doesn’t properly encapsulate all complexity, but that the inability to do so has implications for design. In this specific case (as in many cases), the error they’re making is that they don’t realize that the root of them problem that they’re trying to solve lies in that tension.

The platform and environment are something you can shape even without an established or physical community.

Again, couldn’t agree more! The problem here is that the platform is actually extremely powerful and can easily change behavior in undesirable ways for users. That’s, I think, a big part of where ghosting comes from in the first place, and by thinking that you can just bolt a new thing onto the Tinder model is to repeat the original error.