Singapore Pilots a Government-Built Dating Service (mashable.com)
- Reference: 0185909010
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/30/1620208/singapore-pilots-a-government-built-dating-service
- Source link: https://mashable.com/life/singapore-government-dating-app-first-date
> Singapore's government is trying its hand at matchmaking again. The country's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has launched [2]FirstDate , a pilot dating service for singles aged 21 to 35. For now, it's open only to public officers, according to the service's website. Applications close Oct. 5. FirstDate is [3]designed as an alternative to endless swiping .
>
> Instead of browsing a stream of profiles, users fill out a questionnaire about their interests, habits, values, and preferences. The service then sends them one match per cycle (the time it takes to mutually accept and presumably meet up). Each match includes a compatibility score, a brief description of the person, and a personal note. [...]
>
> The pilot arrives as Singapore's birth rate hits a new low, according to the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times. The country's total fertility rate fell to 0.87 children per woman in 2025, down from 1.24 a decade earlier. In April, the government announced a new workgroup tasked with addressing falling birth rates, which is expected to report its findings by early 2027, The Straits Times reported.
The service relies on the [4]Gale-Shapley algorithm , a well-known mathematical method that solves the stable matching problem by pairing two sets of participants based on their ranked preferences.
Once matched, users have 72 hours to mutually accept before contact details are shared, with optional "Date Quests" and post-date surveys designed to encourage and assess in-person meetups. Accounts are verified through Singapore's Singpass digital ID system to reduce fake profiles, and profiles are only visible to assigned matches. GovTech says user data is protected under government security standards, is not sold to third parties, and can be deleted upon request.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~AmiMoJo
[2] https://firstdate.sandbox.gov.sg/
[3] https://mashable.com/life/singapore-government-dating-app-first-date
[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-stable-marriage-problem-solution-underpins-dating-apps-and-school/
Pay people better (Score:3)
And cut their work hours. If you want babies that's what you need to do.
Radical humanism (Score:3)
Subsidize baby formula and diapers. And make onsite daycare services required at larger companies in order to normalize the practice.
Give grandma a room in your home (Score:1)
> Subsidize baby formula and diapers. And make onsite daycare services required at larger companies in order to normalize the practice.
Or give grandma a room in your home rather than the "retirement community." That worked for many millennia.
Re: (Score:2)
It really depends where you are talking about. In Kansas or Montana, can you rent an extra room relatively cheaply? Sure, probably for $500.
Can you do the same thing in New York or the San Francisco Bay Area? Only if you want to pay an extra $1k+ more in rent.
Re: (Score:2)
That's ideal if grandma can get her wheelchair into your house. (I assume you own a house, but most younger people do not)
For people without children to take care of them, then caring for the elderly must fall on society rather than on family alone. My Mom depends on me because I'm her only living child, and if something were to happen to me she would really be at the mercy of the terrible system we have in the US.
Re: (Score:1)
My use of "home" was attempting to include rentals, I should have been clearer. You can rent a place with an additional room.
No one is saying there should not be a safety net for the elderly. Just that it is too often used and can contribute to child care problems.
Plus there are educational benefits. I was fortunate enough to learn things from parents, grandparents, and briefly great-grandparents. Its amazing what institutional knowledge can get preserved that way, and first hand accounts of history.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh when I had an apartment there was no extra room to give someone. And 2 bed where I live now is $3700/month, which is more than my remaining mortgage.
> Plus there are educational benefits. I was fortunate enough to learn things from parents, grandparents, and briefly great-grandparents. Its amazing what institutional knowledge can get preserved that way, and first hand accounts of history.
Count yourself blessed to have a family and a good relationship with them. That kind of experience is not universal.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Subsidize baby formula and diapers. And make onsite daycare services required at larger companies in order to normalize the practice.
> Or give grandma a room in your home rather than the "retirement community." That worked for many millennia.
Great if your elderly parents can care for your newborns. Definitely sucks if you have to care for both newborns and elderly parents.
Re: (Score:1)
>>> Subsidize baby formula and diapers. And make onsite daycare services required at larger companies in order to normalize the practice.
>> Or give grandma a room in your home rather than the "retirement community." That worked for many millennia.
> Great if your elderly parents can care for your newborns. Definitely sucks if you have to care for both newborns and elderly parents.
Its not a universal solution, just an underused one. Especially given that today's 60-year olds are in better shape than in past generations.
Re: (Score:1)
> And cut their work hours. If you want babies that's what you need to do.
Historical data seems to say otherwise. :-)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's been tried and doesn't work. Heck, Britain's fertility rate was several times higher when the masses lived in slums and worked in mills until they died in an accident or from respiratory illness.
If you want to increase birth rates you need to stop educating girls beyond what's required to be a mother. But no liberal country can do that so they will die out instead.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you want to increase birth rates you need to stop educating girls beyond what's required to be a mother. But no liberal country can do that so they will die out instead.
Holy shit are you off your rocker. Keep those women poor, barefoot, and pregnant, right fellas?
Re: (Score:2)
Is your daughter available?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I share your repugnance, but I suspect that 0123456 is simply stating facts. AFAIK career women tend to have fewer kids.
Re:Pay people better (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't think of any other solutions besides subjugating 50% of the human population I think your priorities are different than just having babies.
There was a line from the last Elephant Graveyard video: From my research, it sounds like they're terrified that the unfuckable are going to be unfucked out of the gene pool of humanity forever.
Anyone who says shit like this probably deserves it.
Re: (Score:2)
Again, you make my point for me. We know that taking women's rights away will fix the collapsing birth rate. You complain but offer no alternative that hasn't been tried and failed.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could do something really crazy and ask women why they don't like to be treated as birthing vessels?
Re: (Score:2)
Thing is if I say that if storks brought everyone a baby through their window wrapped in a blanket that would also fix the birthrate because both of them have about the same chance of happening and my solution again does not involve subjugation of half the population.
You also don't get to act indignant like there aren't alternatives out there, there are, you know there are but most of those don't also force the world to provide you with sex as some sort of public service.
Re:Pay people better (Score:5, Insightful)
> If you can't think of any other solutions besides subjugating 50% of the human population I think your priorities are different than just having babies.
Although there's a suggestion of misogyny in the comment you're replying to, it seems that there may be at least some truth in his fundamental point: [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Having children can limit women's work and career choices. Becoming pregnant while employed may be a CLM, and may even result in outright termination. Employers often find ways around the laws protecting women from this kind of discrimination.
There's more nuance to this discussion than your "subjugating 50% of the human population" characterization allows for.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X20300156
Re: (Score:2)
Women are not going backwards, they're not going to stop going to school, they're not going to stop having control of when they can have kids, they are not going to give up careers, they are not going back to the 1950's.
It is well known, extremely well known that as countries develop advanced economies their birthrates fall, that's all your link is getting it. It's a multivariate problem that is tricky to solve.
What we do know is the stick isn't going to solve it so carrots it is, the OP's solution is all
Re: (Score:3)
The initial instinct is correct. Parent is off his rocker. Simple formula is to make having 2.1 kids on average easy and pleasant.
IMHO that means
-free childcare from 4 months to Kindergarten
-free public schools K-12 that are good nationwide
-Very low cost education incl state colleges and training + apprenticeships for trades
-Affordable health care
-Available work that pays the bills, keeps up with inflation, puts a roof over your head
There are solutions to each of these none of which require unseemly new
Re: (Score:2)
Educating girls and allowing women to pursue careers is a huge hit on birth rates in most nations. Luckily a world of 8 billion human beings doesn't need a high birth rate. And a future with automation and AI won't have much use for cheap human labor, which is really where population growth is economically important.
Re: (Score:1)
> Luckily a world of 8 billion human beings doesn't need a high birth rate. And a future with automation and AI won't have much use for cheap human labor, which is really where population growth is economically important.
A world of 8 billion humans and very low birth rates isn't going to have 8 billion humans for long without higher birth rates. And without consumers, what are those robots gonna make, or sell it to?
Anyway, the real, immediate danger is entire social safety net is entirely based on having way more young people paying in than old people taking out. With so few kids being born, how's that supposed to work?
Re: (Score:2)
Studies show only that flexibility in schedule actually improves birth rates, like remote work and the like.
And in general, it only works in countries who's cultures have shared domestic responsibilities. That isn't the case in Singapore, where women reportedly do twice as much domestic and household work while being expected to have a full time job as well. So instead of "pay people better", how about "Dads and Husbands step up".
"I am Indian and am looking for a Chinese partner" (Score:2)
404
Not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
People want to have sex. They want children. A low birthrate means there are systematic issues that are stopping it from happening.
Most of the world has a significant cost factor. Raising a child is very expensive. Frankly, I think that the government should pay for minimum pre-natal care as well as basic birth costs. It is in our government's best interests for the children to be born as healthy as possible.
But I do not know if that is the main problem in Singapore. Asia is a radically different culture from ours.
In Korea the problem is a culture of work over family. but that might be the same in Singapore.
Re: (Score:3)
I think most people writing nonsense like you simply do not grasp the way other people think.
My EX GF in Thailand, is a sibling of 14 kids. Three died in childhood. She is the youngest. If Ginness book would have been around her birth time, her mother would be noted. She gave birth at age 66 or so. My EX is ten years younger than her youngest brother. Six siblings died in young adulthood, and now 4 are left.
(Mostly) EVERYONE in that family has only ONE child. Some have two, because they divorced and remarri
Re: (Score:2)
1) I have no children.
2) I was very specific about Asia being a very different culture.
3) I have seen several studies that indicate most abusers come from entitled families and were not themselves abused as a child.
4) You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are NOT entitled to call other's opinion's "nonsense"
Don't underestimate 4-6 month relationships (Score:1)
Don't underestimate those failed 4-6 month relationships. They may be some of the best of your life looking backwards. :-)
Singapore pilots dating service (Score:2)
I would have thought the pilots on Singapore Air would have the pick of the flight attendants.
Re: (Score:2)
The flight attendants do like the pilots do: they have BF/GF in every port. Lots less complicated.
Wow! Cool! (Score:3)
Now I only need a cool state job, and I can date 100ds of sexy Asian girls!
I am hot already!!
Bitchy uppity women (Score:2)
Birthrates also fall when you have a bunch of bitchy uppity women whom men don't want to deal with their BS, expense of the woman due to her "expectations" and the expense of a child.
Excess love is no excuse? (Score:2)
Too early in the discussion to hope for Funny, but usually there are some shallow comments marked as Insightful for reasons that escape my analytic vision... But I'm going for Interesting this time around, which may produce Funny as a side effect.
But I have to start by digging back to the Fermi Paradox? Maybe there are no "long-lived" evolved species out there to talk with us because all such species encounter a fundamental reproductive crisis when their technology reaches some critical threshold--and we're
I have 5 kids (Score:2)
If you want a replacement rate of 2.3 kids per woman its almost impossible to reach without some families having 5 or 6 kids.
Play with the math: assume 10 women.
2 won't find a suitable mate and won't have children,
1 (and a bit) won't be able to have a child.
2 will have only 1 child
2 will have 2.
that's 6 children among 7 women. So the last 3 women need to 5.667 kids each for your 10 women to have 23 children between them. Try other numbers. You realistically can't get to 23 children to 10 women wi
Up next: (Score:2)
government-issued girlfriends!
I Know Happy People who Met Online, but... (Score:2)
...meeting online is not the same as being paired up with someone based on a profile which you submit, which may not be reflective of who you are, and where the matching itself is not a holistic process that accounts for your entire personality and demeanor. On the other hand, asking someone out who you routinely interact with in a shared online game, forum, or other program or site is a much healthier way to meet people, and gives both parties the essential act of choice in initiating.
If you catfish (Score:2)
you get caned.
Caning ? (Score:2)
> you get caned.
Wow, that list of preferences and interests is a lot more detailed than I would have guessed. :-)