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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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Partisan governments deciding who gets dates is just speedrunning civil conflict. Is this intentional?

Why does the government need to decide who gets dates? It's not like they can't opensource the algorithm and the methodology. This isn't going to be "Here's your certified date, go on it or you will be fined" or anything They just need to run the app and maintain it.

It's not like they can't opensource the algorithm and the methodology.

If they want to decide who gets dates, they're not going to do that. I'm skeptical that a general public who would otherwise be interested in the app would balk at it being closed-source.

This isn't going to be "Here's your certified date, go on it or you will be fined" or anything

The mechanism probably looks more like "when you're a disfavored group, the partners you want to date and who would be interested in going on a date with you are on the app, but the app won't match you with them". So favored groups get easy access to their desired partners, disfavored groups have to try and use other channels. There's a limit to how much this will work if the desirable partners aren't happy with their dates, but there's probably a fair bit of thumb that can be put on the scale.

So what? Youtube doesn't fine you for not watching videos, but if you piss them off they'll make sure no one sees yours.