Sep 05, 2019 Facebook Dating won’t match you with friends, unless you choose to use Secret Crush and you both add each other to your list. All of your Dating activity will stay in Facebook Dating. It won’t be shared to the rest of Facebook. People will soon be able to connect and share with Facebook and Instagram Stories. May 07, 2018 Facebook Dating is accessed through Facebook’s main mobile apps for iOS and Android. There is no separate Facebook Dating app and no web-based version of the dating service. To begin using Facebook Dating, download the Facebook app and enter your regular Facebook login credentials.

Facebook Dating doesn’t have any virtual dating features, per se. There’s no way to video chat directly in the app and your matches are limited to those around you, even though you can expand. Facebook Dating can now be accessed in the United States and 19 other countries through world’s largest social network’s mobile app. About 7 in 10 Americans use Facebook, so millions — if not tens of millions — have likely already tried the new matchmaking feature. Millions more are surely wondering if they should trust it.

Well, it finally happened: Facebook has entered the online dating sphere. Although Facebook Dating began rolling out in numerous countries just about a year ago, it only just launched in the United States, going live on Sept. 5. If you’re into the online dating scene, you’re undoubtedly wondering whether Facebook Dating is safe — which is absolutely an essential topic to consider before deciding to use the service or not. When it comes down to it, the bottom line is that Facebook Dating is about as safe as any other kind of online dating: There are always risks, and generally we’ve got to be realistic about what we can and can’t control and act accordingly; however, the system does come with some features in place to help mitigate some of those risks.

First things first: If you’re concerned about privacy, Facebook Dating is opt-in — so if you have no interest in using the service, it won't be an issue for you. A Facebook Dating profile will never be made for you unless you choose to make one, so you can feel free to straight-up ignore the feature and carry on. What’s more, if you do opt in, your Facebook Dating activity isn’t share to the rest of Facebook, so the only way people who don’t match with you will know you’re using Facebook Dating is if you share with them that you are. (It also goes without saying that you can delete your Facebook Dating profile at any time, too, right? Right.)

You also have a high degree of control over both what’s in your Dating profile and which elements of your profile get shown to other users. According to a press release on Facebook Dating’s safety and privacy tools provided to Bustle, the only thing that will come with you from your regular Facebook profile to your Facebook Dating profile (and again, only if you choose to create a Facebook Dating profile in the first place) is your first name and age; you choose whether any other information makes its way from one profile to the other. Additionally, you’re also in control of how you appear to other users: Per the press release, “whether you provide different information than you have on your Facebook profile, and if you share details such as your hometown, religion, occupation, and more within Dating” are entirely up to you.

One of the other safety-related perks of Facebook Dating is that you can choose specifically to be matched with friends of your Facebook friends — meaning you can vet people with whom the service matches you with people who already know them. Of course, that’s not necessarily a complete fail-safe; there’s only so much anyone can really know about anyone else, and to use one of the most serious examples, abusers are often really good at keeping their abusive actions hidden from other people. However, this feature of Facebook Dating does provide an additional way to check up on the people you’re matched with — if you’re matched with a friend of someone you trust and ask about them, you can take their opinion into consideration before you decide to message or meet up with your match.

If you do decide to meet up with someone you match with on Facebook Dating, you can also use the “Share Your Plans” feature to let a trusted friend know the details of our date. Basically, this feature is just a high-tech version of the oft-repeated dating advice to let someone you trust know where you’re going, when, and with whom when you’re seeing someone you’re still getting to know; the idea is for someone to be able to check on you in the event that something goes south. The difference here, though, is that “Share Your Plans” lets you share your exact location live you can share your exact location live — so, your safety buddy won’t just know where you are because you told them; they’ll actually be able to see where you are—and if you’re still where you told them you’d be.

Lastly, there are block features built into Facebook Dating. In the privacy settings section of Dating, tapping on “Block people in Dating” will allow you to build a list of anyone you don’t want to have access to you or your profile within Dating. Anyone you’ve blocked won’t be able to see your Dating profile or send you messages; they also won’t be suggested to you as potential matches. (Note, though, that putting someone on your Dating block list doesn’t affect interactions on the rest of Facebook.) Additionally, photos, links, payments, or videos can’t be sent in Facebook Dating messages — which means that no one will have to contend with unsolicited dick pics, among other things. And honestly, anything that cuts down on the number of unsolicited dick pics ambushing unsuspecting people is a good thing.

Again, though, it’s always worth exercising other common-sense safety measures — and remembering that there’s only so much we can control. As Cassie Werber pointed out at Quartz in 2017, statistics on how safe or dangerous online dating is aren’t readily available; the unfortunate reality is, though, that even though online dating is commonplace these days and can often lead to successful and healthy relationships, there’s still a certain amount of risk involved. It’s very easy to create a fake online dating profile, for example — and it’s easy to create a fake Facebook profile, as well. That means that creating a fake Facebook Dating profile probably won’t be all that difficult.

So, even if Facebook Dating’s goal is to be as safe and secure as possible, you’ll still want to stack the decks in your favor, safety-wise: Don’t reveal too much about yourself right off the bat; Google both yourself (so you know what your potential matches can find out about you) and your matches (so you can verify they’re who they say they are) before meeting up; when you’re just getting to know someone, make plans to meet up in public places, make sure you have your own transportation lined up, and tell someone you trust where you’re going, when, and with who. You can check out more online dating safety tips here.

Facebook was always about friends. But now it’s also about love. The social media giants have launched Facebook Dating in the U.S., their answer to Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Bumble and other dating apps. The new feature brings together Facebook’s networking infrastructure and data to help find matches that suit you.

For company that knows you as intimately as Facebook does, it makes total sense that a dating service launched. But with all its controversies, including an ongoing antitrust investigation, do we really want Facebook deeper into our lives?

A separate app within your app

Facebook Dating lives within your Facebook app. The extension is made available to users 18 and above, who need to opt-in and activate their Dating profile – kids on Facebook won’t randomly chance upon a new dating app that lets them meet suitors in town.

Once activated, it requests for your gender, who you’re interested in, a bunch of T&Cs and several privacy settings. You can tweak your dating location, distance from you, age and height preferences. You can even indicate religious preferences and whether you’re okay with your date having children.

It’ll probably be a relief to note that information on Dating is separate from your usual Facebook app. It goes to certain lengths to make them distinct: It makes you create a whole new profile, and all the details you want shown.

Free Dating On Facebook

It ensures your Facebook friends won’t show up on Dating profile; and you can remove friends of friends from potential matches to avoid awkward encounters.

FB Dating also lets you block certain people from ever seeing your Dating profile.

How’s it different?

Much like Tinder, Facebook Dating lets you scroll through endless cards of individuals looking for dates. But instead of swiping, you click on crosses and hearts. It also has a “second look” function to backtrack and revisit matches you’ve passed on.

As you’d expect, Dating takes advantage of plenty of its big brother’s immense pool of data and features. The app can suggest other users who have in common events you’ve attended, stuff you’ve liked and groups followed on your main account.

A unique feature called Secret Crush lets you list individuals from your Facebook friends and Instagram Followers. If they ever join Dating, they’ll be notified that someone has a “crush” on them. If they add you to their “crush” list as well, you’ll be instantly matched, as if to accelerate the dating process. Besides this occasion, Facebook promises never to reveal your crushes – if you’re fickle, you can have up to nine!

Facebook sure is bent on speeding up the matching process. The app lets interact with other users by letting you comment on their profile pictures despite not “matching” with them. This could get annoying very fast.

How To Use Dating Facebook

It’s boldly clamped down on how liberally users can use its chats, though. Chats are limited to text and GIFs only. No links, photos, payments and videos can be shared on Facebook Dating. These restrictions are a heavy-handed answer to porn-bot spams, unwelcome photos and other scams that have brought dating apps to infamy. This is a courageous move that could really make dating apps a healthier place. It’s often been stigmatised as a platform for predatory behaviour as well as encouraging a hook-up culture.

Should we trust Facebook? tl;dr – NO

Where do we begin with this? On the surface, Facebook Dating seems to be putting user choice and privacy front and centre. You’ll notice that unlike Tinder and other apps, you can’t take screenshots on Facebook Dating (although frankly, nothing stops you from grabbing your friends’ phone and taking a picture of your screen). Dating also asks if you’re cool with matching with “friends of friends.”

Then you start to scratch beneath the surface and realize it’s not all transparent.

A big fuss about targeted advertising and other forms of AI recommendations is how algorithms are programmed to make these suggestions. What information is Facebook Dating sorting through to match you with say, Dennis from Texas?

Facebook has been alarmingly good at recommending friends you may know, and we can expect the same from Facebook Dating. While you have the option of enabling matching with profiles with mutual friends, former schools and groups, Facebook said it will still take into consideration these data when making its recommendations.

The difference is, your matches won’t know this information unless you’ve made it public. These details just feed its pairing algorithm.

Beyond its lack of transparency, this is still a heavily “red-flagged” company. Facebook has had a dismal track record when it comes to safeguarding users’ information and privacy.

Just this week, Facebook admitted to exposing 419 million phone numbers in an open online database, because it wasn’t protected with a password. In June 2018, a glitch on Instagram made private posts of 14 million users go public. Do we even need to bring up Cambridge Analytica?

Facebook clearly have a privacy issue. Facebook Dating will potentially collect intimate information about us on a level we’ve never seen before.

One’s romantic preferences, emotions, vulnerabilities, fetishes and mistakes are all laid out on the problematic platform. If Facebook can’t keep our numbers safe, can we really trust them with details of who we fancy?