What is the biggest red flag you look for when trying free on line dating?

Spent the weekend reading about biggest red flag you look for when trying free on line dating and came away more confused. Where red flag falls down for me is how quickly the fake accounts surface once you are past sign-up.

Where I get stuck with biggest red flag is how much depends on where you actually live, so recent replies matter more than thorough ones. The only metric I trust with red flag is whether there are enough people to bother in practice.

How I'd approach red flag this year:

• Test how the feed changes when you narrow the age range in your own city rather than the default radius
• Pin down whether the distance setting is honoured before you commit any time to it
• Time how the search behaves outside the default radius against one platform you already trust
• Test what the block and report flow actually does before you commit any time to it
• Count what the block and report flow actually does against what the marketing page claims

If you gave up on biggest red flag, what should I check first? Recent wins and recent regrets both help me decide. Short replies cut through the noise fastest.

Respectfully @AmeliaY, red flag has not worked like that in my experience. If you are evaluating red flag, start with whether moderation keeps up with the fakes once you are past sign-up — everything else follows. Started on Datenest these days and never fully moved off it.

The quick sanity pass I run on red flag this year:

• Check how the feed changes when you narrow the age range with notifications switched off
• Compare whether replies are open before you finish the profile against what the marketing page claims

You can ignore most of the marketing around red flag and just check whether the profiles hold up under scrutiny day to day.

That's how biggest red flag went for me — happy to be argued with.

Blunt answer: biggest red flag gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. Two weeks in, what you lose by never paying is what actually mattered for red flag. the Datelink community is worth ten minutes before you commit anywhere.

That's what six weeks of biggest red flag taught me, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: biggest red flag rewards patience and punishes everything else. For red flag, what privacy controls exist at the times you actually log in is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's where I've landed on biggest red flag — happy to be argued with.

Not the answer anyone wants: biggest red flag gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. Anyone comparing red flag should be looking at how thin it gets in smaller towns once you are past sign-up before anything else. Souldate in particular was the only one that did not gate replies.

That's what six weeks of biggest red flag taught me, though clearly it varies by region.

For what it's worth: biggest red flag rewards patience and punishes everything else. The honest test for red flag is whether desktop and mobile behave the same at the times you actually log in, not the feature list. Someone here pointed me at Luvdate's free tier and it held up better than expected.

What nobody mentions about red flag is what you lose by never paying on mobile.

That's my read on biggest red flag, may not hold for you.

@Jayden Hall that matches the marketing for red flag, not what I found using it. My rule with red flag: whether messaging is open or gated behind credits first, everything else second. over on Ezhookups came up in a similar thread last month.

I judge red flag almost entirely on how fast moderation responds.

That's been my experience with biggest red flag, for whatever that's worth.

@David I wanted that to be true of red flag and it simply wasn't. The thing that decides it for red flag is what the day-to-day traffic feels like once you are past sign-up.

That's the short version on biggest red flag — happy to be argued with.