Over the past year+, many male Hinge users here have reported an unfortunate bug where they only see Hinge’s lowest-rated users in their Discover section.
Here are a few examples from the Hinge subreddit. I’ve also seen other examples in Game Facebook and Telegram groups:
Does anyone still keep on getting Obese or transgender people?
Hinge only showing me very obese people
Hinge Only showing me unattractive people
Because of the sensitive nature of this topic, these users will frequently been told that they are conceited/rude/unattractive/mean, et cetera, and/or that they need to work on their profiles and take better photos and so on.
I’m here to tell you that this is all untrue, and that there is indeed a bug with Hinge that has been going on for years. I haven’t seen anyone post about this bug publicly, so I figured I’d start one as a centralized place where we can all discuss commonalities and solutions.
It first happened to me in 2018, and has persisted despite multiple resets. I first pointed it out on the Hinge subreddit in May 2019 (and of course was promptly shellacked by offended users, instead of people acknowledging there might be an issue with Hinge).
About a month ago, recreated a Hinge profile again after a year and a half. New email address, new phone, maybe only the number was the same — same behavior, except this time, it’s all unattractive profiles, not broken up by the odd superattractive profile like before.
Luckily, there’s a way to get around this:
Workaround
What we know about how to fix this so far is to set your age and distance settings to very constrained, and then swipe through all the unattractive profiles quickly in that setting, whereupon you’ll finally be shown profiles that are attractive.
For example, set your age range to 26-27 and distance to 1 mile. The least attractive profiles will still be shown first, but you can swipe through them faster and use up your daily likes on the attractive ones quicker.
Many guys have reported that the bug has subsided after they started matching with girls they liked using the workaround method. Personally, I haven’t noticed this after a couple months of swiping and liking, despite matching with a number of attractive women, but it’s possible it takes a while.
Will Hinge fix the bug?
I first let Hinge know about this bug in 2018 through their Zendesk support form. I did not receive a response. I encourage anyone reading this post to send them an email and link them to the post. They can’t ignore us for long.
Pancake Mouse 
Wow! I’ve avoided this app for so long for this very reason.. just tried this fix and it’s a game changer! Literally worked instantly! Thanks a million!
LikeLike
Hey mate, this definitely happens.
I think it’s a shadow ban, I fixed it by change my number after multiple resets.
LikeLike
It’s not a shadowban, it seems to happen to a certain percentage of men at random, some of whom have never been shadowbanned or banned.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have been experiencing this problem for over a year. I recently moved to Manhattan and for some reason thought the change of scenery would resolve the issue. Still, I set my range to a mile and only shown unattractive. In such a big city, do you think it’s a good idea to delete my profile and try again with a different phone number? Thanks
LikeLike
You can try, yeah. But honestly I don’t mind it, once you swipe through the ugly girls you get a nice narrow range you can like from.
LikeLike
It could also happen if you are getting too many left swipes / x’s from women. Have realistic expectations i.e. don’t heart profiles that have different lifestyle choices from you i.e. politics, religion, are your height or taller, smoking/drinking etc.
LikeLike
This is unbelievable. After 24 hours on hinge I hit a wall where the quality dropped from acceptable to heinous. Like I’m not exaggerating when I say that at least 20% of the faces hurt my brain to look at. I got on here to find people I could be with, not look at for 1 second and be biologically repulsed by. It’s uncanny. It’s like the app is trolling me. Crooked faces bad skin and round bodies. Like wtf, that’s not close to representative of the human biomass. Fuck their lame algo.
Your fix worked instantly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You should remove that video. It’s completely unnecessary, and not fair at all on the girls who are in it.
I’m not a snowflake / woke head and I’m all for discussing this issue, but it’s disgusting to showcase it with real girls in the video. Could be your daughter or sister:
LikeLike
I’ve tried making this point without a video. It doesn’t work. People just think you’re being mean, that you don’t “value attractiveness”, that you have “low ELO”, etc.
The ONLY way to unite guys around this bug is to show an actual video of what it looks like. Then you get the a-ha moment of : “oh, yeah. that happens to me.”
The video is not ideal, I agree. But from a utilitarian perspective, I’m leaving it.
LikeLike
THANK YOU FOR THIS! My stack was complete garbage, I hadn’t been even using the 8 likes a day, and it was driving me crazy because with the same six photos on tinder, I could have a week where I would meet up with multiple matches.
LikeLike
This is 100% true as I’m experiencing the same right now and it has been this way for months now.
This problem apparently has been going on for a few years. It’s 2022 and still no improvement whatsoever.
Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking you’re being conceited or superficial for pointing this out. They know their app very well and they know that this is an ongoing problem. They just don’t wanna admit it, at least openly. Absolutely shameful!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Honestly, what is going on with the people who made this app? I just downloaded it and started getting shown a few decent profiles then the next day it is literally like I’ve been shadow banned and only getting shown the types demo’d in the vid…. hard to think this is just a “bug” and not just some fucked up alogrithm they have in place to shatter average guys egos and push the females onto the top 10% of dudes.
LikeLike
maybe a bit of an incel-esque take but frustrating that if you didn’t look this up and google the solution you’re basically gonna think ur unnattractive af.
LikeLike
Hey what about this happens on tinder? I am probably shadowbanned. Have you got the chance to test this on tinder? As I got like 20 likes first night but all of them are unattractive or fake profiles. And my stack is full of them with very little attractive ones in between?
LikeLike
Lmaoo this actually fixed it
Thank you so much!
LikeLike
Wouldn’t it be the case though that the pool of people who see you gets smaller so you get fewer daily likes? granted, i think the trade off is generally worth it, but still something to note
LikeLike