Hello, I’d like to point out an issue I noticed with the “Explore” feature that can significantly impact the user experience.

When we select a location on the map to explore profiles in that area, the expected behavior is that profiles will be displayed based on their distance from the selected location, within a certain radius — as shown in the attached image.

However, according to the information provided by support, the app now shows a curated selection of profiles when using Explore, aiming to highlight the “best” matches and potential connections. The exact criteria used for this selection aren’t clear, but this approach can result in profiles being displayed that are not necessarily near the selected location, which can be misleading.

Practical example:
Let’s say I plan to go to a bar, and I use Explore to check for nearby profiles. I select the bar’s location, see several profiles within 500 meters, and decide to go. Once I get there, I realize those profiles are actually 1 to 2 kilometers away — in completely different directions. This defeats the purpose of exploring by location.

There’s another important side effect: in the community, top profiles are relatively rare. Bottoms tend to seek out tops exclusively, while versatile users usually prefer either other versatiles or tops. As a result, both bottoms and versatiles are drawn to tops, but not to each other. This leads to tops getting significantly more attention, which may cause them to appear more prominently — while bottom and versatile profiles that may be closer and more compatible remain buried in the list.

So when a top uses Explore, they may end up mostly seeing other tops that were algorithmically highlighted, while potentially compatible nearby profiles are missed.

Suggestion: the profile ordering should strictly follow distance from the selected location. If additional filtering or curation is used, it would be best to offer it as an optional feature, rather than the default.

Thanks for your attention.