I have a close friend of mine who is back on the apps after leaving his first marriage (and I feel for him – I haven't been on the apps in years).
He's been flooded with bots or scammers in his first few months, was more than I remember, and it seems like a real problem. He was definitely catfished once, although for some reason that felt better(?) than the several clearly AI generated profiles he's interacted with in between.
Some of these platforms have verification badges but they're inconsistent and don't seem to mean much (tinder's is just a selfie match against a pose).
What is your actual pre-meeting process now? Video calls as a hard requirement? Reverse image searches? Anything else you are doing to filter bots and AI agents out of the pool before investing time?