How your Discovery feed works

What the feed does

When you open Discover, we show you real people near you. That's genuinely it.

Profiles are ordered by how close someone is, how recently they've been active, and whether their intro has just gone up — intros in their first 3 hours rank higher, less so up to 12 hours, so a new intro gets seen. We then apply the preferences you've set — the age range you're interested in, the genders you'd like to meet, and your maximum distance. Intros you've already sparked move down, and so does anyone you already have a conversation with — where either of you has sent the other a video. That way the feed keeps showing you someone new. Accounts flagged by our fraud systems are pushed to the bottom.

Every profile you see is a real person who passed age verification and recorded a video intro. A minimum age floor of 18 applies to every feed, unconditionally.

Data points we use

To decide the order of your feed, we use:

• Your location — to calculate distance from other users
• Your preferences — age range, gender(s), and maximum distance
• Recent activity — when someone last signed in, so you see people who are actually around
• When an intro went up — intros in their first 3 hours rank higher, less so up to 12 hours. Extending an intro's window does not renew it, and it never applies to an intro you've already sparked, or to anyone you already have a conversation with
• Your past interactions — an intro you've already sparked, and anyone you already have a conversation with — where either of you has sent the other a video, answered or not — move down rather than being shown to you again
• Fraud signals — accounts our safety systems have flagged are demoted

What we do not do

This is the part most dating apps don't tell you. Ether does not use:

• Engagement ranking — no scoring by predicted engagement, attractiveness, or any behavioural model
• Behavioural profiling — we don't track how long you linger on a profile, or build a hidden "desirability" score for you
• Artificial scarcity — we don't withhold profiles to keep you scrolling longer
• Paid boosts or sponsored slots — you cannot pay to appear higher in anyone's feed
• Shadow banning — if your account is in good standing, you appear in feeds normally. The only accounts we demote are the ones our fraud systems have flagged, and that's the "good standing" part.

We think black-box feed manipulation is harmful, so our algorithm is deliberately simple — simple enough to explain on one page.

Regions: a celebration, not a gate

Ether launches region by region across the UK, with honest public countdowns on the live map. Crossing a regional threshold changes nothing about how the app works — for you or for anyone else. No features unlock, nothing is withheld beforehand, and feed ranking does not change. When a region lights up, that's a celebration of the people who got it there. Nothing more.

The same goes for the Founding Fifty badge worn by the first fifty members in each region: it is cosmetic recognition, and it never influences feed ranking, matching, or visibility.

Questions or concerns

If you have questions about how your data is used in the feed, or want to exercise your data rights, use the Privacy Centre in the app's Settings, see our Privacy Policy, or email contact@ether.dating.