Searching for people yourself on these apps got entirely replaced by the match/swipe gimmicks. They claimed it was for your own good to reduce harassment or whatever, but it's really just more profitable to gatekeep.
It does seem anti-user. A decade ago I could sort by % personality/interest in common (on OKC) or just look at everyone (on PoF). I can only imagine that women are still harassed, and that a messaging filter would have otherwise been trivial to implement.
