With my Hanlon Razor hat on, how much is this deliberate vs. natural emergent behaviour?

It if course true that the incentives on the platform are to prevent permanent relationships. But can they really tell "these two would make a very good match so let's keep them apart, this match here is at best adequate, let's do this one instead"? My gut feeling would be that they cannot tell.

But then of course the whole design of the platform prevents deep connection. About 70-80% of the information is encoded in a photo that is not even guaranteed to be realistic. And the point of the platform is to be a rich marketplace where you keep trying. That's the USP before you get into any further design choices.

Platforms like Harmony Online existed for a long time and IIUC they were optimising for long term matches, and for whatever reason they were not as popular as eg Tinder.