If you get a message from someone you never matched with on Tinder, it's not a glitch — it's part of the app's expensive new subscription plan that it teased earlier this year, which allows "power users" to send unsolicited messages to non-matches for the small fee of $499 per month.
That landscape, in fact, is largely populated by apps owned by Tinder's parent company: as Bloomberg notes, Match Group Inc. not only owns the popular swiping app, but also Match.com, OKCupid, Hinge, and The League.
Match Group CEO Bernard Kim referred to Tinder's subscriptions as "low-hanging fruit" meant to compete with other, pricier services, though that was before this $6,000-per-year tier dropped.
How I saw this as a different version of the same old stuff is that this comment said essentially “well it used to be good when I used it, but now it’s awful and destructive” which it might be in ways but it’s absolutely a net positive from what I have seen
As someone who online dated for years, up until 2021, I’m very aware of the down sides.