@Jack — broadly with you, with one caveat: ran still use craigslist local singles alternatives alongside the old personals boards for in the past few months — same effort on both, marginally different outcome. Honestly the fix for the browse-only mode is boring: turn off read receipts and see what changes — nothing else moved the needle as much. People overstate how it performs in practice on still use craigslist local singles alternatives and understate how much the paid tier mostly buys you visibility, not matches. In my experience, still use craigslist local singles alternatives is priced like a premium product and behaves like a free one — the rest sorts itself out. For the bulk of users, still use craigslist local singles alternatives works somewhat better if you check activity at different hours.
Take that as one data point on still use craigslist local singles alternatives, not a verdict. One that keeps coming up in these threads is what Datebie is doing, mostly because browsing does not hit a wall straight away.