Yeah, they work. To a certain point. Over the last decade or so I got dozens of dates. If you are engaging in conversation, asking interesting questions and are generally nice to talk to (and your profile and picture show this upfront) you can get dates.
But it gets increasingly harder to get matches as a platform gains popularity. Apps usually put newcomers to the top of the stack to make them visible and get them matches. The older your profile, the more profiles are newer then yours and you slowly fall down the stack. When the app grows in size, you are quicker to go down the stack.
In addition to that it seems every app has a certain demographic progression: At first more women use a new app. They don’t get that much matches and are more likely to match. As time goes on this changes, as men are joining and making up 70% of the user base. Now woman are flooded with people wanting to match and you are unlikely to stick out or, what happens more often: people are overwhelmed and just stop interacting.
My extensive use of apps showed me that you can be most successful in fairly new apps. Bumble used to be really awesome until it got popular.
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