Why Did Plenty of Fish Remove My Photo?

Plenty of Fish takes down photos that use a filter and photos that are not of you, such as pets, food, cars or memes. It also removes photos that show kids without you in them, or that show someone else's kids. A second group of images can get an account permanently banned, so it is worth knowing which group your photo fell into.

The removals fall into two groups, and they are handled very differently.

The first group is about what a dating photo should be. Filtered photos, photos that are not of you, and photos of kids without you or of other people's kids get removed. Your account carries on.

The second group is about images that should not be on a dating app at all. Those can cost you the whole account, permanently, and they are covered further down.

If your account is still there and only one photo came down, it broke one of the rules in the first group. Work out which one, because that tells you what to put up in its place.

A filter does not have to give you dog ears to count. Skin smoothing, heavy color effects and face-slimming tools all change what you look like, and POF removes filtered photos.

The rule is on your side, even if it does not feel that way. Women on the apps know that photos flatter people, and many of them have sat down across from a date who looked nothing like his pictures. A filtered photo makes her wonder what else has been edited.

An unfiltered photo taken in good daylight looks like you on a good day. That is the most any photo should promise, because it is what she will see when you walk in.

A photo of your dog, your dinner, your car or a meme you like does not show her you, and POF removes photos like that.

It does nothing for you anyway. She is trying to picture an evening with you, and a steak on a plate gives her no help at all.

The fix is not to lose the dog or the car. It is to get in the photo with them. You laughing while the dog climbs all over you shows her a man with a dog. The dog on its own shows her a dog.

POF removes photos of kids without you in them, and photos that show someone else's kids.

If you are a father, a photo with your children can be part of an honest page, as long as you are in it with them. If the kids are your nieces, nephews or a friend's children, leave them out.

The rule saves you a problem as well. A woman who sees a child in your photos will wonder whether the child is yours. You would rather answer that in a conversation than leave her to guess from a picture.

The second group is where the rules stop being about photo quality. Nudity and drawings can get an account permanently banned. So can copyrighted images, and photos that show identifying details like a license plate. The same goes for violence, drug use and hate imagery.

Two of those catch ordinary men out. A copyrighted image can be a professional photo you never paid for, or a picture you found online and liked. An identifying detail can be your own car's plate sitting in the background of an otherwise good photo. Crop or cover anything like that before it goes up.

Treat the removal as a reason to put up something better. The photo that came down was rarely one of your strongest.

Replace it with a photo where you are easy to see: daylight, your face clear, and you as the only person in it or the obvious one. If the removed photo was your main one, this matters most, because the first photo decides whether she looks at anything else.

If nothing on your phone fits, the fix takes an afternoon. Ask a friend to take photos of you outside in daylight, in two or three places and a couple of different shirts. Take far more than you need and keep the few where you look like yourself on a good day. No friend free? Prop your phone at chest height against a wall and use the timer.

Then look at the rest of your page with the same eye. Does every photo show you, doing something real, somewhere different? Does your bio say anything specific about your week, or is it a list of words like travel and food? A page where every photo is plainly you and the writing sounds like a person gives POF nothing to remove, and gives women something to answer.