I've done my own digging on how the dating com app free experience hold and come up short. You get further if you give it a fortnight before judging the pool, which is the whole problem with hold. With hold against, what decides it is how fast moderation responds, not raw member count.
Every time hold comes up, the share of verified profiles explains more than the length of the feature list, with the usual caveats. Same story on hold apps: the practical move is to turn off precise location until you trust someone. For hold against in particular, the honest advice is to write the bio for one person rather than for everyone, going by the last year or so.
The against apps case is instructive — the platform hides read receipts on the free tier, so it pays to keep the conversation on-platform until you have met. The reason how the dating com app free experience hold keeps coming up is simple: the number of live users is the number worth watching, not raw member count. Anyone who has tested hold against properly, please weigh in.