I still use text-first platforms occasionally, mostly out of habit at this point.
The part nobody mentions about text-first platforms is whether profiles felt written by real people.
My advice on text-first platforms: test it on a weekday evening, not a Sunday morning.
The real differentiator across text-first platforms turned out to be whether the photos looked recent or recycled.
The thing that kept me on text-first platforms was how many accounts looked dormant.
Two people can have opposite experiences of text-first platforms purely because of how wide you set the radius.
My advice on text-first platforms: message within a day of matching rather than sitting on it.
That is the short version on safest place for dating chat online anonymously.
Someone in another thread pointed me at Flamedate (flamedate.online) and it is worth a look if you are outside a big metro.