Privacy Breaches, Dating App Safety, and AI - Oh My!

How We Ended up with the Tea App Breach and What Are the Alternatives

It was revealed a few days ago that the Tea app that allows women to rate male daters and run them through a "Catfish Finder AI" got hacked. Over 72,000 selfies, ID pictures, and other user images were apparently exposed in the process. Then it turned out that users' direct messages about sensitive topics such as abortions or cheating were revealed as well.

It's easy to dismiss this incident as another instance of a private company failing to safeguard user data properly. But it's worth asking first how we got here. Safety apps such as Tea and social media groups that seek to protect people from dating app abuse have been labeled "vigilante justice." Why do we have this highly imperfect system of reporting abusive dating app behavior, however, along with tenuous frameworks of data storage?

In short, because current dating app use, in a largely unregulated environment, is dangerous yet often unavoidable if one wants to find a romantic partner. Some data suggests that one in three women who have used dating apps have experienced sexual assault as a result. As I discuss in my scholarship (such as in my forthcoming article "Tinder Backgrounds" here), the law currently does little to address or prevent this and other related forms of abuse.

So is it any wonder that dating app users, including especially women, have resorted to self-help in the form of online gossip networks? Most of the writers who attack these types of self-help offer little by way of alternatives and seem mainly focused on the privacy harms to the men being posted at the expense of the physical and other harms to the women who have few other options to warn others. As I argue in "Tinder Backgrounds," this will not change until we create mandated mechanisms on dating apps that would--unlike the Tea app--ensure that the data being collected for purposes of identification and background checks is stored in keeping with recognized safety standards.

Hence, the Tea app breach is actually illustrative of the exact opposite of what it seems at first. In addition to all the other harms it creates, the current lack of regulation of dating apps is hurting privacy rather than helping it.