Industry

Yoel Roth, former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, has now accepted a position as vice president of trust and safety at Match Group.

According to Tech Crunch, Roth will be responsible for developing policies and standards concerning safety across all Match Group apps.

The new VP made the announcement on his LinkedIn page: “As they say… some personal news! I swiped right on Match Group! 15 years ago, I started studying what we now call ‘trust and safety’ because the then-new world of dating apps felt like the Wild West; it’s truly a dream come true to get to roll up my sleeves and work to protect the millions of people making connections on our apps worldwide.”

Dating app Tinder has agreed to provide more transparency about its pricing for premium services to users in the EU. The agreement follows a probe from the European Union’s consumer watchdog agencies when complaints surfaced from daters who were charged different fees for the same service.

According to Reuters, Tinder agreed to better inform users about its pricing, specifically the personalized discounts it offered. Users who showed little interest in purchasing one of the dating app’s standard premium services were later offered personalized discounts to get them to pay for Tinder. It was also disclosed that the app was using automation to identify these users and to personalize the prices for them.

In fact, a study in Sweden in 2022 showed that Tinder was offering 36 different “personalized” price levels, ranging from about $3 U.S. to as much as $36 per month for the same premium service, which prompted the investigation.

A new report on dating app security found that a majority of 70 percent of dating app users had been scammed on one of the dating platforms.

According to Newsweek, the study surveyed people who had used dating apps over the past three years, and 93 percent said they would go back to using the apps, even those who said they were scammed or had their information stolen.

When users sign up for these platforms, their personal information, even social security numbers, become vulnerable to scammers. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed said they were asked to verify their identity on a dating app and 65 percent said they’d provided their social security numbers.

Grindr CEO George Arison is hoping to turn things around for the popular gay dating app after a tumultuous year with employees, investors and app users alike. He is focusing on moving Grindr beyond a hookup app, and in streamlining costs.

According to a feature in The Financial Times, an “a la carte” payment option for travel services will be added to boost the company’s revenue. Arison noted that travelling to events such as Aspen Gay Ski Week and New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro is hugely popular among Grindr users, and the company sees advantages to offering those attending a way to connect.

Grindr is currently testing a feature called Teleport, which lets users place their profile in a new location for an hour to connect with others before traveling to that place. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport, where users can mark their location at a place where they are traveling.

Dating app Bumble is refocusing its brand and has announced significant layoffs following a disappointing fourth quarter earnings report.

The popular female-forward dating company plans to cut 30% of its staff, or 350 employees, and revamp its app to focus on its friend-finding feature.

Bumble also plans to relaunch the app in the second quarter and offer a “compelling modern experience” with a “stronger appeal to younger users” according to Axios, citing Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones’s remarks in the company’s earnings call. The new features focus on making profile-building easier, with “insights on profile pictures, and better app performance” according to Axios.

Dating app Bumble agreed to pay the state of New Jersey $315,000 in a settlement after the state’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin argued that the dating company violated state consumer protection and internet dating safety laws. The lawsuit alleged that Bumble allowed convicted sex offenders and other criminals on the app without warning other users.

Starting in 2020, the Division of Consumer Affairs launched an investigation into Bumble and Badoo dating platforms amid concerns of sexual assault occurring on the dating apps, and found that the company either “inaccurately represented their criminal background screening policies or failed to disclose them all,” according to NJBiz.com. They concluded that this violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and the Internet Dating Safety Act.

Bumble Inc. owns both Bumble and Badoo dating apps.