Tinder

A committee from the U.S. House of Representatives is investigating popular dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid following a report that found underage users and sex offenders were using the apps.

According to a report from AP, the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy sent separate letters on Thursday January 30th to Bumble, Grindr, The Meet Group, and Match Group (which owns Tinder and OkCupid among others). The letters asked for information on “users’ ages, procedures for verifying ages, and any complaints about assaults, rape or the use of the services by minors,” according to AP.

The subcommittee is also seeking additional information on privacy policies for each of the apps, and what users see when they are asked to review or accept such policies. Recently, dating apps have also come under fire for third-party sharing of personal data, where user information wouldn’t be protected by the dating app’s own privacy policy.

A New York City task force on cyber sexual assault has discovered more than 70,000 photos of Tinder users on an online cyber-crime forum. Aaron DeVera, a member of the task force, told reporters that the images were found on a site known for trading in malicious software and that only female users appear to have been targeted.

Gizomodo was the first outlet to share the news. According to the original report, the photos were accompanied by a text file containing around 16,000 unique Tinder user IDs. Items found in the photos, like the iPhone X, and metadata indicate that many of the pictures are relatively current — some, in fact, have timestamps dated as recent as October 2019. The availability of this information to cybercriminals raises serious concerns about why it was collected and what it could be used for.

Boomers are looking for love and increasingly turning to dating apps to do it. But Tinder isn’t necessarily what they are looking for.

BBC reported that the demographics with the biggest growth for dating app usage are 18-24-year-olds and those over 50. Between 2013 and 2015 when Tinder began to take off, online dating tripled for the younger demographic and doubled for those aged 55-64, according to Pew Research Center.

However, older daters were finding obstacles in using popular apps like Tinder that continue to cater to young users. For example, when Tinder launched its premium paid service, the company charged significantly more for older users, which caused an outcry. Some dating apps don’t let people over 50 sign up at all, so boomers were either having to lie about their ages or look for another platform. 

It seems like almost every Tinder user has a horror story. For some, it’s a first date that looks nothing like their photos. For others, it’s being ghosted after weeks of messaging back and forth. And for many, it’s connections that end in harrassment, discrimination, insults, unwanted sexual advances and other ills that online dating has become notorious for.

Tinder is hoping to curb behavior that violates its community standards with a recent update. The company announced in a blog post that it will now use artificial intelligence to detect offensive messages before they reach their intended recipients. The feature, called Does This Bother You?, is powered by machine learning and aided by human members of the Tinder community. Similar technology also plays a role in Undo, an upcoming feature that will allow Tinder members to take back a message containing potentially offensive language before it’s sent.

Recipient of Gold
Tinder

Recipient of Silver
POF

Recipient of Bronze
Match

The 2020 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll went online October 1^st, 2019. It ran for 3 months and then closed for voting on December 31^st, 2019. 513 visitors took time and cast their vote in the poll. The poll asked the following question:

Which dating app or site would you recommend for the Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award?

Voters get to choose 1 dating service from a selection of 10 of the top dating services in 2019. These services are selected by the Editors of DatingSitesReviews.com. For this award the dating service which received the most votes gets the Gold, second place gets Silver, and the third, Bronze.

It was a really close race this year. The top 3 results differed by only 2% in votes (usually this number is much greater). The votes for all the dating services were much more evenly spread out with the lowest and highest only having just less than a 10% difference (this number in previous years could be higher than 30%). What this tells us is that the dating services have matured and user experiences and successes have evened out more across the competition.

The recipient of the 2020 Single's Choice Gold Award is Tinder. Tinder received almost 15% of the vote which works out to 76 votes. Tinder was the winner of Gold as well last year but had 17% of the vote.

The recipient of the 2020 Single's Choice Silver Award is POF (Plenty of Fish). Once again POF comes in second place with 13.65% of the vote (70 votes in total). This is an improvement for them over last year when comparing votes by about half a percent.

The recipient of the 2020 Single's Choice Bronze Award is Match.com. Match received 12.67% of the votes (65 votes) and almost was able to achieve second place. In fact Match missed out on this award last year and it is the first time a paid only dating service has won when competing against free dating services (in previous years we had separated free and paid services in the poll). So this is quite an accomplishment.

Recipient
Tinder

Tinder is this years recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Over All award. In most years the winner of this award usually goes to the the Editors choice of the best paid dating service or the best free dating service. This year is different though.

So why did Tinder stand out over either award winners Match and POF?