Safety

Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones sat down with Tech Crunch to discuss women on the platform no longer making the first move, potential new safety features, AI, and other plans to enhance the app.

In a recent interview Jones shared that she is reconsidering the basic premise of Bumble: that women make the first move. Instead, she said that women should be given the choice of whether they want to make the first move or not, giving them more control in their dating experience.

Jones assured Tech Crunch that her goal of empowering women on the platform remains steadfast: “Our brand awareness is so high, it’s amazing. And if you ask anybody about Bumble, they’ll say it’s about women, and the core of that is not changing. We are a company that really cares about women’s empowerment.”

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.”

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.

Tinder has just launched a new online course in partnership with youth platform Yuvaa to educate young daters on consent.

The 90-minute self-learning course entitled “Let’s Talk Consent” will be available for free on the Coursera platform, and is intended to be a resource for young adults in India to learn about interpersonal consent.

According to CNBC, there are five main topics in the course: “understanding consent in personal relationships, setting and enforcing personal boundaries, recognizing signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships via red, green and gray flags, and navigating online and offline interactions with safety and respect.”

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.

Tinder is expanding its AI-powered ID Verification feature to the U.S., U.K., Brazil, and Mexico, making it available by this summer.

According to the company’s press release, the new safety feature requires users to upload a video selfie and a valid Driver’s License or Passport. The AI-powered feature will then check to see if the face in the video selfie matches both the photo ID and the user’s profile photos, and will check the date of birth on the official ID.

The new feature adds another layer of security to using Photo Verification alone, where video selfies are compared to photos. Now, the official ID is also checked as part of the process.