A stunning report by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism has ripped back the curtain on how unprepared companies are to handle user complaints. The investigation revealed operational incompetence and clearly show that the apps so many of us use are defective products.
We have been arguing for years that it is scandalous that the multibillion-dollar online dating industry — an industry which specifically facilitates in-person intimate encounters — has no meaningful standards for responding to reports of harm and removing offenders from platforms. Most companies have loosely defined procedures that force employees to rely on their own judgment. Such systems frequently fail victims.
Experts say online dating companies routinely fail to anticipate abuse and implement safeguards to prevent it. That meant, in later years, more than 1 mllion users per staffer. No one collects official statistics on online dating sexual assault in the U. Among this small group, more than a third of the women said they were sexually assaulted by someone they had met through a dating app.
Of these women, more than half said they were raped. Companies use geolocation to find matches for users, and he lives within a 3-mile radius of her Brooklyn apartment. When she spotted him on Tinder that year, Emily says she alerted the platform.
Again, she never received a response. The investigation also tells the stories of people like Natalie Dong, who was raped in her home by a man she met on dating website Coffee Meets Bagel.
