The Match Group Knows About Serial Sexual Abusers on Its Platform ⇥ themarkup.org

Emily Elena Dugdale and Hanisha Harjani, the Markup (please note this story contains several descriptions of sexual assault):

“It is shocking that for years after receiving reports of sexual assault, Hinge continued to allow Stephen Matthews access to its platforms and actively facilitated his abuse,” said Laura Wolf, the attorney representing the woman whose police report led to the arrest. Following best practices for reporting on sexual assault, the Dating Apps Reporting Project is honoring survivors’ requests for anonymity. Matthews’ attorney, Douglas Cohen, declined to comment. A letter that The Dating Apps Reporting Project sent directly to Matthews in jail went unanswered.

Match Group’s reach is so massive — its mission is “to spark meaningful connections for every single person worldwide” — that people are more likely to meet through its apps than out at the bars, at church, or through friends.

This is, in part, a problem of platform moderation at scale — but the Match Group choosing to scale beyond the capabilities of what it is willing to manually moderate is a self-created problem.

Most of the dating apps you can name are likely part of the Match Group, which includes Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Tinder, and Match itself. The sad irony of the breadth of Match’s offerings is that it has enormous power when it is presented with evidence of abuse. If you start poking around the web for guides to evade these bans, you will find plenty of people who swear up and down they were kicked off one or more Match Group products for no good reason. I am sure some of them are lying — perhaps most. Some are probably telling the truth, though, because moderation is hard. Again, it is the platform’s choice to scale.

In the context of dating apps, it is best to err on the side of being a little ban-happy. And, if there is a pattern of abuse — as there was in the case profiled in this article — I cannot think of a good reason why someone would not be reported to authorities.