Dating Apps: The Inside Story (2025) Movie Script
1
- I hit dating apps
with a vengeance.
- The rush of getting
all of those likes.
- My first time on Tinder, I
actually got 200 matches.
- An Argos catalogue,
basically, but with people in it.
- Did you know that Hinge,
Tinder, Plenty of Fish,
OkCupid, Pairs,
Match.com, The League -
they're all owned by a single
conglomerate called Match Group?
- I'm Jonathan Badeen, inventor
of the famed Tinder swipe.
- The things that we monetised,
we tried to make them addictive.
- Tinder, the infamous hook-up
app, has hit eight billion matches.
- It was just the right thing at
the right time for the right people.
- Tinder ruined it.
Tinder turned it into a game.
- Ten years ago, I
would recommend them.
It's changed now.
- Kind of like a necessary evil.
- I do not feel safe
on dating apps at all,
and I feel like it's
getting so much worse.
- That's how detectives have described
a Teesside man who raped five women
in three years after
meeting them on dating apps.
- Dr Matthews was ultimately
convicted of drugging ten different women
and sexually assaulting
eight of those women.
- There are rapes,
murders, kidnappings.
I was dealing with
the worst of the worst.
- I've seen things
you can never unsee.
- This is where Tinder started.
We're on Sunset
Boulevard, West Hollywood,
Beverly Hills, just
down the street.
Famed Viper Room.
Yeah, this building here,
this is where we came up with
the concepts for Tinder.
Every once in a while,
lightning strikes, and...
..struck here.
Hi. I'm Jonathan Badeen,
co-founder of Tinder.
At that time, we were
looking to disrupt things
by going sort of
the mobile route.
And one of the things that we had
noticed was that there really isn't
a predominant dating app -
that basically everything
had been web-based.
And it was also, simultaneously,
something that young people
had never really adopted.
And so we saw this
as an opportunity,
and we essentially went to
where the young people were,
which is on their phone.
And we launched
on August 2nd, 2012.
Basically, friends and
family are on there.
It was not a lot of people.
- There was no
go-to-market campaign.
It was just about, let's make
this cool thing and put it out there.
Period of the sentence.
- It didn't have
a lot of growth.
It was just sort of
sat there for a little bit.
- Like, no-one wanted to
admit, "I was on a dating service,"
because it's like you
had somehow failed in life,
that you needed some
service to help you find a mate.
We were seriously pondering
of, like, how are we going to,
like, ramp up Tinder?
- The very first version of Tinder
didn't actually have the swipe.
We had the heart
and the X buttons.
In the back of my head - I
don't know, for weeks or months -
I was kind of iterating,
trying to solve various issues
where I thought it needed to be
used one-handed, on the move.
One morning, I woke up with an
epiphany of how I would do that.
You would have a stack of cards.
You would swipe in one direction
to put them into the right pile,
or in the other direction
for the wrong pile.
And so that's really
where the swipe was born.
One night, when I was fixing
some bugs, I went ahead,
and turns out I was able
to add swiping capabilities
within a few hours.
And I'm not sure if I even told
everybody that it was in there.
It was never really meant to be
some sort of big key differentiator.
We didn't tell anybody about it.
- The magic of it was that it was
dating made mobile in your hands.
The swipe just kept you going.
That was the thing that kept
our time-on-site numbers, like,
super-duper high.
- At that point, the
marketing really started.
That's where we were
going out to colleges.
- Like, our first real
college marketing was at
University of Southern
California - USC - in LA.
It's not just a
run-of-the-mill state school.
It's, like, a
prestigious school.
- Basically, bussed in all of
these sort of who's who, I guess,
of the USC college
campus for this pool party,
and require users to
have Tinder on their phone.
- No-one had really
done college marketing
the way we tapped it before.
- We're talking about Tinder.
What do you know about Tinder?
- It's a dating app.
- I think people use it
to, like, meet new people
and, like, hook up or whatever.
- They launched Tinder by spreading
the word among college students
at so-called party schools.
- I hate to reduce it like
this, but it was like, basically,
throwing parties for cool kids.
- It was pretty exciting.
But it was really January
2013 - right after holiday break -
that's where things
start to blow up.
- One app that's causing quite
the stir on campus is called Tinder.
- I downloaded a little app that
could called Tinder onto my iPhone,
aka the phone, aka the Great
Swagoo Phone Magnificent.
- Oh, my gosh, - PHONE ALERI just got a message on Tinder.
- Liking someone on the
app is completely anonymous,
unless they like you back.
Then it's a match
made in Tinder heaven.
- This just, like, ready, willing
audience who is just going to, like,
take this in as their
own and adopt it,
and then turn around and
spread it just to all of their friends.
- The same company which
produced Match.com created Tinder
back in October. It was
created to remove the creepiness
of online dating for
college-aged students.
It was piloted on several college
campuses, with progressive results.
Within the first two months, Tinder
served over one million matches.
- Early on, seeding it with
that targeted small, fun,
like, excited user base,
it was like fishing
in a barrel, man.
Like, it was just the right thing at
the right time for the right people.
And they took it,
and they went crazy.
- Hey, hey, Jen.
I saw your picture on Tinder.
Are you regretting
that decision now?
- Erm...
No, I like flowers.
- Will you be my valentine?
- Sure.
- Aw. And we did it.
Tinder prevails.
- That was, I think, when we
knew we really had something.
- The new player in town, Tinder,
a location-based hook-up app.
It has attracted more
than a million UK visitors
in the last 60 days alone.
Many of us are spending the
day swiping left and swiping right.
You got a match!
- Laura!
- When I first
signed up to Tinder,
I was hoping that I
would find someone
that I would be with forever.
- So, my first time on Tinder,
I actually got 200 matches,
which for a young 18-year-old
like me was an instant dopamine hit.
- As a gay person
growing up in a countryside
in the middle of nowhere, that
was my first contact, if you want,
with other gay people.
- I hit dating apps
with a vengeance.
I was like, that guy,
that guy, that guy.
Like sweets in a shop.
- It was so exciting.
Basically, everyone was single,
so it was like playing bingo
with the whole of Cardiff.
- All of a sudden,
it's like boom.
Erm...
And we started to kind
of, like, grow, grow, grow.
And then, the Match people
would kind of, like, interact with us.
We were all acutely
aware of Match.
We were kind of like the
upstart misfits going about it
in our own way, and
Match, on the other hand,
was very much, like,
an established company.
I don't even think they understood
what they had in Tinder at the time.
- My name is Michael Lawrie.
I started at OkCupid full-time
in 2013 to 2022.
OkCupid had a very firm
place in the dating world.
It was based on very rich
content, a lot of questions.
Quizzes, testimonials.
All sorts of things
that users loved.
I started as head of moderation,
went on to become head of
safety, working across brands
with Match Group,
who own Tinder,
Plenty of Fish,
Meetic and Match.com.
Match Group, in its day, was
absolutely amazingly good
at what they did.
And OkCupid was in the group.
- Hello, my name
is Christian Rudder,
and I was one of the
founders of OkCupid.
It's now one of the biggest
dating sites in the United States.
Like almost everyone at
the site, I was a math major,
and, as you might expect, we're
known for the analytic approach
we have taken to love.
- The people who founded
OkCupid were data scientists.
They were obviously interested
in data to make the experience
better for the users.
The match meant a lot.
We gave you good data on
how you match, why you match.
- We call it our
matching algorithm.
Basically, OkCupid's matching
algorithm helps us decide
whether two people
should go on a date.
We built our entire
business around it.
- And Tinder turned
it into a game -
purely swiping to decide
who's hot, who's not.
- One thing we did especially
at Tinder was, we really tried
to celebrate that moment
when you get a match.
So, you get a match - I don't know
exactly what the UI looks like now -
but back then we opened
up this screen that was like,
yeah, it's a match.
Congratulations. You can
start this conversation now.
So these are like very tried
and true game mechanics.
- BF Skinner was a psychologist
who studied human behaviour.
- Eventually, a culture
learns how to build a world
in which people
behave more effectively.
- Had done these
tests with pigeons.
- A pigeon's behaviour can be
shaped purely by rewards of food pellets.
- They could press a button.
And he would change how that
would work, whether the button would -
you know, you press it, and
every time you'd get something,
or you press it and
nothing ever happens.
- By random pecking, he occasionally
hits the jackpot, which encourages
him to press on with this
seemingly un-pigeonlike behaviour.
- And this is sort of modelled
into human behaviour, too.
These variable rewards are
how you can better motivate
a person to do something.
- Once in a while, you get
something which is highly reinforcing.
And other times you don't.
- In Tinder, we were
cognisant of that idea.
We knew, in order
for people to match,
to meet the right person,
they needed to go through a
lot of people in order to do that.
We were trying to make
that card stack feel like
sort of random rewards in there,
in order to keep them swiping
until they were hopefully
able to get that match.
- Now, that's the heart
of all gambling devices -
the way in which it pays off.
- It kind of does
feel like a game,
cos it's like when you get a
match, you feel like you win.
And if they don't match you
back, yeah, it feels like you lose.
- I feel like, for a
lot of girls especially,
it's like validation.
So I feel like sometimes
it just feels like a game
of, like, who likes me?
- The whole thing is
like a slot machine.
You're presented
recommendations one after the other.
You don't know exactly
what you're going to get.
You might get a hot person,
you might get an ugly person,
and if you like them,
you might get rewarded
and get that dopamine hit,
and you might not.
- I started to research
online dating in 2014,
when I became aware of
the way that digital services
were accelerating and
commodifying the process of dating.
This kind of reward system where
you're getting positive feedback
through likes, hits, swipes -
it's this idea of
maintaining your subject
in a constant state of hunger.
So you just
continue to go online.
- So, as a product person,
yeah, my job is to really make sure
that you're engaged, which
means you're using the app -
that's swiping, that's
sending messages -
but then also that
you're retaining,
that you're staying around.
And, you know, a lot of the
incentives are based around,
did we get a user to stay
from day one to day two?
From week one to week two?
- This is how you use Tinder.
- Yep, yep, yep, yep,
yep, yep, yep, yep, yep,
yep, yep, yep, yep.
- Lot of matches there, Dan?
- No matches.
- Yeah, I'll just swipe all
the time, literally nonstop.
I'll even be just at work,
and get told off
for being on Tinder.
- There would be moments where
I would just be sitting on my own.
"No, no, no. Yes, yes, no."
I mean, there are more
noes than yeses, to be fair.
And then all these
men kind of...
..merge into one
big blob of a man.
- It did feel like just
endlessly kind of swiping and...
I don't know.
Yeah, maybe it did get a bit,
like, feeling a bit desperate.
- It's kind of like
a love-hate thing.
Deleting your profile and
starting again so regularly, yeah.
Delete it, only to be
back on it an hour later.
So, it was mad.
- People were using
this app for hours a day.
Considering, you know,
you're awake maybe 12 hours,
use your phone five to six.
And we were capturing a
significant portion of that
just on a single app,
which is crazy.
- Best new start-up of 2013.
Tinder quickly set itself apart
by applying social graph data
and game psychology
to online dating.
Sounds like complicated stuff.
But, ultimately, all we're presented
with is the addictive simplicity
of a binary decision.
- We would have parties when
we'd hit a certain number of users.
- And the Crunchie
goes to Tinder.
- 50,000 or 100,000 users,
and then 200,000 and 500,000.
Thanks for swiping right!
Those milestones
started to come so fast
that before we could
plan the next party,
we'd already hit the next one.
It was a really
high-growth period and...
..and a fun time.
- We had monitors at the office
that would show our growth,
and it would be mesmerising.
We could see new countries
just, like, light up overnight.
Places that we didn't expect -
like non-English-speaking places -
like Brazil...
..just started
exploding on their own.
- That was when we started to see,
OK, this could go from being a really
small kind of start-up thing
to something that potentially
takes over the world.
- Tinder started out as a few guys
on a couch in a conference room.
Now it's 200 plus people in a whole
building here on Sunset Boulevard.
- We absolutely weren't
capitalising on it, though.
Like, we had no designs outside
of, we just want you to use the app.
We weren't making
any kind of money.
The only thing that we were
making was brand reputation,
and we were growing
at basically all costs.
- Since its launch in 2012,
it's made 22 million matches
worldwide a day, making six
billion matches in total so far -
up from a billion
this time last year.
- I didn't know that we were going
to be building revenue until I heard it
in a Match Group earnings call that
we were expected to make revenue
the next year, and I was
like, "Oh, whoops. OK."
Well, I mean, obviously
we're going to make money.
You know, it's a company,
we're trying to make money.
But, you know, it's
a matter of when.
Match Group had a lot of
experience in subscription,
and they encouraged us to
go in that subscription route.
- I was running research
for the organisation,
actively involved in the
development of the features
that were the basis of
the subscription model.
- Subscriptions ended up being
the vast majority of the revenue
that we earned.
- One of my first projects at
Tinder was called Tinder Passport,
and it was the feature that
allowed you to look at different parts
of the world to find a date, try to
understand the dating landscape
in a given environment.
- Tinder is making it possible for
users to have a holiday romance
without leaving their home.
It's all part of a new premium
service which the dating app
is launching today,
called Tinder Plus.
- And so, in 2015, we
launched with rewind, passport
and unlimited swipe rights.
- I'm in a different
country every single day.
I'm like, damn!
Y'all putting in new features
that I like even more?!
- We're always
trying to build features
that will help to
connect people.
And we're also
trying to make money.
And limiting the number
of likes that you have,
the number of super likes,
limiting the number of
boosts you can have,
all of these kind of, like,
scarcity-related features,
these are all game mechanics
that keep people coming back
and are also the ones
that you can monetise.
- Do you remember
those DFS adverts?
"Buy now, 50 off!
"Buy now, get two sofas
for free. Get a love armchair."
That's what it felt like.
- So embarrassing!
Just putting myself on blast.
Yes, I pay for Tinder features.
- And you think, oh,
I'll just spend 10,
cos you might find
the love of your life.
- You get sucked into
the likes and the roses
and the super
likes and the boosts.
The marketing
teams are so clever.
- Yeah, I'm the
hamster in a wheel,
and I'm very aware of it.
But I don't know what
the other options are.
- Scarcity rewards are
creating a kind of reward system,
where you keep
the subject hungry
in order to have more
control of their behaviour.
- I never felt like we were
taking advantage of people.
But, certainly, the things
that we monetised, we...
We tried to make them addictive.
- I definitely got addicted.
That dopamine hit
got a bit too much,
and I ended up getting addicted
to people finding me attractive.
- I'd feel, like,
bad about myself.
And then I'd log on to these
apps, and just think, wow, like,
so many people have liked me.
And then, I'm not
feeling, like, fulfilled.
- Looking back now, that
25-year-old who was just so desperate
to be liked and to be wanted.
That was the addiction,
and the app was the tool I
was using to fuel that addiction.
- Making something
fun is addictive,
you know, in itself.
It's unfortunate when somebody
isn't able to manage an addiction.
But the same thing that makes
it addictive for one person is what
helps other people
get through it.
If we were to get rid of
everything addictive in everything,
it'd be hard to get
anybody to do anything.
- Is being addicted to a
dating app worse than...
..being addicted
to a slot machine?
Where are you going
to lose more money?
I think it's far less harmful
than a traditional casino.
And who knows - you
might find the love of your life.
- Tinder, the infamous hook-up
app, has hit eight billion matches.
Sure, it sounds like a milestone
- but a match isn't a marriage.
It just means your pic
and silly profile blurb
got someone to swipe right.
- Did you say Tinder love?
# I'm not here for hook-ups
# Unless
# Um...
# You are
# Then we should talk... #
- It's disappointing.
In my head, you'd go on these
dating apps, and you'd, you know,
meet people that are serious.
But actually, what it is, is a lot
of spending hours on these apps
to then get horrendous pictures
and messages
and aggressive stuff.
- So, as a woman, it was
comments about having large breasts
and short hair and
being, you know,
barely legal, and
things like that.
And then, as I've
transitioned to male,
I had to really emphasise my
transness for my own safety.
- I get aggressive
language all the time,
especially being
racially ambiguous.
A lot of guys, I'm like, "Do
you want to take me out,
"or do you want to deport me?"
- You should really
go to a school,
or have a module to know
how to deal with dating apps,
because even as a
30-something-year-old woman,
I was sort of taken aback
by the number of dick pics.
I'd have messages just,
like, saying that people wanted
to have sex with me, they
want to, like, put me in my place.
Like, I've got daddy issues.
- Tinder continued to
recruit new members,
to grow as a brand.
Match floated on
the stock exchange...
..which bought it in
about $400 million.
- I was told that, basically, the
IPO of Match Group wouldn't have
happened if it
weren't for Tinder.
As we grew and we got bigger,
I think Match definitely was,
"We got to take the
reins a little bit more."
Got to take care of the
golden goose, I suppose.
- When the Match Group spun
off all their dating properties
into this publicly traded
company, the Match Group,
they started to kind of assert
a little more control over Tinder
and especially over
the executive team.
- Match Group being a public
company - boards and all -
and you're always expected
to increase revenue.
- Tinder has a
way of doing things.
You know, we invented a lot of
what I would call best practices now
for how to monetise
subscriptions, specifically.
At this point, Match takes
Tinder's business practices
and applies it to its
other business properties.
- Gamification became
a popular buzzword.
They introduced the swipe
across all the other brands.
Match Group put these
expectations onto the brands,
that they couldn't live up to.
So they made it a swipe
model without understanding
what made the brand the brand.
Turnover was the
model that Tinder used,
and turnover is
great for Tinder.
It was, at that time, by
far the biggest dating site
on the app stores.
So, it's getting tens of
thousands of new users a day.
OkCupid, Plenty of
Fish weren't getting that.
The pool of people you
could swipe was too small.
So, because you need more
people in your queue for swiping,
they had to change the algorithm
to make more people go in there.
They needed to lower
some of the expectations
and some of the deal breakers.
- I think they just
match you with anyone.
It gives you that
little bit of hope,
and then nothing
ever comes of it.
- I've had people pop up
who are, like, in their 50s,
and I'm like, no offence,
but I'm not doing that.
- Or these people could
be miles and miles away.
I'm not travelling 100 miles
to go and see someone!
- And then added features that
would bypass some of the restrictions.
Now, it probably
came in good faith.
I don't want to say it was
originally designed to allow that.
That was an accident.
But people who paid
could suddenly start looking
outside their expectation range.
And that is not
compatible with safety.
- Once dating became
mainstream on mobile,
it just became so easy for criminals
and scam artists, and whoever,
that these practices
just got out of control.
- PRODUCER: - So, just to
confirm that you're happy to take part
in an interview on the basis
that your face is
going to be anonymized
and your voice is going
to be anonymized?
- Yes.
I worked at Match for
the better part of a decade.
I was pretty high up,
working across all the brands.
There was an intense
amount of fraud profiles
that were basically built
and designed to get people
off of the brand and
communicating directly
to defraud that person of money.
There were plenty of
times where romance scams
liquidated people's
retirement savings,
people's life savings.
- Figures seen exclusively
by this programme show that
in the last year, a record
number of people - almost 4,000 -
became victims of
online dating scams.
Between them, they were
conned out of 39 million.
- In the 2016 era,
we had a wall of scammers -
a literal wall of scammers -
where there were
maybe 1,000 pictures.
And because the way the
models promote popular people,
and popular people are based
on people swiping on a photo,
they're putting pretty people
to the front of the queue.
And it's not a secret -
everybody knows they show
the pretty users first, they show
the pretty users on the front page.
But that photo may
well be a scammer.
- Well, I saw one profile, and the
photos were all Enrique Iglesias,
and I was like, I feel like
he's not on Hinge in Cardiff.
But, hey, I don't know what
he does in his personal life!
- People have been
using my pictures,
pretending to be me,
and then messaging
a whole load of girls.
And then I get messages
from these girls saying,
"By the way, someone
is using your pictures.
"He's been talking to me,
he's been asking for stuff."
It's a scammer, yeah.
- Fraud could lead
legitimate people to subscribe.
Fraudulent profiles tend to
have more attractive people,
tend to be more
desirable people.
And...
..when that's the case,
they do tend to get people to
pay a subscription to communicate.
- They want to see
attractive people.
They don't want to see...
people they see every day.
They want users that
say, "This is a cool site
"for cool people. Look
at all these pretty people.
"I want to be part of this."
- There's certainly people, you know,
trying to take advantage of the app
and abuse it in some way.
It's something that we were
constantly worried about.
You know, we built a trust
and safety team around it.
And a lot of times it's a
cat-and-mouse game, trying to do
what you can, and then
people figure ways around it.
- While I was there, we took measures
to block those people's accounts
or report them to
authorities, if required.
Having said that, like,
we were experiencing
a time of rapid
growth at Tinder.
So, you know, things like making
sure our servers didn't go down
were more important than, like,
you know, combating scammers.
- At the end of the day,
the only way to eliminate it
would be to shut
down everything.
- Match was very
interested in knowing the risk.
The attitude was generally
to make a business decision
about whether or not
the fraud should stay.
- Oh, yeah, they've turned
it into a scammer's paradise.
I wouldn't say it's tolerated,
but a lot of these bots, a
lot of these things will pay.
So there is money coming
in from these scammers,
and I don't even want to
begin to imply that's deliberate -
because it's not -
but it's a convenience.
Dating sites are different
from any other site,
in their job is to make
two people meet in person.
So you're making two
vulnerable people meet each other.
They need to trust that the
platforms are doing their best
to keep them safe, to
match them with people
who are there for good reasons.
- The more fraud
that is on the platform,
the easier it is for
someone to inflict harm.
Makes it less safe for people.
- In terms of harm...
..there's a lot of reports
come into the dating sites.
Everything you can think of
that would happen in a big city
is happening on a dating site,
because it's the same people.
And when you look at
Match Group's population of...
Let's say there's ten million
people on all of Match Group's sites,
that's the size of London.
So if you're getting the same
amount of reports as a big city
is getting on serious crimes,
they've got to be investigated,
and there's just not
enough people to do it.
- I do not feel safe
on dating apps, at all.
If I go on a date with
anybody, I do, like,
share my location
with my friends.
The amount of dates I've
come back from where I'm like,
"This man is an incel,"
it is quite scary, it really is.
And there's been quite a few
dates where I've come away
being like, "Oh,
he HATES women."
Do I just ghost him? Well,
that's going to anger him.
And he forced me to
let him walk me home,
so now he knows where I live.
- So, I met up with this one
guy, and straight away there was
something just very
different about him.
So I said, "Oh,
listen, I'm so sorry,
"I'm not feeling well,
I'm going to go home."
And then he just got so
angry, out of nowhere.
He tried to physically stop
me from leaving his house.
He blocked the door. I asked
him, "Please, move," got out.
It was wild to me just how
willingly, maybe, I put myself in
potentially harrowing
situations just to feel not alone.
- I went on a dating app date
and, yeah, had drinks.
He just kept
filling up my drink,
and then kept having a go at
me for not drinking that much.
I then said that I had a train
that I needed to go and get.
I didn't feel comfortable.
And then, when I went outside,
cos I said I wanted to leave,
and then that's when I
got sexually assaulted.
I don't think I reported it
because I just didn't feel that
there would be any support,
that anyone would care,
that they wouldn't see
it as their responsibility.
- SHE EXHALES
- My brother met his
wife on Match Group.
I met my ex-husband
on Match Group.
It really happens, it can
really work, it's really great.
It's just, the bad part
is so bad that, for me, it...
Ooft.
So, I worked at OkCupid
for close to four years.
I was a senior member of staff,
primarily working on
escalated serious cases.
The cases ranged from
harassment in person
or on the site itself,
up to kidnapping,
stalking, rape.
The team was very bare bones.
We were never able to meet
our quota in terms of completing
complex cases before
more complex cases came in.
- For serious
incidents at OkCupid,
even my team at its peak
- which was 20 people -
could not deal with the
amount we had to triage.
Triaging is painful.
We would get a lot of fake
rape reports from scammers,
cos if they knew that a man,
say, was going to report them
for being a scammer, what
they would do is then report them
for being a rapist.
And that's really
hard to deal with.
What triage is doing is,
it's taking what we think are
the most likely rape reports,
then they're going to me, say.
So, let's say there's 300 a day,
I will get the top 100.
If there's not time the next
day, another 300 is coming in.
Unfortunately, the 200
are just not being dealt with,
and there's no way around that.
This was resolved around
2017, but for a couple of years
we couldn't keep
on top of it at all.
- The feeling was
similar to quicksand,
where you could not rise
above or make a plan to succeed.
- Dangerous and depraved.
That's how detectives have described
a Teesside man who raped five women
in three years after
meeting them on dating apps.
- Faces of Glenn Hartland.
But the most dangerous
one was hiding.
He was a sex fiend using
Tinder to find his victims.
The 44-year-old raped
three women he dated briefly
after meeting them online.
- Match was always
concerned about trust and safety,
but up to a point where
the impact of bad actors -
those people that are going
to do harm to other people -
should not be something that
the entire company knows about.
- My teams were put
behind walls, basically.
They were all remote, they
never interacted with anybody else
in the company
other than online,
and I think that was deliberate.
- We were told specifically
not to use language like rape
or murder with certain
teams within the company,
and so therefore we couldn't
put that language in presentations
or any kind of text.
- A lot of people, I suspect,
wouldn't be working for the site
if they were aware of
exactly what the issues were.
- I'm not going to say I think
they believe it to be something
that should stay secret,
but they definitely did not
want it publicised anywhere.
- Match continues to
buy up its competitors.
In 2019, it successfully
buys Hinge.
Its profits continue to grow.
However, there are increasing
numbers of bad actors
who are getting
access to these apps,
and the problem of safety
has yet, really, to be resolved.
- I think that Match Group
eventually, after a couple of years,
began to take it seriously.
And so they did invest
at a much higher level.
- The group started
cooperating more.
It was a Match
Group central idea
that we would start
sharing information.
It became a system
called Sentinel.
And that started to give
everybody more of an idea
of how much abuse was
going on on their sites.
- It's very difficult to shake what
one brand does versus another brand,
and every brand had their
own way of dealing with it...
..for a long time.
- When you actually
looked at the other sites,
it was very obvious that
their systems weren't catching
a lot of these people to
be able to escalate them
to the central Sentinel system,
which was an issue with
their front-line moderation.
Front-end moderators
are the lifeblood of any site.
- Being a content moderator
consisted of reviewing different profiles
and conversations, many
of which were reported
for different violations.
I encountered a lot
of different behaviour.
There was a lot of what
we call romance scamming,
a lot of sexual harassment,
aggression from men towards
women that was of sexual nature.
Starting out, it was less
demanding, but very quickly,
the quota around profiles
we were asked to review
ramped up to 52 an hour.
So we were asked to not take longer
than one minute reviewing a profile.
- PRODUCER: - We've spoken to a
moderator who was working at Hinge,
who started with 32 to 35
profiles whilst he was there.
It went up to 52 an hour.
- 52 an hour...
No. That's stupid.
That's not...safe.
- Then we get on
to serious cases
and you're looking at
about 12 an hour realistically.
- So, in regards
to handling reports
of things like sexual assault,
there really wasn't
more specific guidance
besides the same expectation
that things should be handled
and judged within the
one-minute timeframe -
clicking a button and
just moving right along.
There was really no
sense that, on our end,
there was any sort of
heightened attention
we were able to give to it.
- Problem with moderation
- from my point of view
of trying to get money
- is there's no profit.
It's all loss, 100% loss.
An executive person who comes
from a financial background,
they'll look at this, and they'll
say, "Why do we need it?
"We could outsource
that to the Philippines.
"We could outsource
that to Africa."
And the outsourcing
is the way they're going.
- The safety concerns
don't go away.
And in 2019, we see the
first of several investigative
journalist pieces...
..detailing how
convicted sex offenders
were actually able to access
users from these platforms
when they had already been convicted
of serious sexual assault and rape.
So, this begins to beg the
question as to whether the company
should be carrying out ID checks,
background checks on users.
- ID verifications were
always a good idea.
Financially, they don't work.
A good background check is
going to cost a lot of money.
For things like Tinder,
Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish,
where you're not expecting
to go in spending $100,
then it's not going to happen.
- We have a responsibility to protect
the women on our apps globally.
And so what are we doing to
make sure that they have a great
experience and a
safe experience?
We have "one strike, you're out"
policy and you're banned for life.
They're not just
banned on the app
where they actually
had bad behaviour,
but they're banned
across all of our apps.
- Building up the
systems to ban profiles
across the portfolio
was a fantastic step
in the right direction,
but that definitely gave
brands some pause.
Generally, when
profiles are banned,
it tends to affect the
bottom line of the business.
- So it was only in 2020
that the Match Group finally seemed
to be taking these safety issues
very seriously.
- Match Group
brought in an ex-cop
who'd been working for Uber
for a long time, Tracey Breeden.
One good thing she did was
to build a critical safety team.
- They made several new
partnerships at this time.
One was with Garbo - the
identity verification start-up -
and also a helpline for
domestic abuse called RAINN,
and publicly
committed $120 million.
- Every woman that
I've met in my lifetime
has experienced some form
of gender-based violence,
and when speaking to them
about how they use dating apps,
they've also expressed
experiencing some form of harm.
And so it inspired me to
want to work in trust and safety.
When I first started
with Match Group,
it seemed like they really cared
and were trying to change the way
that trust and
safety was viewed,
and really trying to create a
safer experience for their users.
But when, ultimately, push
comes to shove, it did not happen.
- Match Group's very good at what
I've always called safety theatre.
They will put a lot of money
into a pretence of safety.
- There's all sorts of
different forms of harm
that these apps are aware of.
And, in my opinion, consciously
do not make efforts
to really prevent.
For example, with
their sign-up process,
they would make it as frictionless
as possible, as easy as possible
for a user to get in, and
so safety is not by design.
- With the gamification model,
you've got to get somebody
hooked from the beginning.
You've got 20, 30 seconds
to get somebody on board.
So adding an extra obstacle
to the sign-up process
would get in the
way of retention.
- Asking for more information,
checking the things that are
correct all prevent the user
from getting in the app and counting
as potential revenue or growth.
This is not just a
dating-app problem -
this is a Silicon Valley
technology problem
where it's growth at all costs,
and growth historically
meant users.
- Stephen Matthews seemed
like a wonderful person
from his dating profile.
He's a cardiologist,
a lover of dogs,
very into the outdoors.
He was saying that he was
looking for a relationship.
My client met Stephen
Matthews initially by being
connected with him
as a promoted profile,
and he was paying to have
himself promoted on Hinge,
so they would actually have
him as a recommended match.
They scheduled a
date to have brunch,
and then to go to his condo
afterwards and go in the hot tub,
which she did.
The next thing she recalls is
waking up in her apartment,
crying and having her family
around her, taking care of her.
She had bruises on her body.
They had the sexual
assault exams.
The test concluded
that she had had sex,
and she didn't recall
at any point having sex.
She ultimately decided
to report him to the police
and also to report
him on the app.
We have evidence that Mr
Matthews had been reported for years
prior to this incident.
When they report someone,
they do receive a response,
promising them that the person
has been removed from the website
and removed from the
app and banned indefinitely.
My client's report ultimately
led to the police investigating
Stephen Matthews and eventually
more women coming forward,
which led to his arrest.
Dr Matthews was ultimately convicted
of drugging ten different women
and sexually assaulting
eight of those women.
- It's clear you can just change your
credentials and make a new account,
which is a serious,
serious security breach.
If they had listened to
the multitude of reports
that they had received
about this person
and just banned
him in the first place,
I would not be sitting here
today having this conversation.
- The ease in which Stephen
Matthews was able to continually get back
onto this dating app -
I think that not only
could it happen again,
I'd be surprised if it
isn't happening right now.
- They're a company. They've
got to make profit for shareholders.
I made my case every week,
and I know all the other heads of
safety in all the other companies
did the same.
- Over the years...
..there are less meetings.
The meetings were shorter.
And just a general sense of
"this is a back-burner priority".
- I went into it for
all the right reasons,
and because it was a
site that I owed a lot to,
because I'd met
my partner on there.
But one of the problems with
high-risk moderation
incident response
is that PTSD is
absolutely inevitable.
Mine was getting bad.
I was dreading
going in every day.
I was on clonazepam
and taking far too much
just to be able
to sleep at night.
I was dealing with
the worst of the worst.
It was just
impossible to carry on.
I couldn't face it.
- I've seen everything from
very graphic
photographs and videos
to all manner of abuse.
I've seen things
you can never unsee.
And agreeing to work there
would be, for me, dishonest.
- Every dating app
has a duty to people,
to the public,
to do what is right
and what is safe
and what is just.
The problem here is that
my definition of just,
my definition of safe
and my definition of right
doesn't necessarily align with
the people that
were my superior.
- Having had an
inside look at how
these companies make decisions,
it's clear that the efforts
that they do make are more
for the press and the headlines
versus actually
helping prevent harm.
- Match Group will tell you they're
doing their best, but they're not.
My team cost a
million a year to run.
The executives above us were
on three or four million a year each.
Cut the executive
salary, pay for safety.
Why not? Seems logical to me.
- My personal experience
with dating apps
is the reason that I wanted
to set up a dating app
that makes women
feel more protected.
I have started an app.
We're trying to make dating
eventful and fun, and it can either be,
you know, just with a person or
an event with other single people.
We have started
with half of the people
that have gone down. We...
MAN SHOUTS
- Chop, chop now!
- Dating should be fun,
exciting, and it can be.
So with this, it's doing
something interactive.
They're put in cells with
people, they're all sort of singles.
And then it's just to help
them sort of like chat.
GASPS, SHOUTING
Do you think it's good for dating?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Fun, as well. - Yeah.
- So even if your date's boring,
you're having fun anyway.
- It's better to meet people in person.
- Yeah, it is.
- And I'm so tired
of the dating apps.
Like, generally, like, this could
not have come at a better time.
- Yeah, I know.
- Where would you say you are
in your dating-app journey now?
- Luckily, I'm not
on them any more.
Thank God.
And hopefully I never
have to go back on them.
- I'm engaged!
- I'm sure I'll delete it
again in a couple of weeks
because I'm so sick of it.
But, er, yeah, it's
the hope that kills you.
- I hit dating apps
with a vengeance.
- The rush of getting
all of those likes.
- My first time on Tinder, I
actually got 200 matches.
- An Argos catalogue,
basically, but with people in it.
- Did you know that Hinge,
Tinder, Plenty of Fish,
OkCupid, Pairs,
Match.com, The League -
they're all owned by a single
conglomerate called Match Group?
- I'm Jonathan Badeen, inventor
of the famed Tinder swipe.
- The things that we monetised,
we tried to make them addictive.
- Tinder, the infamous hook-up
app, has hit eight billion matches.
- It was just the right thing at
the right time for the right people.
- Tinder ruined it.
Tinder turned it into a game.
- Ten years ago, I
would recommend them.
It's changed now.
- Kind of like a necessary evil.
- I do not feel safe
on dating apps at all,
and I feel like it's
getting so much worse.
- That's how detectives have described
a Teesside man who raped five women
in three years after
meeting them on dating apps.
- Dr Matthews was ultimately
convicted of drugging ten different women
and sexually assaulting
eight of those women.
- There are rapes,
murders, kidnappings.
I was dealing with
the worst of the worst.
- I've seen things
you can never unsee.
- This is where Tinder started.
We're on Sunset
Boulevard, West Hollywood,
Beverly Hills, just
down the street.
Famed Viper Room.
Yeah, this building here,
this is where we came up with
the concepts for Tinder.
Every once in a while,
lightning strikes, and...
..struck here.
Hi. I'm Jonathan Badeen,
co-founder of Tinder.
At that time, we were
looking to disrupt things
by going sort of
the mobile route.
And one of the things that we had
noticed was that there really isn't
a predominant dating app -
that basically everything
had been web-based.
And it was also, simultaneously,
something that young people
had never really adopted.
And so we saw this
as an opportunity,
and we essentially went to
where the young people were,
which is on their phone.
And we launched
on August 2nd, 2012.
Basically, friends and
family are on there.
It was not a lot of people.
- There was no
go-to-market campaign.
It was just about, let's make
this cool thing and put it out there.
Period of the sentence.
- It didn't have
a lot of growth.
It was just sort of
sat there for a little bit.
- Like, no-one wanted to
admit, "I was on a dating service,"
because it's like you
had somehow failed in life,
that you needed some
service to help you find a mate.
We were seriously pondering
of, like, how are we going to,
like, ramp up Tinder?
- The very first version of Tinder
didn't actually have the swipe.
We had the heart
and the X buttons.
In the back of my head - I
don't know, for weeks or months -
I was kind of iterating,
trying to solve various issues
where I thought it needed to be
used one-handed, on the move.
One morning, I woke up with an
epiphany of how I would do that.
You would have a stack of cards.
You would swipe in one direction
to put them into the right pile,
or in the other direction
for the wrong pile.
And so that's really
where the swipe was born.
One night, when I was fixing
some bugs, I went ahead,
and turns out I was able
to add swiping capabilities
within a few hours.
And I'm not sure if I even told
everybody that it was in there.
It was never really meant to be
some sort of big key differentiator.
We didn't tell anybody about it.
- The magic of it was that it was
dating made mobile in your hands.
The swipe just kept you going.
That was the thing that kept
our time-on-site numbers, like,
super-duper high.
- At that point, the
marketing really started.
That's where we were
going out to colleges.
- Like, our first real
college marketing was at
University of Southern
California - USC - in LA.
It's not just a
run-of-the-mill state school.
It's, like, a
prestigious school.
- Basically, bussed in all of
these sort of who's who, I guess,
of the USC college
campus for this pool party,
and require users to
have Tinder on their phone.
- No-one had really
done college marketing
the way we tapped it before.
- We're talking about Tinder.
What do you know about Tinder?
- It's a dating app.
- I think people use it
to, like, meet new people
and, like, hook up or whatever.
- They launched Tinder by spreading
the word among college students
at so-called party schools.
- I hate to reduce it like
this, but it was like, basically,
throwing parties for cool kids.
- It was pretty exciting.
But it was really January
2013 - right after holiday break -
that's where things
start to blow up.
- One app that's causing quite
the stir on campus is called Tinder.
- I downloaded a little app that
could called Tinder onto my iPhone,
aka the phone, aka the Great
Swagoo Phone Magnificent.
- Oh, my gosh, - PHONE ALERI just got a message on Tinder.
- Liking someone on the
app is completely anonymous,
unless they like you back.
Then it's a match
made in Tinder heaven.
- This just, like, ready, willing
audience who is just going to, like,
take this in as their
own and adopt it,
and then turn around and
spread it just to all of their friends.
- The same company which
produced Match.com created Tinder
back in October. It was
created to remove the creepiness
of online dating for
college-aged students.
It was piloted on several college
campuses, with progressive results.
Within the first two months, Tinder
served over one million matches.
- Early on, seeding it with
that targeted small, fun,
like, excited user base,
it was like fishing
in a barrel, man.
Like, it was just the right thing at
the right time for the right people.
And they took it,
and they went crazy.
- Hey, hey, Jen.
I saw your picture on Tinder.
Are you regretting
that decision now?
- Erm...
No, I like flowers.
- Will you be my valentine?
- Sure.
- Aw. And we did it.
Tinder prevails.
- That was, I think, when we
knew we really had something.
- The new player in town, Tinder,
a location-based hook-up app.
It has attracted more
than a million UK visitors
in the last 60 days alone.
Many of us are spending the
day swiping left and swiping right.
You got a match!
- Laura!
- When I first
signed up to Tinder,
I was hoping that I
would find someone
that I would be with forever.
- So, my first time on Tinder,
I actually got 200 matches,
which for a young 18-year-old
like me was an instant dopamine hit.
- As a gay person
growing up in a countryside
in the middle of nowhere, that
was my first contact, if you want,
with other gay people.
- I hit dating apps
with a vengeance.
I was like, that guy,
that guy, that guy.
Like sweets in a shop.
- It was so exciting.
Basically, everyone was single,
so it was like playing bingo
with the whole of Cardiff.
- All of a sudden,
it's like boom.
Erm...
And we started to kind
of, like, grow, grow, grow.
And then, the Match people
would kind of, like, interact with us.
We were all acutely
aware of Match.
We were kind of like the
upstart misfits going about it
in our own way, and
Match, on the other hand,
was very much, like,
an established company.
I don't even think they understood
what they had in Tinder at the time.
- My name is Michael Lawrie.
I started at OkCupid full-time
in 2013 to 2022.
OkCupid had a very firm
place in the dating world.
It was based on very rich
content, a lot of questions.
Quizzes, testimonials.
All sorts of things
that users loved.
I started as head of moderation,
went on to become head of
safety, working across brands
with Match Group,
who own Tinder,
Plenty of Fish,
Meetic and Match.com.
Match Group, in its day, was
absolutely amazingly good
at what they did.
And OkCupid was in the group.
- Hello, my name
is Christian Rudder,
and I was one of the
founders of OkCupid.
It's now one of the biggest
dating sites in the United States.
Like almost everyone at
the site, I was a math major,
and, as you might expect, we're
known for the analytic approach
we have taken to love.
- The people who founded
OkCupid were data scientists.
They were obviously interested
in data to make the experience
better for the users.
The match meant a lot.
We gave you good data on
how you match, why you match.
- We call it our
matching algorithm.
Basically, OkCupid's matching
algorithm helps us decide
whether two people
should go on a date.
We built our entire
business around it.
- And Tinder turned
it into a game -
purely swiping to decide
who's hot, who's not.
- One thing we did especially
at Tinder was, we really tried
to celebrate that moment
when you get a match.
So, you get a match - I don't know
exactly what the UI looks like now -
but back then we opened
up this screen that was like,
yeah, it's a match.
Congratulations. You can
start this conversation now.
So these are like very tried
and true game mechanics.
- BF Skinner was a psychologist
who studied human behaviour.
- Eventually, a culture
learns how to build a world
in which people
behave more effectively.
- Had done these
tests with pigeons.
- A pigeon's behaviour can be
shaped purely by rewards of food pellets.
- They could press a button.
And he would change how that
would work, whether the button would -
you know, you press it, and
every time you'd get something,
or you press it and
nothing ever happens.
- By random pecking, he occasionally
hits the jackpot, which encourages
him to press on with this
seemingly un-pigeonlike behaviour.
- And this is sort of modelled
into human behaviour, too.
These variable rewards are
how you can better motivate
a person to do something.
- Once in a while, you get
something which is highly reinforcing.
And other times you don't.
- In Tinder, we were
cognisant of that idea.
We knew, in order
for people to match,
to meet the right person,
they needed to go through a
lot of people in order to do that.
We were trying to make
that card stack feel like
sort of random rewards in there,
in order to keep them swiping
until they were hopefully
able to get that match.
- Now, that's the heart
of all gambling devices -
the way in which it pays off.
- It kind of does
feel like a game,
cos it's like when you get a
match, you feel like you win.
And if they don't match you
back, yeah, it feels like you lose.
- I feel like, for a
lot of girls especially,
it's like validation.
So I feel like sometimes
it just feels like a game
of, like, who likes me?
- The whole thing is
like a slot machine.
You're presented
recommendations one after the other.
You don't know exactly
what you're going to get.
You might get a hot person,
you might get an ugly person,
and if you like them,
you might get rewarded
and get that dopamine hit,
and you might not.
- I started to research
online dating in 2014,
when I became aware of
the way that digital services
were accelerating and
commodifying the process of dating.
This kind of reward system where
you're getting positive feedback
through likes, hits, swipes -
it's this idea of
maintaining your subject
in a constant state of hunger.
So you just
continue to go online.
- So, as a product person,
yeah, my job is to really make sure
that you're engaged, which
means you're using the app -
that's swiping, that's
sending messages -
but then also that
you're retaining,
that you're staying around.
And, you know, a lot of the
incentives are based around,
did we get a user to stay
from day one to day two?
From week one to week two?
- This is how you use Tinder.
- Yep, yep, yep, yep,
yep, yep, yep, yep, yep,
yep, yep, yep, yep.
- Lot of matches there, Dan?
- No matches.
- Yeah, I'll just swipe all
the time, literally nonstop.
I'll even be just at work,
and get told off
for being on Tinder.
- There would be moments where
I would just be sitting on my own.
"No, no, no. Yes, yes, no."
I mean, there are more
noes than yeses, to be fair.
And then all these
men kind of...
..merge into one
big blob of a man.
- It did feel like just
endlessly kind of swiping and...
I don't know.
Yeah, maybe it did get a bit,
like, feeling a bit desperate.
- It's kind of like
a love-hate thing.
Deleting your profile and
starting again so regularly, yeah.
Delete it, only to be
back on it an hour later.
So, it was mad.
- People were using
this app for hours a day.
Considering, you know,
you're awake maybe 12 hours,
use your phone five to six.
And we were capturing a
significant portion of that
just on a single app,
which is crazy.
- Best new start-up of 2013.
Tinder quickly set itself apart
by applying social graph data
and game psychology
to online dating.
Sounds like complicated stuff.
But, ultimately, all we're presented
with is the addictive simplicity
of a binary decision.
- We would have parties when
we'd hit a certain number of users.
- And the Crunchie
goes to Tinder.
- 50,000 or 100,000 users,
and then 200,000 and 500,000.
Thanks for swiping right!
Those milestones
started to come so fast
that before we could
plan the next party,
we'd already hit the next one.
It was a really
high-growth period and...
..and a fun time.
- We had monitors at the office
that would show our growth,
and it would be mesmerising.
We could see new countries
just, like, light up overnight.
Places that we didn't expect -
like non-English-speaking places -
like Brazil...
..just started
exploding on their own.
- That was when we started to see,
OK, this could go from being a really
small kind of start-up thing
to something that potentially
takes over the world.
- Tinder started out as a few guys
on a couch in a conference room.
Now it's 200 plus people in a whole
building here on Sunset Boulevard.
- We absolutely weren't
capitalising on it, though.
Like, we had no designs outside
of, we just want you to use the app.
We weren't making
any kind of money.
The only thing that we were
making was brand reputation,
and we were growing
at basically all costs.
- Since its launch in 2012,
it's made 22 million matches
worldwide a day, making six
billion matches in total so far -
up from a billion
this time last year.
- I didn't know that we were going
to be building revenue until I heard it
in a Match Group earnings call that
we were expected to make revenue
the next year, and I was
like, "Oh, whoops. OK."
Well, I mean, obviously
we're going to make money.
You know, it's a company,
we're trying to make money.
But, you know, it's
a matter of when.
Match Group had a lot of
experience in subscription,
and they encouraged us to
go in that subscription route.
- I was running research
for the organisation,
actively involved in the
development of the features
that were the basis of
the subscription model.
- Subscriptions ended up being
the vast majority of the revenue
that we earned.
- One of my first projects at
Tinder was called Tinder Passport,
and it was the feature that
allowed you to look at different parts
of the world to find a date, try to
understand the dating landscape
in a given environment.
- Tinder is making it possible for
users to have a holiday romance
without leaving their home.
It's all part of a new premium
service which the dating app
is launching today,
called Tinder Plus.
- And so, in 2015, we
launched with rewind, passport
and unlimited swipe rights.
- I'm in a different
country every single day.
I'm like, damn!
Y'all putting in new features
that I like even more?!
- We're always
trying to build features
that will help to
connect people.
And we're also
trying to make money.
And limiting the number
of likes that you have,
the number of super likes,
limiting the number of
boosts you can have,
all of these kind of, like,
scarcity-related features,
these are all game mechanics
that keep people coming back
and are also the ones
that you can monetise.
- Do you remember
those DFS adverts?
"Buy now, 50 off!
"Buy now, get two sofas
for free. Get a love armchair."
That's what it felt like.
- So embarrassing!
Just putting myself on blast.
Yes, I pay for Tinder features.
- And you think, oh,
I'll just spend 10,
cos you might find
the love of your life.
- You get sucked into
the likes and the roses
and the super
likes and the boosts.
The marketing
teams are so clever.
- Yeah, I'm the
hamster in a wheel,
and I'm very aware of it.
But I don't know what
the other options are.
- Scarcity rewards are
creating a kind of reward system,
where you keep
the subject hungry
in order to have more
control of their behaviour.
- I never felt like we were
taking advantage of people.
But, certainly, the things
that we monetised, we...
We tried to make them addictive.
- I definitely got addicted.
That dopamine hit
got a bit too much,
and I ended up getting addicted
to people finding me attractive.
- I'd feel, like,
bad about myself.
And then I'd log on to these
apps, and just think, wow, like,
so many people have liked me.
And then, I'm not
feeling, like, fulfilled.
- Looking back now, that
25-year-old who was just so desperate
to be liked and to be wanted.
That was the addiction,
and the app was the tool I
was using to fuel that addiction.
- Making something
fun is addictive,
you know, in itself.
It's unfortunate when somebody
isn't able to manage an addiction.
But the same thing that makes
it addictive for one person is what
helps other people
get through it.
If we were to get rid of
everything addictive in everything,
it'd be hard to get
anybody to do anything.
- Is being addicted to a
dating app worse than...
..being addicted
to a slot machine?
Where are you going
to lose more money?
I think it's far less harmful
than a traditional casino.
And who knows - you
might find the love of your life.
- Tinder, the infamous hook-up
app, has hit eight billion matches.
Sure, it sounds like a milestone
- but a match isn't a marriage.
It just means your pic
and silly profile blurb
got someone to swipe right.
- Did you say Tinder love?
# I'm not here for hook-ups
# Unless
# Um...
# You are
# Then we should talk... #
- It's disappointing.
In my head, you'd go on these
dating apps, and you'd, you know,
meet people that are serious.
But actually, what it is, is a lot
of spending hours on these apps
to then get horrendous pictures
and messages
and aggressive stuff.
- So, as a woman, it was
comments about having large breasts
and short hair and
being, you know,
barely legal, and
things like that.
And then, as I've
transitioned to male,
I had to really emphasise my
transness for my own safety.
- I get aggressive
language all the time,
especially being
racially ambiguous.
A lot of guys, I'm like, "Do
you want to take me out,
"or do you want to deport me?"
- You should really
go to a school,
or have a module to know
how to deal with dating apps,
because even as a
30-something-year-old woman,
I was sort of taken aback
by the number of dick pics.
I'd have messages just,
like, saying that people wanted
to have sex with me, they
want to, like, put me in my place.
Like, I've got daddy issues.
- Tinder continued to
recruit new members,
to grow as a brand.
Match floated on
the stock exchange...
..which bought it in
about $400 million.
- I was told that, basically, the
IPO of Match Group wouldn't have
happened if it
weren't for Tinder.
As we grew and we got bigger,
I think Match definitely was,
"We got to take the
reins a little bit more."
Got to take care of the
golden goose, I suppose.
- When the Match Group spun
off all their dating properties
into this publicly traded
company, the Match Group,
they started to kind of assert
a little more control over Tinder
and especially over
the executive team.
- Match Group being a public
company - boards and all -
and you're always expected
to increase revenue.
- Tinder has a
way of doing things.
You know, we invented a lot of
what I would call best practices now
for how to monetise
subscriptions, specifically.
At this point, Match takes
Tinder's business practices
and applies it to its
other business properties.
- Gamification became
a popular buzzword.
They introduced the swipe
across all the other brands.
Match Group put these
expectations onto the brands,
that they couldn't live up to.
So they made it a swipe
model without understanding
what made the brand the brand.
Turnover was the
model that Tinder used,
and turnover is
great for Tinder.
It was, at that time, by
far the biggest dating site
on the app stores.
So, it's getting tens of
thousands of new users a day.
OkCupid, Plenty of
Fish weren't getting that.
The pool of people you
could swipe was too small.
So, because you need more
people in your queue for swiping,
they had to change the algorithm
to make more people go in there.
They needed to lower
some of the expectations
and some of the deal breakers.
- I think they just
match you with anyone.
It gives you that
little bit of hope,
and then nothing
ever comes of it.
- I've had people pop up
who are, like, in their 50s,
and I'm like, no offence,
but I'm not doing that.
- Or these people could
be miles and miles away.
I'm not travelling 100 miles
to go and see someone!
- And then added features that
would bypass some of the restrictions.
Now, it probably
came in good faith.
I don't want to say it was
originally designed to allow that.
That was an accident.
But people who paid
could suddenly start looking
outside their expectation range.
And that is not
compatible with safety.
- Once dating became
mainstream on mobile,
it just became so easy for criminals
and scam artists, and whoever,
that these practices
just got out of control.
- PRODUCER: - So, just to
confirm that you're happy to take part
in an interview on the basis
that your face is
going to be anonymized
and your voice is going
to be anonymized?
- Yes.
I worked at Match for
the better part of a decade.
I was pretty high up,
working across all the brands.
There was an intense
amount of fraud profiles
that were basically built
and designed to get people
off of the brand and
communicating directly
to defraud that person of money.
There were plenty of
times where romance scams
liquidated people's
retirement savings,
people's life savings.
- Figures seen exclusively
by this programme show that
in the last year, a record
number of people - almost 4,000 -
became victims of
online dating scams.
Between them, they were
conned out of 39 million.
- In the 2016 era,
we had a wall of scammers -
a literal wall of scammers -
where there were
maybe 1,000 pictures.
And because the way the
models promote popular people,
and popular people are based
on people swiping on a photo,
they're putting pretty people
to the front of the queue.
And it's not a secret -
everybody knows they show
the pretty users first, they show
the pretty users on the front page.
But that photo may
well be a scammer.
- Well, I saw one profile, and the
photos were all Enrique Iglesias,
and I was like, I feel like
he's not on Hinge in Cardiff.
But, hey, I don't know what
he does in his personal life!
- People have been
using my pictures,
pretending to be me,
and then messaging
a whole load of girls.
And then I get messages
from these girls saying,
"By the way, someone
is using your pictures.
"He's been talking to me,
he's been asking for stuff."
It's a scammer, yeah.
- Fraud could lead
legitimate people to subscribe.
Fraudulent profiles tend to
have more attractive people,
tend to be more
desirable people.
And...
..when that's the case,
they do tend to get people to
pay a subscription to communicate.
- They want to see
attractive people.
They don't want to see...
people they see every day.
They want users that
say, "This is a cool site
"for cool people. Look
at all these pretty people.
"I want to be part of this."
- There's certainly people, you know,
trying to take advantage of the app
and abuse it in some way.
It's something that we were
constantly worried about.
You know, we built a trust
and safety team around it.
And a lot of times it's a
cat-and-mouse game, trying to do
what you can, and then
people figure ways around it.
- While I was there, we took measures
to block those people's accounts
or report them to
authorities, if required.
Having said that, like,
we were experiencing
a time of rapid
growth at Tinder.
So, you know, things like making
sure our servers didn't go down
were more important than, like,
you know, combating scammers.
- At the end of the day,
the only way to eliminate it
would be to shut
down everything.
- Match was very
interested in knowing the risk.
The attitude was generally
to make a business decision
about whether or not
the fraud should stay.
- Oh, yeah, they've turned
it into a scammer's paradise.
I wouldn't say it's tolerated,
but a lot of these bots, a
lot of these things will pay.
So there is money coming
in from these scammers,
and I don't even want to
begin to imply that's deliberate -
because it's not -
but it's a convenience.
Dating sites are different
from any other site,
in their job is to make
two people meet in person.
So you're making two
vulnerable people meet each other.
They need to trust that the
platforms are doing their best
to keep them safe, to
match them with people
who are there for good reasons.
- The more fraud
that is on the platform,
the easier it is for
someone to inflict harm.
Makes it less safe for people.
- In terms of harm...
..there's a lot of reports
come into the dating sites.
Everything you can think of
that would happen in a big city
is happening on a dating site,
because it's the same people.
And when you look at
Match Group's population of...
Let's say there's ten million
people on all of Match Group's sites,
that's the size of London.
So if you're getting the same
amount of reports as a big city
is getting on serious crimes,
they've got to be investigated,
and there's just not
enough people to do it.
- I do not feel safe
on dating apps, at all.
If I go on a date with
anybody, I do, like,
share my location
with my friends.
The amount of dates I've
come back from where I'm like,
"This man is an incel,"
it is quite scary, it really is.
And there's been quite a few
dates where I've come away
being like, "Oh,
he HATES women."
Do I just ghost him? Well,
that's going to anger him.
And he forced me to
let him walk me home,
so now he knows where I live.
- So, I met up with this one
guy, and straight away there was
something just very
different about him.
So I said, "Oh,
listen, I'm so sorry,
"I'm not feeling well,
I'm going to go home."
And then he just got so
angry, out of nowhere.
He tried to physically stop
me from leaving his house.
He blocked the door. I asked
him, "Please, move," got out.
It was wild to me just how
willingly, maybe, I put myself in
potentially harrowing
situations just to feel not alone.
- I went on a dating app date
and, yeah, had drinks.
He just kept
filling up my drink,
and then kept having a go at
me for not drinking that much.
I then said that I had a train
that I needed to go and get.
I didn't feel comfortable.
And then, when I went outside,
cos I said I wanted to leave,
and then that's when I
got sexually assaulted.
I don't think I reported it
because I just didn't feel that
there would be any support,
that anyone would care,
that they wouldn't see
it as their responsibility.
- SHE EXHALES
- My brother met his
wife on Match Group.
I met my ex-husband
on Match Group.
It really happens, it can
really work, it's really great.
It's just, the bad part
is so bad that, for me, it...
Ooft.
So, I worked at OkCupid
for close to four years.
I was a senior member of staff,
primarily working on
escalated serious cases.
The cases ranged from
harassment in person
or on the site itself,
up to kidnapping,
stalking, rape.
The team was very bare bones.
We were never able to meet
our quota in terms of completing
complex cases before
more complex cases came in.
- For serious
incidents at OkCupid,
even my team at its peak
- which was 20 people -
could not deal with the
amount we had to triage.
Triaging is painful.
We would get a lot of fake
rape reports from scammers,
cos if they knew that a man,
say, was going to report them
for being a scammer, what
they would do is then report them
for being a rapist.
And that's really
hard to deal with.
What triage is doing is,
it's taking what we think are
the most likely rape reports,
then they're going to me, say.
So, let's say there's 300 a day,
I will get the top 100.
If there's not time the next
day, another 300 is coming in.
Unfortunately, the 200
are just not being dealt with,
and there's no way around that.
This was resolved around
2017, but for a couple of years
we couldn't keep
on top of it at all.
- The feeling was
similar to quicksand,
where you could not rise
above or make a plan to succeed.
- Dangerous and depraved.
That's how detectives have described
a Teesside man who raped five women
in three years after
meeting them on dating apps.
- Faces of Glenn Hartland.
But the most dangerous
one was hiding.
He was a sex fiend using
Tinder to find his victims.
The 44-year-old raped
three women he dated briefly
after meeting them online.
- Match was always
concerned about trust and safety,
but up to a point where
the impact of bad actors -
those people that are going
to do harm to other people -
should not be something that
the entire company knows about.
- My teams were put
behind walls, basically.
They were all remote, they
never interacted with anybody else
in the company
other than online,
and I think that was deliberate.
- We were told specifically
not to use language like rape
or murder with certain
teams within the company,
and so therefore we couldn't
put that language in presentations
or any kind of text.
- A lot of people, I suspect,
wouldn't be working for the site
if they were aware of
exactly what the issues were.
- I'm not going to say I think
they believe it to be something
that should stay secret,
but they definitely did not
want it publicised anywhere.
- Match continues to
buy up its competitors.
In 2019, it successfully
buys Hinge.
Its profits continue to grow.
However, there are increasing
numbers of bad actors
who are getting
access to these apps,
and the problem of safety
has yet, really, to be resolved.
- I think that Match Group
eventually, after a couple of years,
began to take it seriously.
And so they did invest
at a much higher level.
- The group started
cooperating more.
It was a Match
Group central idea
that we would start
sharing information.
It became a system
called Sentinel.
And that started to give
everybody more of an idea
of how much abuse was
going on on their sites.
- It's very difficult to shake what
one brand does versus another brand,
and every brand had their
own way of dealing with it...
..for a long time.
- When you actually
looked at the other sites,
it was very obvious that
their systems weren't catching
a lot of these people to
be able to escalate them
to the central Sentinel system,
which was an issue with
their front-line moderation.
Front-end moderators
are the lifeblood of any site.
- Being a content moderator
consisted of reviewing different profiles
and conversations, many
of which were reported
for different violations.
I encountered a lot
of different behaviour.
There was a lot of what
we call romance scamming,
a lot of sexual harassment,
aggression from men towards
women that was of sexual nature.
Starting out, it was less
demanding, but very quickly,
the quota around profiles
we were asked to review
ramped up to 52 an hour.
So we were asked to not take longer
than one minute reviewing a profile.
- PRODUCER: - We've spoken to a
moderator who was working at Hinge,
who started with 32 to 35
profiles whilst he was there.
It went up to 52 an hour.
- 52 an hour...
No. That's stupid.
That's not...safe.
- Then we get on
to serious cases
and you're looking at
about 12 an hour realistically.
- So, in regards
to handling reports
of things like sexual assault,
there really wasn't
more specific guidance
besides the same expectation
that things should be handled
and judged within the
one-minute timeframe -
clicking a button and
just moving right along.
There was really no
sense that, on our end,
there was any sort of
heightened attention
we were able to give to it.
- Problem with moderation
- from my point of view
of trying to get money
- is there's no profit.
It's all loss, 100% loss.
An executive person who comes
from a financial background,
they'll look at this, and they'll
say, "Why do we need it?
"We could outsource
that to the Philippines.
"We could outsource
that to Africa."
And the outsourcing
is the way they're going.
- The safety concerns
don't go away.
And in 2019, we see the
first of several investigative
journalist pieces...
..detailing how
convicted sex offenders
were actually able to access
users from these platforms
when they had already been convicted
of serious sexual assault and rape.
So, this begins to beg the
question as to whether the company
should be carrying out ID checks,
background checks on users.
- ID verifications were
always a good idea.
Financially, they don't work.
A good background check is
going to cost a lot of money.
For things like Tinder,
Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish,
where you're not expecting
to go in spending $100,
then it's not going to happen.
- We have a responsibility to protect
the women on our apps globally.
And so what are we doing to
make sure that they have a great
experience and a
safe experience?
We have "one strike, you're out"
policy and you're banned for life.
They're not just
banned on the app
where they actually
had bad behaviour,
but they're banned
across all of our apps.
- Building up the
systems to ban profiles
across the portfolio
was a fantastic step
in the right direction,
but that definitely gave
brands some pause.
Generally, when
profiles are banned,
it tends to affect the
bottom line of the business.
- So it was only in 2020
that the Match Group finally seemed
to be taking these safety issues
very seriously.
- Match Group
brought in an ex-cop
who'd been working for Uber
for a long time, Tracey Breeden.
One good thing she did was
to build a critical safety team.
- They made several new
partnerships at this time.
One was with Garbo - the
identity verification start-up -
and also a helpline for
domestic abuse called RAINN,
and publicly
committed $120 million.
- Every woman that
I've met in my lifetime
has experienced some form
of gender-based violence,
and when speaking to them
about how they use dating apps,
they've also expressed
experiencing some form of harm.
And so it inspired me to
want to work in trust and safety.
When I first started
with Match Group,
it seemed like they really cared
and were trying to change the way
that trust and
safety was viewed,
and really trying to create a
safer experience for their users.
But when, ultimately, push
comes to shove, it did not happen.
- Match Group's very good at what
I've always called safety theatre.
They will put a lot of money
into a pretence of safety.
- There's all sorts of
different forms of harm
that these apps are aware of.
And, in my opinion, consciously
do not make efforts
to really prevent.
For example, with
their sign-up process,
they would make it as frictionless
as possible, as easy as possible
for a user to get in, and
so safety is not by design.
- With the gamification model,
you've got to get somebody
hooked from the beginning.
You've got 20, 30 seconds
to get somebody on board.
So adding an extra obstacle
to the sign-up process
would get in the
way of retention.
- Asking for more information,
checking the things that are
correct all prevent the user
from getting in the app and counting
as potential revenue or growth.
This is not just a
dating-app problem -
this is a Silicon Valley
technology problem
where it's growth at all costs,
and growth historically
meant users.
- Stephen Matthews seemed
like a wonderful person
from his dating profile.
He's a cardiologist,
a lover of dogs,
very into the outdoors.
He was saying that he was
looking for a relationship.
My client met Stephen
Matthews initially by being
connected with him
as a promoted profile,
and he was paying to have
himself promoted on Hinge,
so they would actually have
him as a recommended match.
They scheduled a
date to have brunch,
and then to go to his condo
afterwards and go in the hot tub,
which she did.
The next thing she recalls is
waking up in her apartment,
crying and having her family
around her, taking care of her.
She had bruises on her body.
They had the sexual
assault exams.
The test concluded
that she had had sex,
and she didn't recall
at any point having sex.
She ultimately decided
to report him to the police
and also to report
him on the app.
We have evidence that Mr
Matthews had been reported for years
prior to this incident.
When they report someone,
they do receive a response,
promising them that the person
has been removed from the website
and removed from the
app and banned indefinitely.
My client's report ultimately
led to the police investigating
Stephen Matthews and eventually
more women coming forward,
which led to his arrest.
Dr Matthews was ultimately convicted
of drugging ten different women
and sexually assaulting
eight of those women.
- It's clear you can just change your
credentials and make a new account,
which is a serious,
serious security breach.
If they had listened to
the multitude of reports
that they had received
about this person
and just banned
him in the first place,
I would not be sitting here
today having this conversation.
- The ease in which Stephen
Matthews was able to continually get back
onto this dating app -
I think that not only
could it happen again,
I'd be surprised if it
isn't happening right now.
- They're a company. They've
got to make profit for shareholders.
I made my case every week,
and I know all the other heads of
safety in all the other companies
did the same.
- Over the years...
..there are less meetings.
The meetings were shorter.
And just a general sense of
"this is a back-burner priority".
- I went into it for
all the right reasons,
and because it was a
site that I owed a lot to,
because I'd met
my partner on there.
But one of the problems with
high-risk moderation
incident response
is that PTSD is
absolutely inevitable.
Mine was getting bad.
I was dreading
going in every day.
I was on clonazepam
and taking far too much
just to be able
to sleep at night.
I was dealing with
the worst of the worst.
It was just
impossible to carry on.
I couldn't face it.
- I've seen everything from
very graphic
photographs and videos
to all manner of abuse.
I've seen things
you can never unsee.
And agreeing to work there
would be, for me, dishonest.
- Every dating app
has a duty to people,
to the public,
to do what is right
and what is safe
and what is just.
The problem here is that
my definition of just,
my definition of safe
and my definition of right
doesn't necessarily align with
the people that
were my superior.
- Having had an
inside look at how
these companies make decisions,
it's clear that the efforts
that they do make are more
for the press and the headlines
versus actually
helping prevent harm.
- Match Group will tell you they're
doing their best, but they're not.
My team cost a
million a year to run.
The executives above us were
on three or four million a year each.
Cut the executive
salary, pay for safety.
Why not? Seems logical to me.
- My personal experience
with dating apps
is the reason that I wanted
to set up a dating app
that makes women
feel more protected.
I have started an app.
We're trying to make dating
eventful and fun, and it can either be,
you know, just with a person or
an event with other single people.
We have started
with half of the people
that have gone down. We...
MAN SHOUTS
- Chop, chop now!
- Dating should be fun,
exciting, and it can be.
So with this, it's doing
something interactive.
They're put in cells with
people, they're all sort of singles.
And then it's just to help
them sort of like chat.
GASPS, SHOUTING
Do you think it's good for dating?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Fun, as well. - Yeah.
- So even if your date's boring,
you're having fun anyway.
- It's better to meet people in person.
- Yeah, it is.
- And I'm so tired
of the dating apps.
Like, generally, like, this could
not have come at a better time.
- Yeah, I know.
- Where would you say you are
in your dating-app journey now?
- Luckily, I'm not
on them any more.
Thank God.
And hopefully I never
have to go back on them.
- I'm engaged!
- I'm sure I'll delete it
again in a couple of weeks
because I'm so sick of it.
But, er, yeah, it's
the hope that kills you.