Tinder parent company Match Group announced Monday that it plans to bring background checks to the dating app later this year. To do so, it plans to work with Garbo , a New York nonprofit focused on background checks around violence and abuse, to make it easy for people to find out if their matches have documented histories of such behavior. While the exact details remain to be determined, Match Group head of safety Tracey Breeden says users can expect to see a feature based on the partnership appear in Tinder in 2021. Since Tinder is one of the company’s most popular dating apps, it’s a natural place to try the feature, she says, but if it is successful there users are likely to see it appear in Match’s other apps as well, including OKCupid, Hinge, and Plenty of Fish. Tracy Breeden [Photo: courtesy of Tinder] Garbo’s overall goal is to work with vulnerable populations including women, people of color, and LGBT people to protect them from gender-based violence. It aims to provide inexpensive or free access to information that’s buried in paywalled court records or otherwise difficult for people to access, like convictions for crimes of violence or civil restraining orders. “We fundamentally believe that public record access should be free, if not very, very low cost,” says Garbo founder Kathryn Kosmides, who is herself a survivor of gender-based violence. Relationship violence is unfortunately quite common , especially against women, and violence linked to dating services has existed long before the internet. Tinder already provides users with safety tips like meeting in public and avoiding accepting drinks from strangers, as well as ways to report people who behave inappropriately on the platform. Match Group announced a partnership with the anti-sexual violence group, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), late last year , to review its existing safety measures and reporting tools.
Originally posted here:
Tinder will integrate background checks to keep users safe