Bailey’s experience of using dating apps was like many young women: She’d spend her time swiping through photos of guys, matching with some and engaging in varying levels of conversation – most of which led nowhere, but some of which sparked an interest.
Like many young women using dating apps, the 23-year-old American had to fend off her fair share of pushy men. One of them was a match on Bumble, with whom she initially hit it off: they moved from the app to iMessage, and texted for a bit. “Eventually he ended up asking me to come to my apartment,” she says. “I said no, and eventually he asked me on a date. I figured it wasn’t a big deal that he asked to come over and just thought maybe I would go on the date.”
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But the more she thought about it, the less comfortable she felt at how forward he’d been. She politely declined the invite. “He didn’t seem to respond well to that,” she says. So she stopped texting him on iMessage, and went to Bumble to unmatch with him so he couldn’t get in contact.
That’s when she realised she couldn’t log in. She tried to reset the password, to close the app and restart it, but nothing worked. “I realised I was banned,” she says. Bailey tried to move over to Hinge, which is owned by a separate company, dating app conglomerate Match Group, but wasn’t able to create an account there, either. She next downloaded Tinder, which is owned by the same parent company as Hinge, and faced the same issue.
“I emailed Tinder customer support, and was told I ‘violated their terms’ but that’s all they would tell me,” she says. “Just a generic email. I kept asking what did I do wrong? And I got no answer. I also reached out to Bumble, but never got a reply.” (Bumble has been approached for comment.)
Bailey believes that she’d fallen victim to something that’s spoken about begrudgingly by those on Reddit forums dedicated to online dating: weaponised reporting, in which people – usually scorned dates – retaliate by incorrectly reporting that the person who shunned them had done something against the app’s terms and conditions. “I think it would be too much of a coincidence to get banned right after rejecting that guy who seemed to not take it too well,” she says. “My theory is that he reported me for doing something truly horrible and made up a lie about me.”
Reporting accounts for fictional violations of apps’ terms and conditions happens a lot on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where copyright strikes or false reports of infractions can harm a user’s ability to earn money. “Malicious reporting is definitely a thing that people discussed in our research,” says Kath Albury, professor of media and communication at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, who studies online dating apps.
“I noticed that Bumble – not in the Match Group – recently updated its safety policies and explicitly said that ‘not liking’ someone was not grounds for reporting and it would take action against users who exhibited a pattern of vexatious reporting,” Albury adds.
Weaponised reporting also appears to be commonplace against those who don’t fit into traditional binary gender categorisation. “The email about the update specifically noted that it was not okay to report trans people for the ‘crime’ of being trans,” says Albury.
Being separated from a stream of income thanks to vengeful YouTube and TikTok commenters is bad enough for a digital creator. But being locked out of dating apps can be far more significant for young people looking for a lifelong partner.
Stanford University’s How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey has been tracking how US couples meet for nearly 15 years, and using pre-existing data to track back the sparks that kindled relationships since the 1940s. Four in 10 heterosexual couples met online according to the latest wave of data, gathered in 2017, up from 22 percent in 2009.
People unable to get onto those apps are potentially losing out on finding their life partner (or simply a hot date), and given the concentration of Match Group, which owns five of the top eight dating apps by market share, being banned from its services can be terminal. Match Group apps account for two-thirds of the online dating market, according to the Business of Apps.
It’s an issue that weighs heavy on Bailey’s mind. “Being banned off all the Match Group apps definitely ruins my chance of online dating,” she says. It’s also something that worries Reddit user reelmeish, who declined to give his name, and was banned from Tinder and the whole Match Group. The Redditor is insistent he has done nothing wrong and has no idea why he’s been banned. “I’ve never been rude, never made crude remarks with anyone, and have been on several great dates from Match Group apps,” he says. “I’m not your typical dude that people would think would get banned. Like most people imagine some misogynist; I think Andrew Tate and his ilk are gross.”
Nevertheless, the ban has had a significant impact on his love life. “Being cancelled from Match Group is akin to being cancelled from all dating,” he says. “It really feels bad and is unfair, and it’s a real problem. There is no mechanism to dispute the issue.”
For reelmeish, there’s also a lack of closure as to why he was blocked from all the Match Group apps. “They do not even tell you what you did or why they banned you,” he says. “It could be a mistake, it could be retaliation, it could be anything, but you don’t even get a chance. I understand it’s their site and they have the right, but it sucks from a personal standpoint.”
The challenge is that bans, when they’re handed out, are pretty absolute. The companies overseeing dating apps can not just ban usernames and email addresses, but also IP addresses (from where you log onto the internet) and device identifiers, meaning that individual devices can be barred from rejoining apps.
The reasons for both Bailey and reelmeish’s bans are still unclear to them. They were informed of their bans through generic notifications. Their messages to the platforms were ignored. “I’m not sure if Match Group has similarly cautioned users [like Bumble] around using the report button punitively – and I’m not sure if the decision to ban this particular user was automated, or made by a human moderator,” says Albury. “These are the kinds of things I would ask the company in the name of safety and fairness for all users.”
Match Group spokesperson Kayla Whaling says that identifying the specific users mentioned in this story was difficult because of their pseudonymity. However, generally, the company has support teams for each of the brands under the Match Group umbrella, who look into individual reports by users to take action on the account, which can include removing it.
“If it’s believed the account belongs to a bad actor and/or we received a report that the account’s user was in violation of our terms and conditions, we will remove the account across Match Group’s platforms,” she adds. “If someone believes they may have been banned incorrectly, we encourage users to reach out to support so we can look into it further.”
For Bailey, being banned has had an impact on her dating life. But she’s found a way through it all: Meeting people the old-fashioned way. “I am just not using dating apps anymore and it is for the better,” she says. “People on there are not genuine.”
