Online dating and hook-ups are great, but let’s face it, there’s a lot of weirdos out there. Luckily, dating sites put a lot of effort into weeding them out, meaning you can be more confident in your online interactions.
The Problems
People can be pretty creepy out there and the news is often filled with absolute horror stories. While using online platforms means that we can filter ourselves, presenting the best versions, everyone else can too. You see where the problems arise.
For dating and hook-up sites like TenderBang – one night stands near me, this presents a really, really serious problem and it’s one that they’re finally waking up to. Put simply, if they don’t make users feel safe, they won’t come back. If they don’t come back, the community dies. If the community dies, the service stops making money and folds.
That’s not an unreasonable stance for users to take either. There have been cases of theft, ID scams sexual crimes of all natures and even murder. Far beyond the PR disaster for the companies that each of these represents, there’s an overwhelming moral imperative to avoid these risks as much as possible.
The Solutions
Quite frankly, a Wild West in the online dating world is in no one’s interests. Different sites have different strategies for dealing with the implicit risks that face their users, but the underlying theme is the same: protect people and let them have fun.
While there’s a lot of legitimate criticism on many of these policies effectiveness, dating sites’ bottom-line relies on keeping people using their services.
The most common polices are:
Terms and conditions
Most sites have pretty strict terms and conditions which prohibit certain behaviours and people from using them. Many go further and actively ban anyone who has ever been convicted of a felony, or plead no contest to a violent crime. When you sign up, you agree to abide by these terms.
The problem here is that this requires honesty from the user base, and that’s not something you can trust. When it’s often partnered with disclaimers absolving the company from the actions of its customers, it’s little more than a fig leaf.
Photo Verification
A few services go to more stringent lengths and confirm people are who they say they are.
Requiring all users to upload some piece of official identification, say a drivers licence or passport, means that they can be more sure that they are who they claim they are. Matching the image in the ID to the images uploaded on the profile ads a second layer of protection.
The requirement for official ID means that users can interact with some confidence .The problem here is that while these practices confirm physical identity, they don’t cover malign intentions.
Safety Teams And Manual Overviews
Much like social media’s community standards and online safety teams, dating apps utilise a lot of manual reviewing techniques. If users are uncomfortable or feel that something’s not right, they have the option to report the other user.
While this isn’t fool proof, people’s instincts tend to be pretty good on a group level. If someone is getting lots of reports, it’s in the company’s interests to ban them from their platform. While it might be fairly resource heavy, the results are proving worth it.
Automated Tools
While key-word scanning and filtering has been in action for a long time with mixed results, the rise of AI might provide the answer. Training the machine learning models on ‘risky’ conversations and partnered with human oversight, the result is, in theory, a safer environment.
While the best of these tools are still in the early stages and the expense behind their development means only the largest platforms can afford them, they’re worth it.
Partnerships
Various platforms have partnered with background check organisations to offer free or discounted searches. While this still relies on users to make use of the service, these checks can bring any previous convictions to light before a physical meeting occurs.
Advice To Users
Probably the most common, and most effective way to stay safe is through offering advice to users.
Almost every online dating platform does this, whether via blogs, as part of the sign-up process or regular emails.
Conclusion: Slowly Getting Better
Work on user safety is a never-ending task and requires endless effort and improvement, but things are getting better. As more people become aware of the risks, they need to know that there are things being done to mitigate them.
The days of the Wild West are gone, and the cowboy developers are being chased out of town. As it stands, safety sells and long may that continue.
