New Tinder feature is viewed as being racist

In the US, Tinder users can see if potential dates have a criminal record. The feature is nice, except it is a colossal gift for OSINT players.

Tinder users in the United States will be able to check if potential dates have a criminal record starting this week. The dating app wants to increase the safety of using Tinder in this way.

Users are given the opportunity to do a background check within the so-called ‘Safety Center’ of the app. This new application could be launched thanks to a collaboration with Garbo, a non-profit that offers background checks in the hope of preventing violence against women.

In the app, Users can provide basic information about a potential match, after which Garbo checks whether they have a criminal record. If this turns out to be the case, Garbo encourages the user to report them to Tinder. Garbo mainly looks at people who have criminal records for sexual abuse or violence. For example, no report is given if someone has a criminal record due to drug possession.

“If someone has shown transgressive behavior in the past, this often also predicts whether someone may pose a danger in this way in the future,” Kathryn Kosmides, founder of Garbo, explains in a statement.

Kosmides emphasizes how important it is to check in advance whether you can safely meet with someone. ,, Whether it’s online dating or the dozens of other ways strangers meet in the modern digital age, ” she says. “We need to know if we might be jeopardizing our safety.”

The first two searches with Garbo via Tinder are free. After that, a processing fee of 2.50 US dollars will be charged per search.

The new application in the app could stop dangerous people from using Tinder for their purposes, says Sarah Lageson, an associate professor at the School of Criminal Justice in Newark, USA.

But experts also have their doubts about the reliability of the new function. ,, Most people who engage in harmful behavior have no criminal record, ” Lageson explains. ,, Therefore, checking the criminal record may not be the best way to assess whether someone you do not know personally can pose a danger to you.”
False sense of security

The application is also incomplete, according to the academic, because racial inequality still plays a major role in the American legal system.

“Many white sexual predators have no criminal record, while many black people unfairly have one.”

The biggest risk, according to researcher Nicole Bedera, is that the application gives Tinder users a ‘false sense of security’.

“There are many structural barriers in the U.S. penal system that allow powerful and privileged abusers to escape punishment.”

Whether and when this application will also be used in the Netherlands is not yet known.