The company behind more than a dozen dating apps, Match Group, has known for years about the abusive users on its platforms, but chooses to leave millions of people in the dark
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.When a young woman in Denver met up with a smiling cardiologist she matched with on the dating app Hinge , she had no way of knowing that the company behind the app had already received reports from two other women who accused him of rape.
She woke up at home, soaking wet on her bathroom floor, the key to her house still in her door. She continued vomiting for hours. When she came to, she reported the assault to Hinge. Even after a police report, it took nearly two months for Matthews to be arrested — the only thing that got him off the apps. By then, at least 15 women would eventually report that Matthews had raped or drugged them. Nearly every one of them had met him on dating apps run by Match Group.after a jury convicted him of 35 counts related to drugging and sexually assaulting eight women, drugging two women, and assaulting one more for a total of 11 women.
Instead, as people continued to get hurt, the company dithered over what damning information should be hidden. “Do we publish only where we are required by law?” reads a slide in a 2021 presentation shown multiple times to Match Group employees as well as external safety partners. “Do we push back on how much we are required to reveal, or do we try to go beyond what is required?”No online space is risk-free.
The Dating Apps Reporting Project sent Match Group a four-page letter detailing our findings. The company responded with a short statement. The statement did not dispute that Match Group has carefully documented the extent of harm on company apps for years without sharing that information with the public. It also defended the company’s efforts to make platforms safe.
To get around the Tinder ban, we used techniques commonly suggested by online guides and forums that don’t require lots of technical knowledge to understand. We were able to verify three techniques that allowed banned Match Group users to repeatedly bypass being flagged when creating new accounts. Sporting a trademark black leather jacket and short, slick-backed hair, Breeden went by the nickname “Tornado” during her 15-year career in law enforcement. What made her attractive to Match Group was her most recent job at Uber. She helped the global ride-hailing company revive its reputation after a series of scandals — from persistent reports of harassment of women employees to allegations that it was ignoring sexual assault that occurred during Uber rides.
During this time, Match Group invested $100 million into safety as a recurring cost, the company said, and boasted about Breeden’s “central safety team.” “I don’t think they’re safe enough at the moment,” he said. “They’re gonna get worse. ... I’m hoping dating sites vanish.” OkCupid already had those tools. Lawrie was using them every day. One of those was the Sentinel system, which had been up and running across Match Group’s apps for at least five years before Breeden arrived. It works like this: When a user is banned for something serious — like sexual assault — a case is created in Sentinel with the phone number and email address associated with their account.
Lawrie left the company in 2022 and said most of his small team that was ferreting out malicious users also left due to a negative workplace environment. He said much of their work was outsourced to contractors with little training and severe quotas. Despite having been reported for rape to Hinge, Stephen Matthews' profile was still promoted on the app as a Standout, as indicated by the rose icon in the bottom right corner.By this point, Matthews had already been reported for rape at least once to Hinge. Court documents show that he had already allegedly sexually assaulted nine women and drugged 10. Not only did the apps allow him back on, they featured Matthews’ profile.
Match Group declined to make Bernard Kim available for an interview. Messages sent to Kim directly went unreturned. Four months before Matthews was arrested, a post on a Facebook group in Denver blew up, right around Christmas. The flood of Facebook comments mirrored details in the police reports released the following year. Nearly all of the 16 women included in the district attorney’s initial complaints were offered tequila. Eight recalled playing Jenga. Six mentioned a hot tub.
During the years Matthews was on their apps, Match Group hired and fired Breeden. It made loud promises on sexual violence, announced initiatives and product lines, and promised a transparency report. But it was not straight with the public, which meant the women matching with Matthews on Match Group apps were not aware of the risk they faced.
In fact, under Kim’s leadership, all mentions of a transparency report disappeared from the company’s annual impact report. Ironically, this was around the same time that new legislation in Europe required tech companiesof “non-consensual behavior” and other issues. Match Group will be required to submit a transparency report to the European Union on the scope of harm on their platforms later this month. Lawmakers in India and Australia are also demanding transparency.
But neither the cleanup nor tracking a date from your phone would have stopped Matthews — a man who never sought to hide his identity, who assaulted his dates in his own home — from finding and harming women. Matthews will likely never leave prison. Match Group executives currently face no charges. But the company knew about Matthews, and it knows about thousands of other abusive users. It has the data that could help users avoid dangerous situations, but it hasn’t shared it, leaving millions of people in the dark.
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