we're dating the same guy

privacy versus safety in a dating context

sweden, august 2022

STRANGER DANGER

I've heard this (catch) phrase so many times working in online safety. Interacting with strangers on the internet always comes with risk because there are bad people in the world. Risk increases a lot when you introduce offline encounters to the process, like dating or meeting new friends irl from apps. There are countless negative stories out there around dating - from Tinder Swindler to catfishing and beyond.

A friend recently told me about the community group "Are we dating the same guy?" (late to the game, I know). This group has become a popular community for women to share stories about men they are dating and get input from other women who have dated the same guy. The group aims to keep women safe by sharing negative experiences with the broader community. The group is not necessarily about "ranking" guys but warning women about potentially dangerous or sketchy men.

The group prohibits taking screenshots or sharing specific stories outside the group, but posts look something like this:

Photo of the guy

"Name - age - location, any red flags?"

I scrolled through maybe 70 posts, and 80% had 10+ comments describing terrible experiences women had with the man in the post - some horrendous stories and many "he has a wife and kids" type stuff - so it was pretty clear this group serves a valuable purpose.

This group is so uniquely fascinating in my world because it perfectly captures the trade-offs between privacy and safety and how opposing these two can be, even if they are two sides of the same coin. 

In hindsight, many safety solutions I worked on and advocated for in my previous roles often relied on compromising privacy principles. I always advocated for better verification processes and prioritizing actor-level interventions. The problem with many safety solutions like identity verification is that it often compromises privacy, for instance, by verifying people's identity using passports or facial recognition technology to determine someone's age. While they both have the same end goal (well, kind of), privacy and safety interventions can sometimes clash and be complete opposites. For example, we need personal information about users to protect others while respecting their right to privacy (and yes, even the bad actors). Prioritizing one over the other is not always super clear. I’m sure the creators of the group felt similarly.

The group admins are making obvious trade-offs in this example. Men don't have any control over the situation, and even though we all know photos we publish on the internet don't really belong to us, it can be uncomfortable having your photo posted and used in this way, you know, having people talking about what dating you is like. The man cannot intervene should anyone spread false rumors or have a say about the woman in return. I have yet to see any evidence of women sharing false rumors, so this may not be a problem, but the risk is still there. Perhaps I'm cynical from my years in the content space, but you only need a few bad actors to abuse a community like this for it to become a problem.

While these are valid concerns, it's pretty clear group admins decided safety carries a higher weight in this discussion. If it's good intent, does the process matter? The countless posts I read justify this decision and prioritization - many women experiencing abuse, lies, romance scams, men who are married with kids but say they don't, and so on. And yes, before someone says it, I am sure this also happens to men, but that's not what we are discussing here. And no, men are not the most vulnerable.

Privacy is more than owning your data and understanding how it's being used. Reflecting on what privacy meant for social media companies in its early days, privacy wasn't anything more than features allowing you to limit your posts to be seen by specific audiences/only you/everyone. Privacy was visibility; privacy was choosing who could see what. Ultimately, privacy is about choosing, owning, knowing, and understanding what is happening with your information.

While there are excellent reasons for this group to exist, and I am happy it does, it does make me reflect on what this would look like if we made it a bit fairer for both sides. For example, do we ask the woman to justify her claims with evidence? Who carries the burden of proof if so? And that brings us back to the main topic - privacy versus safety - where does it end and begin? Is there a better way to design dating apps so there is no need for this group to exist? Can we capture the bad guys and be transparent about these negative experiences without also looping in innocent individuals? Can we do anything we want for safety? When does intent matter? Should group admins consider this?