[HN Gopher] Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs p...
___________________________________________________________________
Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan
Also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1m8z2w4/4chan_the_ha...
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/tea-app-brea...
Author : gloxkiqcza
Score : 518 points
Date : 2025-07-25 15:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| duxup wrote:
| A flash in the pan gossip app that when it functions normally is
| not worried about anyone's privacy / accuracy ... also doesn't
| care about good policies or their user's privacy.
|
| That seems about right.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You could say that the *Tea has been spilt*
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Painting this as a "gossip" app seems extraordinarily
| reductive. Women have a good incentive to share info about and
| to one another for safety beyond "gossip."
| duxup wrote:
| Go checkout the website, the first image is just two people
| gossiping.
|
| This app operates just like an app some creep online would
| use, people post pictures (permission or not) and gossip
| about them.
| jahewson wrote:
| There's also a ton of bad incentives for those women who lie,
| manipulate and abuse beyond "gossip".
| ryandv wrote:
| Yeah? What are they?
| chneu wrote:
| Attention. Revenge. Blackmail. Victimhood personality
| types.
|
| There are plenty of examples of people making things up
| about other people who they thought wronged them. Mob
| justice is really disgusting, and that's all this site
| is. People justify horribly vindictive behavior when they
| think they're righting a perceived wrong.
| ryandv wrote:
| You're right, but my question was asking what incentives
| exist to _discourage_ revenge, blackmail, and the other
| behaviours you describe.
|
| I suspect that there was no answer to my original
| question because we all know that we'll sooner let
| surgeons hack off children's genitals than hold
| progressive white women accountable for their actions...
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Is it reductive? It also has good incentive for someone
| jilted or misinterpreting something to suddenly tarnish
| someone's reputation with little recourse for the other
| party. It is a one-sided review app for people in a way that
| people affected may never even know!
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If guys had an app that women couldn't access where we shit
| talked all of our exes with photo evidence women would riot
| at the company HQ.
|
| But then again, can't convince people as a whole that men
| are, on average, good and decent people with normal flaws
| just like women, and therefore deserve to be protected,
| loved, and appreciated equally.
| nis0s wrote:
| How is this user data even reliable or useful when someone can
| make fake personas and populate their activity with LLMs?
|
| Drivers licenses can be faked. Moreover, someone can just pretend
| to be someone else on this app with real drivers licenses.
|
| The whole premise, implementation and process of Tea as a social
| media app is flawed, and a legal liability for the devs.
| tamimio wrote:
| I hope it served as a good lesson to the average person to be
| more cautious while submitting sensitive information like a
| government ID. Just because it's an app with a nice UI doesn't
| mean it's secure, let alone trustworthy regarding who owns it.
| Last week I was contacting a government agency here in Canada
| and the support team requested a government ID to be shared
| over email, which is anything but a secure communication. I
| tried to share it as a link to my vault, but they refused, so
| now either I will have to go in person or they will find
| another way in the meantime.
|
| The internet went from 'YouTube asking users to never use your
| real name' to 'you have to submit your ID to some random app'
| in 10 years. Crazy!
| ethagnawl wrote:
| > I hope it served as a good lesson to the average person to
| be more cautious while submitting sensitive information like
| a government ID.
|
| This absolutely should not be normalized. If I'm ever
| prompted to submit photos of a government ID to some service,
| I'm turning heel. I'll try to use their phone service (which
| I just did successfully this week), correspond via mail or
| maybe, as you've said, handle it in person but I'm probably
| content to go without.
| wosined wrote:
| I always do. I would have never made social media accounts
| if it required phone or ID. Thankfully I'm old so my
| accounts were made before normies flooded the net and
| started trusting everything.
| dabockster wrote:
| > Thankfully I'm old so my accounts were made before
| normies flooded the net and started trusting everything.
|
| It wasn't "normies" so much as it was the leadership and
| early investors of Facebook shoving "just trust us" and
| FOMO literally everywhere online. The hype (and hope) in
| 2010 was REAL and almost all privacy related
| conversations were shut down on sight. Heck, I think I
| still have my copy of Jeff Jarvis's Public Parts (ISBN13
| 9781451636352) somewhere in my closet. Amazing read if
| you really want to understand the mindset in place at the
| time.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The sad part is that your government ID is about as likely
| to be leaked by the government agency itself than it is by
| any third party that has an scan of it.
|
| My driver's license is scanned every time I buy beer. I'm
| under no illusions that it's not quite readily available in
| any number of leaks or disclosures.
|
| If that sounds defeatist, maybe it is. Nothing online is
| private. Once it's in a database, it's only a matter of
| time before it's exposed. History has proven this again and
| again.
| gitremote wrote:
| You need to do this for background checks for employment,
| even though the employees for the background check service
| might be outsourced to a different country, and your
| government data had no protections in their jurisdiction.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Every hotel and his dog takes a copy of my passport, it's
| basically public domain.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| You can send it as an encrypted PDF, fwiw
| chatmasta wrote:
| On the rare occasion when I have to do this, I blur the
| maximum amount of the image and watermark it with hundreds of
| lines of small red font saying "FOR EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION
| BY $X_ENTITY."
|
| If they have a problem with it then I will gradually remove
| pieces until they're okay. But I haven't had to do this the
| few times I've used this tactic - it causes issues with
| automated scans but eventually some human manually reviews it
| and says it's okay.
|
| What I don't like is the "live verification" apps that leave
| me no choice but to take a photo of it.
| gruez wrote:
| >What I don't like is the "live verification" apps that
| leave me no choice but to take a photo of it.
|
| That's becoming the norm now, presumably because of concern
| that people are taking leaked scans from one site, and
| using it to commit identify fraud (eg. getting KYC scans
| from crypto exchanges and using it to apply for accounts at
| other crypto changes, for money laundering purposes).
| 10000truths wrote:
| You can use OBS to overlay your watermark on your webcam
| feed, then expose the composited output as a virtual camera
| that you select in the browser.
| codedokode wrote:
| You have a choice of not using such apps.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| At the cost of being excluded from a larger and larger
| part of everyday social life.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Apps like the visa application to Australia? Yes I
| suppose I could not use them.
| 63stack wrote:
| This is a really useful practice, going to implement it as
| well.
| dabockster wrote:
| > The internet went from 'YouTube asking users to never use
| your real name' to 'you have to submit your ID to some random
| app' in 10 years. Crazy!
|
| Because we couldn't get anyone to take the internet seriously
| if it was just a bunch of anonymous pseudonyms trolling each
| other. And maybe that was a mistake.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| When I started on the internet it was common to use real
| name, and indeed include things like addresses and phone
| numbers in usenet .sigs
| lupusreal wrote:
| It was definitely a mistake. The internet was not meant to
| be taken seriously. Measures like real name policies are
| designed to make people take it seriously but that is to
| the detriment of the users who do.
|
| Just look at Facebook. Users with real names sharing all
| kinds of inane schizo nonsense, extremism, building echo
| chambers without realizing it, becoming completely divorced
| from reality as perceived by the majority of people around
| them in meatspace, because they section themselves off in
| cyberspace.
| xtracto wrote:
| CEOs and board members should be personally criminally liable
| for shared personal information coming out of their
| platforms.
|
| It's the only way they will push companies to STOP storing
| them long term.
|
| I've been in several companies (mostly FinTech) that store
| personal sensitive documents "just in case". They should be
| used for whatever is needed and deleted. But lazy compliance
| and operations VPs would push to keep them... or worse, the
| marketing people
| ronsor wrote:
| To be fair to the FinTech companies and their leadership,
| banking and finance laws are so draconian to the point
| where you'd rather store (and risk leaking) sensitive data
| than face even bigger fines from the government overlords.
| If you want that to stop, get rid of the PATRIOT Act and
| reform the KYC insanity.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| If my license gets leaked and then a stalker shows up at my
| house, I will simply turn them away on the grounds that it was
| illogical to assume the license wasnt faked.
| carabiner wrote:
| > Drivers licenses can be faked. Moreover, someone can just
| pretend to be someone else on this app with real drivers
| licenses.
|
| These are actually still very hard to do. I don't know anyone
| who would let me use their license for this purpose.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| With all this talk about age verification, I have to wonder if
| the complete lack of security was intentional.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| How do you mean?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| The UK and some US states are instituting age verification
| for adult content. Doxxing thousands of women is a great way
| to get people talking about privacy and security.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| That feels like a hell of a risk to take just to get a
| conversation started. Not just the obvious implications of
| endangering all the users, but the cloud that's going to
| hang over everyone associated with Tea, now.
| fidotron wrote:
| https://www.teaforwomen.com/about
|
| Two people, in public.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| http://archive.today/U5Tah
|
| Freewalled
| more_corn wrote:
| Freewalled I like that
| neonate wrote:
| Is that site down? I'm just getting the default nginx page.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Strange! Doesn't seem to be down, at least at time of
| writing _(either my original post or this one)_
|
| I linked the plain HTTP version... which seems to rely on a
| series of redirects; potentially TOR: ~ $
| curl -vLsq http://archive.today/U5Tah |& grep -Ei
| 'location:|title' < Location:
| https://archive.today/U5Tah < onion-location: http:
| //archiveiya74codqgiixo33q62qlrqtkgmcitqx5u2oeqnmn5bpcbiyd.
| onion/U5Tah < location: https://archive.ph/U5Tah
| <title>archive.ph</title>
|
| Tough to say :) Vaguely reminiscent of SNI troubles on the
| web server... which _can_ depend on the client. I thought
| that was becoming exceedingly irrelevant, though.
| dpedu wrote:
| I've seen this issue with certain dns providers. I don't
| have issues with google dns (8.8.8.8).
| edgineer wrote:
| There is a long-standing conflict between archive and
| cloudflare
|
| https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Good lord, why would they store those drivers' license images for
| an instant longer than it took to verify their users?
| duxup wrote:
| They shouldn't, but it appears to be a gossip app where by
| design they're also storing photos taken of other people
| (permission or not) and gossip about them...
|
| They don't seem to value privacy.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| According to another media report, the approval queue for new
| account verification was seventeen hours long. It's possible
| what the 4channers got was that approval queue.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| No they got more, 23gb of files.
| AlanYx wrote:
| That's only a partial archive. There's another one with
| 55gb.
| jsrozner wrote:
| This. Appropriate regulation should make this an offense
| punishable by a large fine. There is almost no consequence to
| companies for bad practices.
|
| Ideally you'd see fines in the 10%s of revenue. In egregious
| cases (gross negligence) like this, you should be able to go
| outside the LLC and recoup from equity holders' personal
| assets.
|
| Alas, if only we had consumer protections.
| dabockster wrote:
| > Appropriate regulation should make this an offense
| punishable by a large fine.
|
| And some kind of legal penalty for the engineers as well.
| Just fining the company does nothing to change the behavior
| of the people who built it in the first place.
| chemeng wrote:
| In the US, professional certifications (PE, Bar, USMLE,
| CPA) exist to partially solve this problem when the
| certification is required to perform work legally. These
| are typically required in industries where lives and
| livelihoods of individuals and the public are at risk based
| on the decisions of the professional.
|
| Joining in with some other comments on this thread, if the
| stamp of a certified person was required to submit/sign
| apps with more than 10K or 100K users and came with
| personal risk and potential loss of licensure, I imagine
| things would change quickly.
|
| I'm personally not for introducing more gatekeeping and
| control over software distribution (Apple/Google already
| have too much power). Also not sure how you'd make it work
| in an international context, but would be simple to
| implement for US based companies if Apple/Google wanted to
| tackle the problem.
|
| I think the broader issue is that we as a society don't see
| data exposure or bad development practices as real harm.
| However, exposing the addresses and personal info of people
| talking about potentially violent, aggressive or unsafe
| people seems very dangerous.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I would at least love to see a public postmortem. What was
| the developer's rationale for storing extremely personal
| user data unencrypted, in a publicly facing database? How
| many layers of management approved storing extremely
| personal user data unencrypted, in a publicly facing
| database? What amount of testing was done that failed to
| figure out that extremely personal user data was stored
| unencrypted, in a publicly facing database?
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| >What was the developer's rationale for storing extremely
| personal user data unencrypted, in a publicly facing
| database?
|
| https://www.teaforwomen.com/about >With a proven
| background leading product development teams at top Bay
| Area tech companies like Salesforce and Shutterfly, Sean
| [Cook, creator of Tea] leveraged his expertise building
| innovative technology to create a game-changing platform
| that prioritizes women's safety
|
| If you're lucky, a clown vibe coded this trash. If you're
| unlucky, he paid someone to do so, and despite his proven
| background about leading top Bay Area companies, didn't
| even think to check a single time.
|
| The CEO is directly responsible for this.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wow, so the entire company is a Founder and a Social
| Media Director??
|
| > With a proven background leading product development
| teams at top Bay Area tech companies like Salesforce and
| Shutterfly, Sean [Cook, creator of Tea] leveraged his
| expertise building innovative technology
|
| Blah blah blah blah blah... Just goes to show that you
| can write all sorts of powerful sounding words about
| yourself on your About page, but it doesn't say anything
| about your actual competence. I mean, I don't have a
| "proven background leading product development teams" but
| I sure as shit wouldn't make obvious amateur-level
| mistakes like this if I ever did a startup.
| ytpete wrote:
| Requiring a 3rd-party auditor perform a postmortem whose
| results are posted publicly might be an interesting
| regulatory approach to this. Companies get shamed for
| their mistakes, and also the rest of the industry learns
| more about which practices are safe and which are
| dangerous. A bit like NTSB investigation reports, for
| example.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| Absent broader regulation, we all know that apps like Tea
| depend HEAVILY on user trust. However, I am a bit concerned
| users either won't fully grasp the severity of this breach or
| won't care enough and end up sticking with the app
| regardless.
|
| A somewhat embarrassing but relevant example: my friends and
| I used Grindr for years (many still do), and we remained
| loyal despite the company's terrible track record with user
| data, privacy, and security as there simply wasn't (and still
| isn't) a viable alternative offering the same service at the
| expected level.
|
| It appears Tea saw a pretty large pop in discussion across
| social channels over the last few days so I'm pretty hopeful
| this will lend itself to widespread discussion where the
| users can understand just how poorly this reflects on the
| company and determine if they want to stick around or jump
| ship.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| "They just trust me. Dumb f*cks.."
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Companies, especially American ones, see data as an asset,
| rather than a liability.
|
| The GDPR in Europe attempts to reset this but it's still an
| uphill battle
| ytpete wrote:
| Or maybe require them to prominently disclose the breech to
| all current and future users on the app main screen for some
| period of time afterward (a year or two?). Sort of like the
| health-code inspection ratings posted in restaurant windows.
|
| That cuts to the issue some other comments have pointed out,
| that user _trust_ is really their most important capital -
| and with short attention spans and short news cycles, it may
| rebound surprisingly fast.
| hbn wrote:
| This is what vibe coding gets us!
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| The cynical part of me feels like certain employees had
| uncontrolled access to the user data.
|
| There would be a morbid irony in the idea of a tool marketed
| as increasing safety for women actually being a honeypot
| operation to accumulate very sensitive personal information
| on those very women.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Honestly it doesn't matter that they didn't have that
| additional nefarious intent their incompetence and
| carelessness drove to the same result.
| ytpete wrote:
| Not a fan of the "vibe coding" hype, but is there any
| evidence that this app was built that way?
| Proofread0592 wrote:
| I am just making a wild guess with no evidence to back it up,
| but I have a question and a potential answer:
|
| How was this app going to monetize?
|
| I'm guessing by selling user data, namely drivers license info
| to phone number.
| DanHulton wrote:
| We really need to get used to treating PII as poison, storing
| as little of it as possible, and getting rid of it as soon as
| we're done with it.
| sigwinch wrote:
| I think we can treat it as currency. All nine letters of my
| SSN, for example, I'll allow you to store those if in return
| I get to store the name of the CEO's boat.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I thought 4chan died a year or so ago?
|
| Ugh. I'm clearly getting old. I don't even remember the last time
| I went to 4chan.
| tokai wrote:
| It was knocked offline and a lot of journalists and bloggers
| spun a history about it not coming back. But it did.
| morkalork wrote:
| All the mods were doxxed too, but life uh finds a way?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Thanks - this is context I was missing :)
| linkage wrote:
| It's unironically a stronger case for network effects than
| Facebook
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| that thing is a cockroach. It will survive every tech company
| you can care to name.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "Security breach" more likely a vibe coded slop app
|
| But yeah please tell me how "we care about your privacy"
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _more likely a vibe coded slop app_
|
| I mean, it's fun to throw baseless accusations around, but do
| you have any actual reason to suspect this?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Do you think if that was disproved that would be better
| somehow?
| therein wrote:
| If you look at the API, it is a slop app. The IDs were being
| uploaded to a public Firebase bucket. Chats are also public
| now. The full API keys are leaked because they were in the
| shipped app.
| Vvector wrote:
| None of that ever happened before AI. Right...
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| It had to learn from somewhere!
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Unlikely considering it allegedly launched 2 years ago:
| https://www.distractify.com/p/what-is-the-tea-dating-app
| raverbashing wrote:
| I believe this argument, still not clear why it became viral
| recently
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Tiktok. Some men who got flagged in the app shared their
| perspectives and some of it went viral.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| You can get Apple Legal involved if your face is on the app and
| they should get the related posts removed.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| It's on a torrent. Good luck getting that removed.
| schroeding wrote:
| I think they mean the actual posts on tea itself, not the
| leaked ID photos.
| goku12 wrote:
| Even if only a few women are abusive and gossiping, they
| will doxx a lot of innocent men. At that stage, that entire
| app should be treated as illegal and shut down, instead of
| hoping that Apple legal will find the time to settle each
| complaint. The entire app is a toxically bigoted concept
| that gets a pass because the term 'women's safety' is
| attached to it.
| chneu wrote:
| I'm failing to see how this app is legal. States like
| Arizona have recently passed anti doxxing laws. Posting
| any information on this app with the intent of social
| pressure, harassment, etc is illegal in those states.
|
| At the very least, the app itself might be legal using
| the "public forum" argument but the content posted on
| there definitely leaves the users in a legal gray area.
|
| I can see the argument on both sides but this is asking
| for a case to be brought just so the law can be fleshed
| out.
| goku12 wrote:
| > I can see the argument on both sides but ...
|
| I recently saw a screenshot from one of these apps (so I
| can't guarantee its authenticity. But it's not an
| inconceivable scenario). Someone posted a man in there
| with his photo. The elephant in the room is that the man
| is dead! His ex-wife (with whom he had children) is
| enraged by this and is demanding to have it removed.
| Instead of addressing her concern, one of them decides to
| report her!
|
| Now this may be an anecdotal argument. But when it
| pertains individual rights and human dignity, even a
| single violation is sufficient to question the ethics and
| legality of such endeavors. An important fact here is
| that nobody has absolute rights. Any rights are valid
| only as long as they don't infringe on someone else's
| rights. So, smearing, maligning and vilifying someone
| cannot be justified in the name of 'women's safety'.
|
| This is one of those cases where you can't find a balance
| between both sides. One side is objectively wrong.
| Ruining the lives of any number of innocent men must not
| be an acceptable compromise for ensuring women's safety.
| There must be ways to achieve that without causing such
| widespread collateral damage. Their argument to the
| contrary is not just lazy, it reeks of hubris and
| contempt.
| smnthermes wrote:
| You can report it to Google Play. The category is Restricted
| Content -> User Generated Content, and the app ID is
| "com.tea.tea". https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/cont...
| gruez wrote:
| What's the actual violation though? If you click through the
| "User Generated Content" link, it shows that it's allowed, just
| that they have to moderate it.
|
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
| ronsor wrote:
| The actual violation would be a privacy violation
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| How is an app that allows users to post unverified and doxxing
| information about random men allowed on the IOS app store?
|
| Apple had no issue mass censoring Parlor and others, how is an
| app like this able to reach #1 under all?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| If big tech didn't have double standards they'd have no
| standards at all.
| bitpush wrote:
| There's only one guiding principle for Apple - and that's
| money. Dont let their privacy marketing ("Privacy is a human
| right") fool you otherwise.
| mikestew wrote:
| One could say that about any company (because "fiduciary
| duty", amirite?).
|
| "Don't let Toyota's 'reliable car at a reasonable price'
| marketing fool you, they're all about money." Yeah, but
| does that preclude them from selling me an actually
| reliable car at a reasonable price?
| bitpush wrote:
| But when a company makes moral arguments ("We're better
| than others because of X") the bar goes up.
|
| If Toyota says that we're the car company that cares
| about _you_ , we want to keep you safe from the bad
| actors, and trust us on making right choices for you -
| and when you discover Toyota has been secretly building
| out an ad network, in bed with Chinese government, you
| have to call them out. And that's what Apple is doing.
|
| Privacy is a human right, except in China where they are
| happy to go along with what the government wants. Google
| atleast had the balls to pack up and leave the country.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Why don't you try uploading an app where men doxx &
| "review" women that they date on dating apps? See if Apple
| suddenly finds morals.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Apple fired its Chief Diversity Officer when she said that
| white men with blue eyes can also count towards a diverse
| workforce. A purely non-monetary ideological capitulation.
|
| https://www.bet.com/article/pe65fc/apple-s-black-
| diversity-c...
| adastra22 wrote:
| What was wrong about what she said?
| drak0n1c wrote:
| I think it was a perfectly reasonable statement. But
| because it does not align with a recent radical
| redefinition of diversity, she was fired. Apple certainly
| wasn't at risk of losing money over keeping her in that
| role.
| cmxch wrote:
| Safety for favored people, doxxing for the disfavored.
|
| Truth.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Firebase again lol
| progbits wrote:
| Letting frontend bootcamp devs think they can do backend was a
| mistake .
| throwacct wrote:
| Hahaha. Bet money they left everything accessible just by
| signing in into the app.
| rozap wrote:
| it's always firebase. always.
| batmaniam wrote:
| Isn't this basically Peeple except gender locked to women? Peeple
| failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip against
| anyone. If someone was jealous of another, for example, that
| person could just write false slander and claim it was real with
| no evidence. That would have affected the victim for jobs, dates,
| etc. So it was laughed at by VCs and everyone online and it shut
| down.
|
| How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel timebomb
| waiting to happen?
| webstrand wrote:
| Not only that, I think they're forfeit their Section 230
| protections since they're exercising editorial control by
| excluding males from the platform. So they'd be directly liable
| for any defamation they publish on their platform.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| That's not how 230 works - why do people keep parroting this
| misinformation?
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-
| referre...
| webstrand wrote:
| Because it's really good misinformation, thanks for the
| link. I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional
| protection.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional
| protection._
|
| Defamation is still not protected, it's just the person
| who posted it who is liable. Meanwhile the site's
| "editorial control" is protected by the first amendment,
| not section 230.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Huge credit for actually updating in response to
| evidence.
| schoen wrote:
| It continues to confuse me that the publisher/distributor
| distinction that section 230 was meant to _remove_ (created
| by prior Federal court decisions) gets so frequently
| interpreted as if section 230 had been intended to
| _establish_ it.
|
| To me this feels as if people widely thought that the
| Apollo Program was intended to prevent people from
| traveling to the moon, or Magna Carta was meant to prevent
| barons from limiting the king's power, or Impressionism was
| all about using technical artistic skills to depict scenes
| in a realistically detailed way.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Because they seem to want it to work that way and seem to
| think that by spreading the misinformation that it will
| somehow change the way the law is interpreted.
| derbOac wrote:
| Thanks for posting the link. I had read that before and
| forgot.
|
| I think sometimes confusion about Section 230 maybe points
| to some legal soft spots.
|
| I think there's a trend -- good or bad -- for courts to see
| websites as accountable for users' activities on the site
| when those activities are systematic and collectively
| illegal or jeopardized, when the website is seen as
| encouraging the activity.
|
| It's not hard for me to imagine a court deciding that the
| intrinsic nature of the website encourages systematic
| libel, and is therefore is somehow involved in the creation
| of post content.
|
| Even more specifically, I'm not sure the "good faith"
| clause of Section 230 even applies to something like Tea in
| the case of libel, should libel be there.
|
| Now, actually showing libel is another thing, but that's
| also easier for me to imagine today than even a year ago,
| especially in the presence of a data breach where posters
| are exposed.
|
| I guess I don't see Tea as being held legally responsible
| for anything about the content of user posts, in the US at
| least, for the reasons outlined in that article. But I also
| wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.
| pridzone wrote:
| It would be in Apple and Google's best interest to pull these
| apps immediately. Multiple Supreme Court justices have
| indicated an interest in narrowing the breadth of section 230
| immunity. This app, structured entirely around effecting the
| reputation of private individuals, provides a relatively
| clean case to do so. It's not a stretch that the app could be
| considered a 'developer in part' of the content it hosts, and
| thus lose section 230 protection.
|
| A narrowing of section 230 would not be good for Apple or
| Google, though they wouldn't face any liability for the Tea
| apps conduct.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's exactly like Lulu which shutdown due to privacy issues.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(app)
| prisenco wrote:
| Every couple years someone tries this and it immediately
| turns into a cesspool because no matter the good intentions
| of the makers, it attracts the worst kind of person as active
| users.
|
| It gets shut down, everyone forgets, then someone eventually
| has a brilliant idea...
|
| It come from a place of sincerity but defenders imagine
| everyone would use it for the same reasons they would:
| Warning people of genuine threats in the dating world. They
| would never use it for gossip, or revenge, or creative
| writing, etc. so they don't imagine others would.
|
| But at scale, if generously only 0.1% of women in America are
| bad actors that would weaponize this app, that's over 150k
| people (not to mention men slipping past security). And the
| thing about bad actors is that one bad actor can have an
| outsized effect.
| carabiner wrote:
| There needs to be a startup accelerator or VC that solely
| focuses on recycled ideas. We could have an app that
| gathers strangers for dinners, one for reviewing people,
| and so on. Since all of these gained traction at some
| point, the idea would be you get 1-2 quick puffs of these
| discarded cigarette butts before selling or shutting down.
| Just vibe code it, go viral, collect some subscriber fees,
| then close due to whatever reason.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| TechStars already exists.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| We've already got one: YC
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495
| junto wrote:
| These kinds of apps are already in existence across many
| cities in the world in the form of informal, invite-only
| WhatsApp and Telegram groups.
|
| The problem is the demand is there for such groups and I
| see posts that range from, "this guy tried to get me to get
| in his car", or "man exposed himself to me", to "man has
| twice approached children at my child's school" or "I was
| drugged and raped after meeting with X on Y dating app".
|
| Lots of sexual attackers are known to multiple women.
|
| Fact is that in lots of countries rape kits don't get
| processed, it's hard to secure a conviction, many serial
| sex offenders walk free and many women don't want to go
| through a reliving of their trauma in court.
|
| As a result these kinds of groups are very useful, not just
| for women who are actively dating, but for women who are
| simply existing in day-to-day public life. We have a
| president and a supreme court judge who both have been
| accused of serious sex offenses and nothing happened.
|
| Is there a chance that some man who has done nothing wrong,
| gets accused by a woman in these groups? Yes of course
| there is a chance that could happen, but many would prefer
| to not take the risk of dating someone that has been
| accused of being a sex offender and the vast majority of
| posts with confirmation by multiple women confirm that
| bias.
|
| These groups help keep women safer than without them.
| There's a good reason why many women just don't date at all
| any more. Covid lockdowns reminded them that they don't
| really need it and it's more hassle than it's worth.
|
| Sadly the vast majority of men are fine (not all men), but
| not enough call out the bad and dangerous behavior of a
| minority of their friends and peers. Until that happens
| women will be drawn to these apps and groups to try to be
| safer and not be a part of a sex crime statistic.
| prisenco wrote:
| "invite-only" is key because it requires a trust
| relationship, if not directly then through minimal
| degrees of separation. While not perfect they can
| basically work while apps for the general population
| cannot because there is no trust between the users.
| junto wrote:
| Indeed. This trust is a critical point. The invitation
| mechanism is a web of trust. Not infallible but better
| than these apps that try to centralize that through
| identification.
| carabiner wrote:
| > Is there a chance that some man who has done nothing
| wrong, gets accused by a woman in these groups? Yes of
| course there is a chance that could happen, but many
| would prefer to not take the risk of dating someone that
| has been accused of being a sex offender and the vast
| majority of posts with confirmation by multiple women
| confirm that bias.
|
| The concern of false accusation appears to be... brushed
| aside. Are you a man? How would you feel if you were
| falsely accused? Knowing that this could snowball into
| being doxxed, having your employer informed etc. Innocent
| men have been jailed for this.
| derbOac wrote:
| Based on some of the things I've seen in my professional
| and personal circles, I'd say there's much more than a
| chance, and the level of potential distortion is probably
| much greater, with more consequences, than some are
| acknowledging.
| chneu wrote:
| Innocent people have killed themselves over this stuff.
| The mob don't care.
| duxup wrote:
| This also seems like an app ripe for actual creep / abusers to
| follow / manipulate.
|
| The claim that it provides safety really is just that, an empty
| claim.
| dabockster wrote:
| The fact that it verifies by ID scan is also not safe at all
| for a million different reasons.
|
| A better way would have been to charge a small subscription
| fee - like $2/month or something. The fee filters out 99% of
| the trolls out there (who wants to pay to troll) and also
| gives the app/website admins access to billing info - name,
| mailing address, phone number, etc - without the need for a
| full ID scan. So the tiny amount of trolls that do pay to
| troll would have to enter accurate deanonymizing payment
| information to even get on the system in the first place.
|
| And it can be made so only admins know peoples' true
| identities. For the user facing parts, pseudonyms and
| usernames are still very possible - again so long as everyone
| understands up front that such a platform would ultimately
| not be anonymous on the back end.
|
| But oh no, that won't hypergrow the company and dominate the
| internet! Think of all the people in India and China you're
| missing out on! /sarcasm
| konart wrote:
| >A better way would have been to charge a small
| subscription fee - like $2/month or something.
|
| That's Pure. And they have more than 5$ I believe.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you act like it's impossible to get payment credentials
| that have nothing to do with the user
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| no, but it is _tremendously_ more difficult than email or
| even ID scans (unless you're doing actual verification,
| which is both more expensive and complicated than just
| charging a nominal fee or even just attaching a Card
| object to a stripe customer). Just getting to stand on
| top of an extremely robust existing system (payments)
| gets you so much adjacent help in keeping bad actors out,
| or at least getting it down to a human-team manageable
| level. It can be the difference between a viable business
| and not.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > extremely robust existing system (payments)
|
| It is not, indeed.
|
| The first part is its goal: identity is secondary, the
| main purpose is money. It means a customer can put a fake
| name and address as long as the money part is considered
| OK. Most PSPs won't check the cardholder name (it can be
| used for fuzzy scoring, but exact match is a fool's
| errand). Address is usually only required for physical
| goods and won't be checked otherwise. And 3DSecure will
| shift the blame enough that the PSP won't need to care
| that much about the details.
|
| The second part is the whole mess that comes with
| payments. You'll become a card testing pot in no time,
| and you'll be dealing with all the fuss just to check
| identities, you'll soon be rising the token payment to a
| significant amount to cover the costs, and before you
| realize it half your business has shifted into payment
| handling.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Payment systems are significantly more robust than taking
| a picture of an ID to prove you're you.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > you act like it's impossible to get payment credentials
| that have nothing to do with the user
|
| This is incorrect. The parent acts like it isn't trivial
| to obtain payment methods that aren't linked to the
| payer. It seems like a reasonable possibility.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It seems like a reasonable possibility.
|
| For whom? For people willing to be an asshole on the
| internet? For people willing to stalk other people
| online? This sounds exactly like the group of people that
| would look for ways of paying for something in ways not
| linked to them, even if that means "borrowing" someone
| else's identity
| FiniteIntegral wrote:
| I think you underestimate the willingness of people to pay
| to troll, it may filter out people but an app that was (in
| theory) meant to be secure shouldn't think of a problem as
| filtering rather than securing. Admins knowing peoples'
| identities simply moves the weakest link in the chain to
| the admins. I think an app like this was doomed from the
| start and 4chan simply pulled the plug on an already
| leaking bathtub.
| msgodel wrote:
| I've thought about buying throwaway phone numbers just to
| troll linkedin. I'd be surprised if people weren't
| finding ways to get accounts on apps like this for
| trolling.
|
| The only reason I haven't is because it feels like
| LinkedIn may have already jumped the shark and I wouldn't
| really get the value for my money.
| ada1981 wrote:
| Are there any premium troll Sites?
| fooker wrote:
| Twitter with check mark
| ada1981 wrote:
| Great point.
| rKarpinski wrote:
| Whats wrong with verifying the ID?
|
| The issue is they decided to roll their own extremely
| questionable service and insecurely store sensitive images
| in a public bucket
|
| Multiple SAAS vendors provide ID verification for ~$2/each.
| They should have eaten that fee when it was small and then
| found a way pass it onto the users later
| jandrese wrote:
| > A better way would have been to charge a small
| subscription fee - like $2/month or something. The fee
| filters out 99% of the trolls out there
|
| Have you seen who has the blue checkmarks on Twitter/X now?
| I'll give you a hint, it's not the people who argue in good
| faith.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > Have you seen who has the blue checkmarks on Twitter/X
| now? I'll give you a hint, it's not the people who argue
| in good faith.
|
| So the same as it was before you could buy them?
| raydev wrote:
| > who wants to pay to troll
|
| You've never visited X (formerly known as Twitter)?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Many people will do anything they can to hurt their ex after
| a breakup.
| djohnston wrote:
| Hey now! They use ID verification bub - how are you gonna
| fake that? It's not like there are just public buckets of
| legitimate ID photos taken by real women for you to hoover
| up. Check mate.
| danesparza wrote:
| >> How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel
| timebomb waiting to happen?
|
| By this logic: I suppose glassdoor, yelp, or Google reviews
| aren't legal either?
|
| What about identity verification as part of any employment
| offer?
| AndroTux wrote:
| The difference is, on these platforms you're rating legal
| entities. On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal
| information about, an individual. Where I come from, sharing
| personal data of someone without their consent is not
| allowed.
| voxic11 wrote:
| I think its a mostly US based app, in the US sharing your
| opinion about other people is protected speech.
| const_cast wrote:
| Sharing your opinion is protected speech, by lying is not
| always protected speech, particularly if done with the
| intent to financially hurt someone.
| gitremote wrote:
| Do you think a women's dating safety app is mainly about
| women lying and intending to hurt men, because it's rare
| for men to stalk or sexually assault women?
| prisenco wrote:
| I do. Not as an indictment of women but an indictment of
| social apps. Apps like this are way too hard to moderate,
| manage and verify. They quickly get swarmed by bad actors
| and misused. Again, not because women don't have genuine
| safety concerns in the dating world but because apps are
| not a viable way to manage those concerns.
|
| Some social problems just don't have technological
| solutions.
| gitremote wrote:
| Like online reviews, if 10 women reported that the same
| man was violent, would you see it as 10 data points or 0
| data points that say nothing?
| prisenco wrote:
| You know the answer to that is zero. There is no viable
| system a company, let alone a small unfunded startup,
| could use to verify the identity of the reporters let
| alone guarantee the trustworthiness of the account.
|
| Those ten reports could be made by one person. That one
| person might not even know the person they're accusing.
| That one person might be a man. That one person might be
| a bot.
|
| You'd have to ignore the last three decades of online
| identity, trolling and social media pitfalls to not
| recognize that.
|
| And please don't compare reviewing a can opener on Amazon
| to accusing someone anonymously of a heinous crime on an
| app built by one person.
|
| But I'm not sure I'm going to convince you with words so
| I'll suggest this:
|
| _Go and build this app_.
|
| Build it, see what happens. Nobody else has been able to
| crack this but maybe you can.
| philodeon wrote:
| You've never read the story of the Halifax Slasher, have
| you?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Slasher
| bawolff wrote:
| That's not really relavent to whether someone is going to
| get sued for defamation.
|
| It might be relavent to who wins the lawsuit, but
| sometimes the mere existence of a lawsuit is pretty
| painful.
| gitremote wrote:
| Sure, and what was proposed was suing the women for
| warning others about an allegedly dangerous man, not
| suing the man.
| Levitz wrote:
| >for warning others about an allegedly dangerous man
|
| I mean if witches didn't do anything surely they wouldn't
| be hunted down.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| We grant a tremendous amount of leeway and power to
| accusations made by women against men in society today.
| There are always honest people using things for their
| intended purpose. Though they are also dishonest people
| using things for their own ulterior motives.
|
| A well-designed system will maximize utility for the
| former, and minimize utility for the latter. An app where
| women can leave what are practically anonymous reviews
| for men is not such a system.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I'm sorry and I'll be voted down for this, but I do think
| that it will attract plenty of fibbing and deliberate or
| not-so-deliberate stretching of the truth. Anyone who is
| rejected tends to be a bit angry about it. In this case,
| women who are ghosted can say whatever they want.
|
| This isn't all of the people, but in my experience in
| life it's more than enough to make this app impossible to
| filter.
| qcnguy wrote:
| A few days ago a video leaked of a woman riding in a
| Mexican taxi, who was demanding the driver went faster.
| He refused because it'd be dangerous, and she immediately
| started threatening to report him as a harasser to the
| police. She even said he had to speed up or else the
| police would be waiting for him when they got there. She
| didn't realize her whole conversation was recorded on
| camera.
|
| A lot of men have had experiences like this one. Either
| directly or they know someone it happened to. Yeah
| #NotAllWomen but way too many will exploit the feminist
| #BelieveAllWomen culture to gain even trivial benefits.
| An app devoted to letting women anonymous gossip and
| engage in reputation warfare without fear of consequence,
| or even fear that the man might reply in self defense, is
| going to get flooded with women like the taxi passenger.
| 9dev wrote:
| "A lot of men" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
|
| Go read some statistics on the number of women harassed,
| abused, raped, and _killed_ every day-- _every single
| day_ --because they are women.
|
| Go ask your mother, your sister, your wife, your female
| best friend, when they had their last abusive encounter.
|
| Go ask your friends of both genders what the worst things
| are that could happen to them when walking home at night,
| and compare the responses.
|
| Go read some historic accounts of how women were treated
| for... pretty much all of history.
|
| Go look up news articles of what can happen to women when
| riding a taxi. Spoiler: it's not just a threat.
|
| Yes, there are some abusive women out there. Yes, it's
| fucked up when that happens to you. But trying to
| insinuate the levels of violence against men would be
| even remotely comparable is just plain awful.
| lazide wrote:
| By the time a man has hit his 40's, it is exceptionally
| uncommon he hasn't seen someone hit with a false rape
| claim - or had one himself - by a vindictive ex. Or has
| been threatened with (or directly attacked) with physical
| violence.
|
| By people going on the same sort of rants like you just
| did.
|
| Some People are terrible, especially when they think they
| can act without consequences.
|
| Does that excuse men doing bad things too? No.
|
| But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain
| question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without
| actual evidence.
| 9dev wrote:
| The problem is that you're equating the wide range of
| violence against women with a specific kind of violence
| against men by calling both "bad things", insinuating
| those are even remotely comparable. They are not. 90% of
| rape victims are female. In the US alone, every 68
| seconds, a woman is sexually assaulted.
|
| After the big war, some Germans were quick to point out
| that their people had suffered when they were displaced
| from the land they occupied in Poland, for example, and
| that "both sides had suffered". I assume you're also
| incapable of understanding why the victims of the Nazi
| regime were completely aghast by that?
|
| > But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain
| question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without
| actual evidence.
|
| What do you suggest to do instead? Sexual violence is
| often a crime with only the perpetrator(s) and the victim
| as witnesses. In most cases, rape doesn't leave
| persistent traces. Rape victims tend to be in shock,
| however, and often need time to process what happened.
| Your suggestion seems to be that we _should_ question
| these claims?
|
| Judging these cases correctly is incredibly complicated,
| and claims of wide swaths of men falling prey to abusive
| women don't really help anyone affected.
| lazide wrote:
| There is a reason 'he said, she said' is widely known as
| the shittiest type of situation, eh?
|
| Yes, we should question those claims, and any others. Or
| everyone who wants to be shitty will do it via that
| route. It's basic shitty human behavior.
|
| That it screws _actual_ victims is why people gaming the
| system should be punished.
|
| But not challenging these claims just makes more victims
| too. And eventually people _will_ just tune out
| accusations, because the shittiness has gotten too
| pervasive. And then the predators /shitty humans will get
| be doing more _actual_ rape eh? Which is terrible.
|
| This is why it's also prudent to be very careful who
| anyone is alone with, favor video recording of public
| spaces, etc. as well. Because the best way to avoid a
| situation is to make it as difficult as possible for the
| situation to occur, and minimize the chances of any
| ambiguity. Which is also shitty for everyone.
|
| Personally, I also don't trust the stats because I've
| seen many (5+) women retcon clearly consensual behavior
| (that they were even bragging about before!) into 'he
| raped me' when someone tried to shame them for it later,
| or there was some leverage they could get out of it. I
| had one who literally admitted to me when I investigated
| that she was doing it to punish the guy for refusing to
| date her later. Another was fine until she went home and
| her mom gave her crap about her dating behavior, and then
| all the sudden it was rape. Until we started to interview
| her for her story, and then she admitted it was
| consensual.
|
| I very much believe actual rapes and SA's occur. I
| personally have literally never seen an accusation for
| rape or SA that stood up to even the lightest scrutiny,
| within the environments I've been responsible for. And
| not because I was trying to avoid them!
|
| The joys of being a manager of mixed sex groups eh?
|
| If we could figure out the actual truth of these
| situations, then we could punish actual offenders and not
| constantly be in this BS situation.
| Fogest wrote:
| > Do you think a women's dating safety app is mainly
| about women lying
|
| That's not what it is intended for, but many people after
| relationships end can be extremely emotional and
| sometimes very spiteful. It's not uncommon for people to
| embellish or lie about the truth to make themselves look
| better and the other person look shitty. Especially if
| you're the one being dumped, you may be even more likely
| to engage in petty behaviour.
|
| I personally have experienced an ex making up a sexual
| assault story. This kind of app didn't exist then, but
| she even went as far as reporting me to the police.
| Luckily the police investigated and could easily discern
| it was a lie. Going to the police is obviously a much
| higher burden than using an app, and yet many females
| still go make false SA claims there. Do you really think
| it wouldn't be a common problem for people to do the same
| in an app at a much higher rate?
|
| People often believe things like SA claims without any
| evidence and will often even attack people trying to
| defend the person or insist on some kind of proof. It
| means that someone making up bull crap on these apps is
| going to be treated like it is true, yet the rates of
| lies would likely be pretty high.
|
| People can just be so crazy when it comes to
| relationships/love. Especially when it comes to people in
| their teens or early 20's, the brain isn't fully
| developed and dealing with these emotions is even more
| challenging and leads to even more rash decision making.
| Mawr wrote:
| > because it's rare for men to stalk or sexually assault
| women?
|
| The more common it is, the more damaging false claims of
| it are. It's a self-defeating linear relationship.
| firefax wrote:
| Devil's advocate, but how is saying someone is an
| unreliable romantic partner going to financially hurt
| someone? Maybe the reason I haven't had success in the
| policy arena is because I've been too kind, given recent
| events :-)
| lazide wrote:
| What words do you think a vindictive ex uses? I don't
| think 'unreliable romantic partner' are any of them.
|
| I have seen false rape claims, false claims of child
| abuse, neglect, etc.
|
| With zero repercussions, of course.
| parineum wrote:
| If you're boss is on the app.
| const_cast wrote:
| I'm not sure, it depends case to case and what the court
| thinks. I think, generally, if you can prove it directly
| caused you to lose lots of money then you can make an
| argument.
| hyperliner wrote:
| Not if it's libel or slander, both which are generically
| defamation.
| gitremote wrote:
| It's not defamation if it's true. Why do you think women
| warning other women about rapey and stalker men are
| mostly lies? Even if it's only 5% of men, wouldn't the
| discussion focus on that dangerous 5% over persecuting
| the innocent 95%, as a matter of self-preservation?
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| An irony in this conversation is how normalized it is for
| women to be concerned about men as a demographic when
| it's only a small minority that inflict harm. While it's
| controversial for men to be concerned about women as a
| demographic when it's only a small minority that inflict
| harm.
|
| I still maintain my pet theory that this is a downstream
| effect of the normalization of paranoia around pedophiles
| that began hitting the mainstream in the '80s. The modern
| world is exceptionally safe, yet to the average person,
| it _feels_ exceptionally dangerous.
|
| ...While I 've got the hood up, I'll continue soapboxing.
|
| I've started seeing rare instances such as a young woman
| walking around a corner and there is a man rounding the
| same corner, surprising her by mistake, and the woman
| starts crying or breathing in a panicked way, unable to
| regulate herself for several minutes. It's not always
| walking around the corner at the same time, but there's a
| common pattern of being surprised by a man just going
| about his day and experiencing a severe fear response to
| that interaction.
|
| When I look at a lot of cultural related issues today,
| beyond just gender, I see many signs of pervasive
| psychological issues. I don't know what the solution is,
| but I'm very confident that the root cause is more
| complicated than something you can describe in a single
| sentence.
| gitremote wrote:
| > An irony in this conversation is how normalized it is
| for women to be concerned about men as a demographic when
| it's only a small minority that inflict harm.
|
| The same hypothetical 5% can inflict harm to multiple
| women, that's why multiple women and girls complained
| about Epstein and Trump.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Maybe it's different now, I have no clue, but I'm in my
| 40's now and don't make a habit of hanging out with 20
| year olds.
|
| But I was friends with my wife's friends before we got
| married, and in a sample size of ~20 women my age, every
| single one of them has experienced inappropriate and
| unwanted touching in social settings. And a large number
| of them were victims of outright rape.
|
| In comparison, I have many male friends and of them, I
| only know one who has been wrongly accused of sexual
| assault (the lady openly talked about doing it to help
| with a promotion...)
|
| So even if both sides may have a few bad apples, one side
| is a much more prevalent problem when it comes to the
| number of victims.
| perihelions wrote:
| But sharing *facts* about other people is potentially
| defamatory speech (in the American context). There's a
| not-at-all small nuance here: when you make concrete
| allegations about your personal experiences, you're _not_
| sharing an opinion--not sharing your subjective reaction
| to publicly-known information--rather you 're introducing
| novel facts, provable objective facts, into the
| discussion--your version of those facts. And that comes
| with genuine legal risks.
|
| A remarkable fact that's stayed with me: Ken White
| (@popehat) once said that in his defamation law practice,
| his largest category of consultations was with clients
| who'd said negative things about a past romantic partner,
| who then threatened to sue. I believe his point was those
| negative things were true most of the time, but difficult
| to prove, or defend.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But sharing _facts_ about other people is potentially
| defamatory speech
|
| Yes, and? The service is protected in the US by Section
| 230, and Tea doesn't operate anywhere else currently.
| Individual users who use it defame are, in principal,
| subject to defamation liability, but in the US (and,
| again, that's the only jurisdiction currently relevant),
| the burden to proving that the description was both false
| _and at least negligently made_ (as well as the other
| elements of the tort) falls on the plaintiff (it is often
| said that "truth is an absolute defense", but that's
| misleading--falsity and fault are both elements of the
| prima facie case the plaintiff must establish.)
|
| Sure, in a jurisdiction with strict liability for libel
| and where truth is actually a defense, and/or where the
| platform itself, being a deep pockets target, was
| exposed, Tea would be a more precarious business. But
| that's not where it operates.
| perihelions wrote:
| That's all true. I wasn't clear on the context of this
| thread, whether we were talking about the users or the
| platform.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The most obvious legal claim at the moment is that Tea
| was negligent about its security.
|
| I suspect that's going to be more of a problem for Tea
| than hypothetical individual defamation cases.
|
| Although having said that, how can you sue someone for
| defamation if you never find out you're being defamed?
|
| Any woman can say "Don't date [name], he's a bad person"
| and the victim will never know.
|
| Unless he asks a female friend for a social credit check,
| all [name] will see is a shrinking pool of opportunities.
| naet wrote:
| If it's an opinion or a statement of a fact it isn't
| defamation.
|
| "He's a bad person and you shouldn't date him" is an
| opinion you can legally express anywhere as much as you
| want.
| blks wrote:
| Is making a post on eg Instagram after breaking up with
| your ex and telling that she/he e.g. abused you, illegal
| too?
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| Heard of Amber Heard?;)
|
| I mean, I think it depends what you claim in this post.
| firefax wrote:
| I thought, as a practical matter, it's on the person
| alleging slander or libel to prove falsehood?
|
| I think sometimes folks don't properly threat model what
| can be done if someone chooses to think about what the
| consequences for breaking a rule are and letting that
| guide their actions, rather than striving to avoid
| breaking them out of some kind of moral principle.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Hypothetically, if I said "firefax murdered an underage
| prostitute and then sexually violated the underage
| prostitute's corpse in 2018 and was never caught, I
| witnessed it happen and tried to report it but the police
| refused to even open an investigation, firefax is a
| dangerous predator and should not be trusted", and you
| lost your job because of that, should you be the one with
| the burden to prove that never happened?
| umanwizard wrote:
| We are talking about what is the law in a specific
| country, not what "should" be the law. Also, the
| bizarrely graphic description is out of place here.
| anonym29 wrote:
| It's a visceral thought experiment, intended to instill a
| sense of bewilderment at what being falsely accused
| actually feels like to someone who seems to offer a
| normative assertion that privileges bad-faith accusers,
| without actually causing any of the harm of a real false
| accusation. That is topically relevant and experientially
| informative while being restrained enough to not be
| actually harmful.
| tpmoney wrote:
| It's complicated in the US. The rules of thumb as I
| understand them are:
|
| 1) The truth is an absolute defense against libel claims,
| but it is a defense, so you must prove the truth of your
| claims.
|
| 2) Statements of opinion (or that a "reasonable person"
| would understand to be opinion) are with few exceptions
| protected. "Firefax is a rapist" is likely to not be
| considered a statement of opinion. "Firefax is a creepy
| asshole" likely is. "Firefax is a sexual predator" is
| probably going to be in a grey area and context and
| damages will be relevant.
|
| 3) The more "public" of a person you are, the harder it
| is to win a libel case, even the statements were false.
| For example, let's say it turns out both that there is
| some "Epstein List" describing clients and their
| activities, and also that it turns out Trump doesn't
| appear anywhere in that list. Trump is such a public
| figure (both as a celebrity and as the POTUS) that he
| would be extremely unlikely to win any libel cases
| against the internet randos confidently asserting he's on
| the list even though that statement would have been a
| statement of fact, and would have been false.
|
| 4) A key part of the "opinion" grey area is whether you
| imply knowledge of heretofore unknown facts, or your
| relying on publicly available data. Internet randos might
| not lose a case, but someone like Elon Musk might if they
| said something like "I've seen the case files, Trump is
| definitely on that list and has done some sick things".
| This is because Musk could reasonably be believed to have
| had privileged access to the information in question and
| have non-public facts they are basing their statements
| on. Internet randos on the other hand are largely going
| to be considered making their statements on the back of
| publicly known facts (e.g. photos, business connections,
| public actions and statements) and general "vibes"
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Even if it's true and provable, very few people have the
| money to defend a defamation matter.
| mjbroe02 wrote:
| That doesn't apply when you publish information for broad
| consumption. Then it becomes libel. People need to
| realize that posting on a site where you can reasonably
| expect that your words may be consumed by the masses
| makes you a publisher. That comes with responsibilities
| and is not protected the same way as an individual's
| personal speech.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| So all I need to do to mark another guy (who might be,
| for example, competing for a job I want, or a certain
| woman's attention) as a rapist on a platform that's used
| by people in the location this guy lives in in the US is
| a (fake) female driver's license, a photo of the guy in
| question, and a name?
|
| coolcoolcool. I'm sure that _never_ _ever_ gets abused
| horrifically.
| gitremote wrote:
| What was leaked was women's personal data, like driver's
| licenses. What they shared with each other was their
| experiences with men who sexually assaulted them or stalked
| them and their names, not the men's personal data.
|
| Men's driver licenses were not distributed online. Only
| women's driver licenses were distributed online.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this app, but surely those
| accusations of sexual assault are only useful to other
| users of the men are sufficiently well identified?
| gitremote wrote:
| Name and photo.
| 9dev wrote:
| So... Personal data?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The article says that what gets shared with the app is a
| picture of the man, and it's not just "those who sexually
| assaulted them or stalked them" but anyone they want
| feedback about.
|
| I assume the app then runs facial recognition.
|
| This may be legal in the US, but not under GDPR. Pictures
| of faces are biometric data (explicitly listed as such),
| which falls under additional restrictions beyond
| personally identifiable information.
|
| A drivers license with the picture blacked out would be
| less sensitive than the picture itself!
| 9dev wrote:
| > This may be legal in the US, but not under GDPR.
|
| This whole story is an amazing example of why the GDPR is
| correct about this, IMHO.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| There are soo many examples from the US showing why GDPR
| is a good thing: Clearview AI (biometric mass
| surveillance, essentially "search the internet by face"),
| car manufacturers collecting and selling location data,
| phone companies collecting and selling location data,
| ISPs collecting and selling browsing behavior, companies
| running mass surveillance on license plates and selling
| the data to law enforcement and really anyone who pays,
| some DNA sequencing related abuses that I don't remember
| the details of, all the data collected by the ad
| "ecosystem" (note that this still happens in GDPR-land
| because enforcement is lacking), this, ...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Where I come from, sharing personal data of someone
| without their consent is not allowed.
|
| Where you come from, people arent allowed to share their
| own experiences interacting with third parties without the
| third parties consent?
|
| Sounds pretty oppressive, but there are absolutely many
| jurisdictions where that is not the case.
| ioasuncvinvaer wrote:
| They post images of the men in question without consent.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Unless they are intimate images (in which case revenge
| porn laws are likely to apply), copyrightable images for
| which someone other than the poster is the creator posted
| without the copyright holder's permission (in which case
| copyright applies), or being used for commercial
| promotion or to suggest endorsement (in which case,
| depending on which states law applies, state law right of
| personality/publicity, especially if the subject is a
| celebrity, might apply), that's generally legal in the
| US.
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| > that's generally legal in the US.
|
| Cool, I'm sure Tea is only available to report things
| about United States citiz... nevermind.
|
| It runs afoul of about a dozen european rights to
| privacy, imagery and consent laws. And that's just by
| posting pictures ! Libel and slander are a bunch of
| others, right to a response is also another... the list
| is long. It is, once again, yet another dudebro trying to
| skirt legality.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It runs afoul of about a dozen european rights to
| privacy, imagery and consent laws
|
| The EU is welcome to try to enforce its local laws on the
| US operations of a US business open only to US users, but
| I don't think its going to have much success.
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| It's cute that the Americans think they're some special,
| unrestricted by law type of citizens: they're not.
|
| https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-10/edpb_2024
| 041...
|
| That boat already sailed and it already happened. "US
| only operations" does not matter (which is already
| bullshit, as Tea does not verify that users are US ones,
| they merely disabled downloading in the play/app store):
| posting pictures of European citizens runs afoul of
| European laws. Sure, they can't come and arrest you on US
| soil. Just don't travel too much.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Unrestricted by foreign law, yes. Would you be in favor
| of having US law enforced against you? It bewilders me
| why anyone would want more of this nonsense in the world
| instead of less.
|
| The document you linked is interesting but I'm skeptical
| that you actually read it. It effectively says that in
| practice there's no hope of enforcing actions against
| entities that are purely in the US unless their behavior
| has run afoul of state or federal policy.
|
| It does note that if concrete damages are recognized by
| the court that there is a decent chance US courts will
| cooperate to enforce the judgment. But the vast majority
| of GDPR enforcement is punitive as opposed to
| compensatory so it's not particularly relevant.
|
| I'm also not clear why you think traveling would matter.
| DPA penalties are administrative in nature, not criminal.
| They are also likely to be levied against corporations as
| opposed to individuals. My guess is that the extremely
| unlikely worst case is your entry or visa application
| getting denied.
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| US law is _already_ enforced upon me. Banks regularly ask
| if you are a US citizen, or subject to the IRS in any
| way. The US affirms at every step the extraterritoriality
| of its harmful laws and attempts to use their pathetic
| excuse of "free speech" to defend multimillion dollar
| companies evading taxes in my country while damaging
| democracy. The US imposes its definition of copyright to
| the world, destroying access to culture and knowledge to
| billions.
|
| Needless to say, I am very happy about making the US eat
| shit.
| Quarrel wrote:
| While the GDPR has extraterritoriality, you are over-
| reaching here.
|
| Tea can collect and use photos of EU citizens, if it
| collected them in the USA, with (all other things being
| equal) no fear of GDPR violations.
|
| So, yes Facebook can't collect photos of EU citizens,
| then process and do "stuff" with them in the USA, without
| violating GDPR, because that'd be the easiest out ever
| for multinational tech companies.
|
| It is the location of the subject of the personal data
| collection that matters, not their citizenship.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Why would they care if they're breaking European laws?
| They're not a European company.
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| European laws apply to any European citizen, _anywhere in
| the world_.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Ah yes, the notorious extraterritorial "right to be
| forgotten". Whereby the EU military dispatches its
| special forces to smash up computers in foreign data
| centers.
| Quarrel wrote:
| This is not true. Like, (almost) at all. (There are a few
| tiny exceptions, for instance, if an EU national commits
| child sexual abuse overseas, they can be prosecuted for
| it in the EU)
|
| Two Germans shooting each other in Australia break
| Australian law, but not German law.
| chopin wrote:
| Germany does in fact prosecute severe crimes done in
| foreign countries. It will not act if Australia does, but
| it will act if Australia doesn't.
| 9dev wrote:
| No, that isn't true. To the contrary actually, the GDPR
| applies to anyone on European soil, even US citizens.
| When you're on American soil, you fall under American
| legislation.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Are you saying the developers are European or what?
| ioasuncvinvaer wrote:
| Thank god the US is the only country in the world.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Thank god the US is the only country in the world.
|
| Its the only country in the world where Tea operates or
| is open to users, what other country's laws do you think
| apply to it?
| oc1 wrote:
| You seem very confused how law applies. Please inform
| yourself before posting.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| please inform us before hitting post.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Why have revenge porn laws and not revenge libel laws.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| What are "revenge libel laws", and, in particular, how
| would they differ from regular libel laws?
| oc1 wrote:
| Honey, that's generally not legal in many jurisdictions
| in the world, including most of europe.
| umanwizard wrote:
| True, but we're not talking about those jurisdictions.
| This is a discussion about American users of an American
| app.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Also on those platforms you can see if people are trash
| talking you even if you don't have a procedure to face your
| accuser.
|
| Even the open platforms creep me out. I don't like seeing
| unverified accounts of crime in Nextdoor, I think if you
| see some crime you go to the police. I had a series of in
| person interactions with a woman which seemed creepy in
| retrospect, her Nextdoor was full of creepy stuff including
| screenshots of creepy online interactions. At least this
| gives everyone clear evidence they should keep away.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal
| information about, an individual.
|
| Or in this case, sharing personal information about
| yourself...
| Bilal_io wrote:
| No, they'd be sharing the man's photo, name and phone
| number if I am not mistaken, and obviously without his
| consent.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Where I come from
|
| ...is clearly not the US, which has probably the most
| expansive understanding of "freedom of speech" in the
| world.
| chneu wrote:
| lol no it doesn't. american freedom is a bit of a joke
| but it's par for the course in the USA to make shit up
| and then defend it.
|
| The USA doesn't even rank in the top 15 on the human
| freedom index. Most freedom indices don't even put the
| USA in the top 20. A few don't even put the USA in the
| top 30.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| In my personal and equally arbitrary freedom index north
| korea is #1.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| I neither agree nor disagree with the specific point
| about the US but all those indexes are silly, pointless
| and shouldn't be taken seriously.
|
| Also they have very little to do with "measuring" freedom
| of speech anyway.
| 9dev wrote:
| So totally free, unless you criticise the empero... err,
| Trump or the government, of course. Or if you're against
| Israeli settlements. Or in favour of humane treatment of
| the People of Palestine. Or have information on the
| customers of Jeffrey Epstein. Or...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Well I'm not American but I feel like all I have read for
| the last 8 months has been American organisations and
| American people criticising Trump, the US government and
| Israel. I am not aware of penalties for these orgs or
| people, do you have examples?
| umanwizard wrote:
| Let me a bit more precise. I'm not claiming that the US
| actually always follows its own standards, or that there
| aren't authoritarian oversteps of power -- there are.
|
| I'm just saying that the American definition of freedom
| of speech (whether the authorities follow it in practice
| or not) is unusually expansive. Edge cases like hate
| speech against particular ethnic groups, public insults,
| open support for terrorist organizations, etc. are much
| more likely to be legally protected in the US than in
| other countries, even including other liberal
| democracies.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| > By this logic: I suppose glassdoor, yelp, or Google reviews
| aren't legal either?
|
| Imagining a future where I have to pay Tea to promote and
| astroturf my profile or they lower my rating, and pay bot
| farms to post glowing reviews
| fragmede wrote:
| In this future that you want me to imagine, do you imagine,
| that I'm imagining that I am poor or I am rich? Because oh
| man, I didn't have much luck at the lottery or at blackjack
| or craps or startups or crypto, but I'm sure, this time, AI
| is gonna help me strike it rich!
| Beijinger wrote:
| I have not used the app nor read much about it but this guys
| talk about it: https://youtu.be/WjfpryoQ0Mk
|
| Yes, as far as I understand, you upload pictures of men,
| either taken in the wild or from dating sites (Tinder)
| against their will. I am pretty sure that this would be
| illegal in some jurisdictions. Especially EU.
| ajuc wrote:
| Companies aren't people (despite lots of people pretending
| they are).
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > Peeple failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip
| against anyone
|
| Without bias and gossip, who would even want to use the app?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Almost everyone? And not in a cheap throwaway comment way, I
| mean genuinely. The value is that it's informative not a
| gossip rag.
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| I don't think you understand humans. Spicy social gossip is
| far more attractive to people rather than anything
| informative.
| exiguus wrote:
| A gray area in my eyes. As a father, I think it's good that my
| daughter uses the app. You only need to look at the statistics
| to see how many women are killed by their male partners every
| year.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| It's harmful to spread this kind of fear. Statistically it's
| less than 0.05% of women die because they are killed by their
| partner. This puts a stigma on men in general as some sort of
| dangerous savages.
| guywithahat wrote:
| It's also leads to racism when people break down
| relationship violence by race. It's a dumb argument that
| helps no one
| cauch wrote:
| I think the problem is not the statement, but the
| conclusion.
|
| Do we have more physical violence from men towards women
| than the opposite? I think I saw that the reality is yes.
| Does it mean that men are biologically coded to be
| violent, or is it a question of education and culture?
|
| If you conclude the second one, it is not "sexist" (on
| the contrary, it may even be that the culture that
| creates the problem is itself rooted in sexism and that
| acknowledging some reality about its existence may help
| changing this culture), and does not imply prejudice
| against men, just acknowledging that we need to be
| careful in case of bad apples.
|
| It still means that talking about this requires to be
| very careful.
|
| To react on your example, I think it is a good think to
| notice if some population have a bigger problem at this
| subject than others, and we can then identify more easily
| the places where this problem forms and target these
| places. But people who concludes "look at violence
| divided by race, so I can generalise and be prejudicial
| to everyone in some race and not other" are idiots.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than
| women
| exiguus wrote:
| The context was a dating app. And yes, men are also
| victims by men.
| standardUser wrote:
| Yes, primarily by other men as we all know.
| cauch wrote:
| Not sure what is your point?
|
| It feels a bit like saying "there is a bug in software X,
| but there is also a bug in software Y, so let's not fix
| the bug in software X".
|
| Of course, men also suffer from problems. It even feels
| that it is usually also due to machismo or something
| similar. Sometimes, it feels like the majority of men's
| problem is in fact self-inflicted by the manosphere. They
| both complain of suicide rate, army draft, violence
| against men, but they also promote a culture of not-
| showing-emotion-otherwise-you-are-not-manly, a-man-is-
| worthless-if-they-dont-succeed, army-is-manly-and-women-
| are-weak, a-man-should-show-dominence-and-other-men-are-
| a-threath, ...
|
| People likes to see things in black or white, but the
| reality is more complicated, and there is no advantages
| that does not bring also some disadvantages.
| belorn wrote:
| The statistics is a bit more complex and nuanced than
| giving straight answers. Studies looking at any form of
| violence in partner relationships shows both women and
| men having equal amount. When looking at physical
| violence, especially those that lead to people being
| charged with a crime, men are over-represented in
| heterosexual relationships.
|
| However, homosexual relationships has equal rate of
| partner violence as heterosexual ones. A bisexual woman
| that has a relationship with an other woman will double
| her rate of physical violence compare to relationship
| with a man (statically). A man who has a relationship
| with an other man will half his rate of violence. This
| makes no sense at all (unless we believe that sexual
| orientation is an factor for violent behavior), unless we
| add a additional factor of sexual dimorphism. Men are on
| average larger and more muscular, and there seems to be a
| correlation between being the larger/stronger and using
| physical strength/fists during a fight. The smaller
| person is in return more likely to use tools or other
| means of violence. Statistically, fist also has a higher
| probability to do damage than improvised weapons, since
| people are more proficient in using their fists.
|
| Does it mean men are biologically coded to be violent?
| No. Is it a question about education and culture. Maybe
| in some countries/cultures, and it wouldn't hurt to use
| the education system to teach people conflict resolution.
| Getting people who are physically larger to not exploit
| that fact during a heated fight is likely a hard problem
| to solve on a population level.
| cauch wrote:
| Not sure what is your point.
|
| I think "any form of violence" is not a constructive
| direction. First, this ends up being very subjective:
| between 2 forms of psychological violence, which one is
| the most violent? Secondly, if indeed it is cultural, it
| implies that different sub-culture may have different
| ways of acting, so we can always play the subgroups to
| make it says whatever we want. But most importantly, it
| is not very relevant for our context: in the case of the
| first interactions during heterosexual dating, pretending
| that men risk as much as women seems a very unconvincing
| claim, for several reasons (even if under-represented it
| should be under-represented to an unrealistic level to
| reach an equal level, and it also does not fit with
| plenty of cultural tropes (I can find a video explaining
| explicitly that manly men need to dominate their female
| partner. I'm sure it exists, but the simple fact that I
| cannot easily find a video explaining explicitly that
| womenly women need to dominate their male partner shows
| it's not that of a trope. On the other hand, I can also
| easily find videos about "trad wife" that will explain
| that a womenly woman must be with a dominating man))
|
| For the rest, I think we say the same thing: talking
| about the visible issues is not a problem in itself, but
| people instrumentalising these issues to be racist or
| sexist are the problem.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Not sure what is your point.
|
| If it's almost all about the size of the specific two
| people in a relationship, it's a terrible terrible idea
| to aggregate that by gender, leading to completely
| misplaced wariness and judgement.
| cauch wrote:
| Why would it be the size of the specific two people in a
| relationship?
|
| It looks very clear to me that violent behavior in
| relationship (and more specifically, in the first few
| days of dating) is a question of education, not the
| result of one person being bigger. For example, every
| parents are stronger than their young children, but only
| some kind of parent are violent towards their children.
| If it's a question of education, reducing the problem of
| the size of the people is a terrible terrible idea: the
| problem will never go away because you don't understand
| the source and therefore don't act on the source to fix
| it.
|
| It feels like some people here are framing the problem in
| "men vs women" framework, as if it is a competition and
| they don't want to accept that maybe men behavior is
| different from women behavior because the way they are
| raised in our society. I don't really see the point: I'm
| a man, and yet I don't take it personally. The same way I
| don't take it personally when someone says "don't accept
| candy from strangers": I'm a stranger for a lot of kids,
| and yet I understand why they should be prudent and I
| understand that, in situation where I have to interact
| with an unknown kid, I should do things differently (for
| example not giving them candy), not because I'm a danger
| for them, but because it is true that there is danger and
| that they cannot know if I'm a danger or not.
|
| So many men take it uselessly and nonconstructively
| personally as soon as it is dating.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Why would it be the size of the specific two people in
| a relationship?
|
| That's the main argument of the grandparent post. If
| you're missing that then you're not really responding to
| what they said.
|
| They went into significant detail so I feel like trying
| to reword it myself would be worse than suggesting you
| read the post again.
|
| > If it's a question of education, reducing the problem
| of the size of the people is a terrible terrible idea:
| the problem will never go away because you don't
| understand the source and therefore don't act on the
| source to fix it.
|
| Nah. Root cause analysis is entirely different from risk
| analysis. This is about risk analysis. If a woman dates a
| man that's smaller than her, who should be more worried
| about violence? That's not the time to worry about why
| and how to fix society.
|
| > maybe men behavior is different from women behavior
|
| Maybe it is! But then you need a really good explanation
| for the data in the above post. Or you need to say the
| data is wrong. But you can't just dismiss it as being
| defensive.
| cauch wrote:
| > That's the main argument of the grandparent post.
|
| Exactly, and I've answered that saying I'm not convinced,
| so, I've asked you if you had further arguments. I've
| said at the time why it was not convincing, and I've
| built even more in my previous comment.
|
| > If a woman dates a man that's smaller than her, who
| should be more worried about violence?
|
| I still think it's the woman, because not every parent
| beat their children despite them being smaller, which
| proves that being bigger does not mean being violent. You
| need something more. In this case, I think it's a culture
| that implies that violent men are manly and successful,
| which is present in the manosphere. Because there is no
| such culture (I guess you can find anecdotical case, far
| from being as common as the manosphere) that implies that
| women beating men is somehow "womenly", I doubt it
| implies that tall women will beat men at the same rate.
|
| > But then you need a really good explanation for the
| data in the above post.
|
| All the data adds up, everything is pretty well predicted
| by this model. Not sure which data you think this model
| does not explain (unless you think that somehow this
| model implies 0%-100%, which is of course not the case).
| On the other hand, I doubt anyone has ever proven that
| being taller in the relationship is really a strong
| causal factor (and not just correlation, as the
| manosphere is also into going to the gym) (but happy to
| get links if you have some).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Exactly, and I've answered that saying I'm not
| convinced, so, I've asked you if you had further
| arguments. I've said at the time why it was not
| convincing, and I've built even more in my previous
| comment.
|
| You never made it clear that you understood the argument,
| because you went straight from "Not sure what is your
| point" to "Why would it be". That doesn't look like a
| request for _more_ convincing, that looks like you never
| considered it.
|
| > I still think it's the woman, because not every parent
| beat their children despite them being smaller, which
| proves that being bigger does not mean being violent.
|
| What. Not every dating relationship involves violence
| either. We're talking about what's _more likely_ here.
|
| Also children and dates are different in so many ways
| that even ignoring that factor this doesn't disprove the
| argument at all.
|
| > Not sure which data you think this model does not
| explain
|
| If the root cause is culture encouraging men to be
| physically violent, why would the total amount of
| physical violence be the same in gay relationships,
| especially lesbian ones?
| belorn wrote:
| The technical term of "any form of violence" seems to be
| Partner Abuse, and the definition is: _" violence refers
| to behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes
| physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of
| physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse
| and controlling behaviours."_
|
| The primary motives are to get back at a partner for
| emotionally hurting them, because of stress or jealousy,
| to express anger and other feelings that they could not
| put into words or communicate, and to get their partner's
| attention.
|
| The highest rates are found in high school and college,
| and the majority of partner violence is bidirectional. (A
| meta study illustrating this: https://journals.sagepub.co
| m/doi/10.1177/15248380231193440)
|
| The idea that women are unable of violent behavior, or
| immune to wanting to take revenge for being emotional
| hurt or stressed, seems utterly unlikely. Especially
| young adults who might lack the tools and experience to
| avoid falling into violent responses.
|
| To quote a different finding: Eight studies directly
| compared men and women in the power/control motive and
| subjected their findings to statistical analyses. Three
| reported no significant gender differences and one had
| mixed findings. One paper found that women were more
| motivated to perpetrate violence as a result of
| power/control than were men, and three found that men
| were more motivated; however, gender differences were
| weak
|
| Asking if "men risk as much as women" is a very different
| question however. If a woman throws a knife at a man, and
| a man hits a woman in the face, who carry the highest
| risk? Statically, the fist is going to do significant
| more damage on average than the knife, as throwing a
| knife (especially a non-throwing knife), hitting the
| target, and creating damage is fairly unlikely for a non-
| proficient attacker. If the attacks was recorded on
| camera/witnessed, one would be an attack with a deadly
| weapon with the intent to kill, and the other would be
| physical assault.
|
| The point is that partner violence is a complex problem,
| which only simple aspect being that both women and men
| are humans.
| exiguus wrote:
| The risk of females being murdered by an intimate partner
| is five times higher than for males. And murder is just
| the very end of the spectrum. And by definition, calling
| out men, is not racism.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Are there other groups that are 5x more likely to commit
| murder? Even if there are, IMO we shouldn't judge every
| member of that group for the actions of a small minority
| exiguus wrote:
| Are we still talking about a App that helps with dating?
| standardUser wrote:
| Race is America is extremely idiosyncratic. Gender
| relations exhibit a far more consistent dynamic cross-
| culturally.
| octopoc wrote:
| Calling it "extremely idiosyncratic" is not indicative of
| reality:
|
| > Black people are the most likely to experience domestic
| violence--either male-to-female or female-to-male--
| followed by Hispanic people and White people.2 Centers
| for Disease Control and Prevention. The national intimate
| partner and sexual violence survey: 2010-2012 state
| report.
|
| > Asian people are the least likely to experience
| intimate partner violence.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.verywellmind.com/domestic-violence-
| varies-by-eth...
| standardUser wrote:
| You misunderstood my comment and instead gave examples
| that further support the idea that race relations in
| America are unique and particular to our history and
| geography. That's why race statistics in the US are not
| well-suited for cross-cultural comparison, let alone for
| drawing gargantuan conclusions about inherent racial
| traits (as racists are often looking to do).
| spinach wrote:
| Statistically that is a rather small number. But if we take
| the number of women in say, America, a web search says
| 334.9 million. 0.05% of that is 167,450. That is quite a
| lot of women being killed by their partner.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > the number of women in say, America, a web search says
| 334.9 million
|
| Doesn't look correct.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| That looks like the general population of the US, and is
| out of date, it's 340m+
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| USA population is c.350M total, so they're probably off
| by half.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/us-
| demographics/
| edmundsauto wrote:
| 5k women are murdered in America each year, fwiw.
|
| 18k men are murdered. But women are murdered by their
| partners at a higher rate.
| cwmoore wrote:
| How many men are murdered by their partner's other or
| would-be partners? Not none.
|
| Is suicide not counted in any way? A significant other or
| their loss will have a significant impact on mental
| health.
| deathanatos wrote:
| According to the UNODC[1], in 2023, the rate of _all_
| murders of women in the US was 0.00205%. (2.05 per
| 100,000) Partner violence appears to account for ~34% of
| violence against women[2] (but vs. 6% for men), so that
| would be 0.697 per 100k or ~0.0007%, or ~1190 women /yr
| in the US[3]. Assuming I've done the math right... the
| risk is more than two orders of magnitude smaller than
| what you came up with.
|
| > _Partner violence appears to account for ~34% of
| violence against women[2] (but vs. 6% for men)_
|
| And this is sort of the point of the comment higher up:
| when you cut the stat this way, it seems like men are
| wildly dangerous creeps. But it is a statistic comparing
| one _group_ to another _group_. We need to instead look
| at the absolute rate of partner violence to decide if men
| are on the whole violent murders or so, and there, the
| overall risk is low.
|
| [1]: https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-intentional-homicide-
| victims
|
| [2]: https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-
| victim-offende...
|
| [3]: (I've assumed a round population of 340M for the US,
| with 50/50 gender, just an approximation.)
| adolph wrote:
| > when you cut the stat this way, it seems like men are
| wildly dangerous creeps.
|
| Not exactly. The statistics didn't specify the gender
| identity of the perpetuator, just the relationship to the
| victim and the gender identity of the victim.
| exiguus wrote:
| I don't know were you have this numbers from, but in 2021
| 34% of women were killed by partner and 76% of women where
| killed by a known person (family, friends, colleges,
| partner) [1].
|
| Edit: 100% are murder victims
|
| https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-
| offende...
| qualeed wrote:
| Your stats are for murder victims. I assume that the
| parent poster was talking about all causes of death.
|
| I have no idea if their number is correct for that
| either.
| exiguus wrote:
| Could be. But I'm not. And the context is App for dating.
| qualeed wrote:
| > _But I 'm not._
|
| But... you're trying to correct their statistics?
|
| I agree with you that in the context, your stats maybe
| make more sense. But if you're going to correct someone,
| you generally should recognize what they were trying to
| communicate in the first place.
| exiguus wrote:
| I don't want to imply that someone tried to find the
| smallest possible number in order to deliberately
| misunderstand my comment, but we are still in the context
| of the dating app.
| K0balt wrote:
| I think poster is looking at mortality risk, not
| mortality cause.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| That's out of women who were murdered or killed in
| manslaughter cases. OP was talking about base rates.
| 5000/170000000 is about 0.03%.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| Your wording here is clumsy. You're saying that 34% of
| the adult female population was murdered by their
| partner. I'm assuming you meant female murder victims and
| not women in general?
| exiguus wrote:
| To clarify, its about murdered victims. I thought this
| was clear. I thought we are still talking about
| partnership and dating.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's better to think in terms of overall life damage and
| "quality of life years lost". I think it's very debatable
| which side loses more from getting involved in
| relationships.
| standardUser wrote:
| As a man, I find it absurd and even dangerous to _not_
| attach some stigma to men. That you feel the need to invoke
| "dangerous savages" is maybe your own prerogative, but by
| _any_ sober and fact-based analysis it is indisputable that
| women are justified in acting cautiously when dealing with
| strange men.
| fsckboy wrote:
| mothers are more than twice as likely as fathers to kill
| their children. and the same is true for child abuse and
| neglect.
|
| humans in general act like psychos, the danger comes more
| from the size differential than propensity to act like a
| jerk.
| standardUser wrote:
| Most violence is perpetrated by men. If you're only
| response to that hard, cold fact is some stat about
| infanticide, maybe you're not honestly grappling with the
| issue.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Most violence is perpetrated by men, but men are also
| equal victims.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| And yet domestic violence is equally done by men and
| women, except that most men don't report the abuse
| because of people like you who act like it doesn't
| happen. It's disappointing.
|
| You bring up fact based analyses. Let's see what they
| have to say.
|
| > Over two hundred studies found that men and women
| perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly
| equivalent rates, depending on where the samples are
| drawn from, and what level of violence is identified.
| (Dutton and Nicholls, 2005).
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/b
| log...
| throwanem wrote:
| I'm justified in acting cautiously when dealing with
| strange pit bulls, too. That isn't the same as saying pit
| bulls deserve to be stigmatized. Or I don't think it is.
| adolph wrote:
| > Statistically it's less than 0.05% of women die because
| they are killed by their partner.
|
| 2020 USA Per Capita Count of Mortality Event:
| Assault(Homicide), Female: 0.00139%
|
| https://datacommons.org/tools/visualization#visType%3Dtimel
| i...
| jabjq wrote:
| I wonder how well-received this comment would be if it
| mentioned crime statistics regarding something else than
| gender.
| saparaloot wrote:
| You still think so?
| jameslk wrote:
| I keep seeing the defense for Tea as an app for women's
| safety, which is of course a valid concern. Wouldn't it make
| more sense for a service to exist, like some kind of
| enforcement service provided by the government, where others
| can report safety concerns and that service goes and does
| something about it legally?
|
| If such a service exists and isn't being too effective,
| shouldn't that be worked on?
|
| My guess is that there's more to the reasons for why Tea is
| popular but the safety argument is largely being used to
| defend it
| ronsor wrote:
| > Wouldn't it make more sense for a service to exist, like
| some kind of enforcement service provided by the
| government, where others can report safety concerns and
| that service goes and does something about it legally?
|
| I think this is called "the police"
| sali0 wrote:
| No it's called sarcasm
| jameslk wrote:
| It seems you've discovered my point
| blks wrote:
| Online men-dominated forums often dislike and feel personally
| attacked by people talking about sexual abuse/harassment done
| by other men. I guess they immediately imagine themselves
| being falsely accused of such acts, rather than being a woman
| that is attacked.
| John-117 wrote:
| Right. Generally, people don't like things that can only
| negatively impact them.
| tpmoney wrote:
| I think groups in general feel personally attacked by
| things that attack people on the basis of their immutable
| group characteristics. Notably women dislike and feel
| attacked by unqualified statements like "women are crazy"
| or calling someone a "karen". Black people dislike and feel
| attacked when people talk about "ghetto trash" or "welfare
| queens".
|
| Sure any individual discussion about an individual might
| justifiably refer to that person as "crazy" or "ghetto
| trash". But the nature of online spaces, and the nature of
| the public discourse that tends to bring these phrases and
| discussions into the public eye very quickly starts
| painting people with broad brushes.
|
| People also feel attacked because often times discussions
| tend to confuse useful rhetorical devices for conveying a
| point with justification for a behavior that has harmful
| impacts on the broader group. For example, it was pretty
| common to here the "bowl of M&Ms where one M&M is poisoned"
| analogy in the height of the "Me Too" movement. It's a
| useful rhetorical device for explaining why someone would
| fell cautious about a strange man, and why they wouldn't
| start from a position of trust. But it's also a terrible
| way of generally treating men in your life, and a terrible
| broad philosophy for organizations and governments to
| follow.
|
| And we know this rhetorical device makes bad policy and at
| large is harmful to innocent people because another time in
| recent history when that analogy was really popular was
| immediately after the Sept 11 attacks when talking about
| Muslims in general and immigrants from Muslim countries.
| Surely no one would find it strange that Muslims might
| dislike and feel personally attacked by "people talking
| about crimes and terrorism done by other Muslims" in the
| same way that many online spaces talk about "sexual
| abuse/harassment done by other men". Surely we wouldn't be
| surprised if people felt attacked or disliked an app for
| sharing anonymous and private information about suspicious
| Muslims right? Or let's say someone noticed that black
| people are statistically 2x as likely relative to their
| population to be the offender of a violent crime[1]. You'd
| reasonably expect people to be bothered by an app that
| excluded black people from signing up and was entirely
| about strangers providing un-verified experiences with
| black people under the premise of keeping people safe.
|
| Ultimately, people are bad at statistics and really bad at
| understanding the degree to which a small minority of
| individuals can affect a large majority of people by virtue
| of repeat offending. So it can be true both that lots of
| people have completely valid awful experiences with members
| of a given broad group, and that members of that group feel
| unfairly maligned when discussion about those experiences
| paints with broad, unqualified strokes.
|
| [1]: https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv23.pdf
| storus wrote:
| You are probably unaware of unintended consequences enabled
| by this app - many women use it to find bad boys they feel
| attracted to due to some brokenness in female psyche. So
| you'll get public outrage on one hand and private DMs on the
| other from them, based on how bad you are described/vetted by
| other women on the app.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I believe that at least one person has gotten a posting removed
| about himself by complaining directly to Apple. He presumed
| that Tea wouldn't care.
|
| https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870
| viccis wrote:
| Whew, one look at his account and I can imagine what women
| who've been on dates with him would be saying haha
| kingkawn wrote:
| That dude is a pos tho
| singleshot_ wrote:
| "False slander" is not a thing.
|
| The answer to your last two questions is found within section
| 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > "False slander" is not a thing.
|
| It's only not a thing because, in the U.S., it's redundant.
| In other jurisdictions, it _might_ be a thing, because there
| are places where a claim can be both defamatory and true.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| There are large Facebook groups dedicated to "Are we dating the
| same guy?" / "Are we dating the same woman?" that predate this
| app.
| Fogest wrote:
| A lot of these groups have also had people get successfully
| sued for defamation.
| tptacek wrote:
| Defamation (libel and slander) consists of false statements (or
| _direct_ implications) of fact. Actionable defamation consists
| either of those false claims that cause quantifiable damages,
| or that claim things that are _per se_ considered damaging ---
| a specific and limited list.
|
| "This guy is a creeper and treats romantic partners terribly"
| is pure opinion, and cannot be defamatory. The (rare) kinds of
| opinion statements that can be defamatory generally take the
| form of "I believe (subjective thing) about this person because
| I observed (objective thing)", where "(objective thing)" is
| itself false. "The vibe I get about this person is that they
| hunt humans for sport" does not take that form and is almost
| certainly not defamatory.
|
| Under US law, providers are generally not liable for defamatory
| content generated by users unless you can show they materially
| encouraged that content in its specifics, which is a high bar
| app providers are unlikely to clear.
| akerl_ wrote:
| A general plug that if you read this comment and thought
| "damn, 1st amendment law sounds complex and interesting", you
| may want to check out https://www.serioustrouble.show/ , a
| podcast about legal news with a recurring focus on 1st
| amendment law and cases
| dyauspitr wrote:
| But you can ruin a person's life on a whim. That cannot be
| allowed.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Can you cite that? Because in the US I'm not aware of a law
| against sharing negative opinions about someone.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Right - that's basically the business model of Twitter
| these days
| krisoft wrote:
| > "This guy is a creeper and treats romantic partners
| terribly" is pure opinion, and cannot be defamatory.
|
| That is true. But i think untrained and emotionaly involved
| individuals will have trouble navigating the boundaries of
| defamation. Instead of writing opinions like "treats romantic
| partners terribly" they will write statements purporting
| facts like "this creep lured me to his house, raped me, and
| gave me the clap". This is not an opinion but three
| individually provable statements of facts. Plus the third
| would be considered "defamation per se" in most jurisdictions
| if it were false. (The false allegation that someone has an
| STD is considered so loathsome that in most places the person
| wouldn't need to prove damages.)
|
| Unles specifically coached people would write this second
| way. Both because it is rethoricaly more powerfull, but also
| because they would report on their own personal experience.
| To be able to say "treats romantic partners terribly" they
| would need to canvas multiple former partners and then put
| their emotionaly charged stories into calm terms. That
| requires a lot of work. While the kind of message i'm
| suggesting only requires the commenter to report things they
| personaly know about. And in an emotionaly charged situation,
| like a breakup, people would be more likely to exagarate in
| their descriptions, making defamatory claims more likely.
|
| > Under US law, providers are generally not liable for
| defamatory content generated by users...
|
| This is true, and i believe this is the real key. Even if the
| commenters would be liable, the site themselves would be
| unlikely to become liable with them.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just keep in mind there are two very high bars you need to
| clear to come out ahead on a defamation action:
|
| 1. To _prove_ that the factual claims made by the defendant
| were false, and that the defendant should have known they
| were false
|
| 2. That you suffered actual damages from those claims
|
| Very hard to make happen on a dating app.
| swores wrote:
| Worth pointing out that you're talking purely from a US
| point of view, and different countries treat slander and
| libel differently.
|
| For example in the US, to sue for defamation you need to
| prove something is false, whereas in the UK the defendant
| has to prove that what they said or wrote (and are being
| sued for) is true.
|
| (I've no idea whether this app had any non-US use, but
| thought worth adding this comment regardless since it's a
| general point about defamation law and being discussed on
| a site with a big international audience.)
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > or that claim things that are per se considered damaging
| --- a specific and limited list
|
| Standard disclaimer that law varies by jurisdiction. However,
| that limited list typically includes claims that the person
| committed a crime. Many juristictions also include accusing
| someone of having a contagious disease, engaging in sexual
| misconduct, or engaging is misconduct that is inconsistent
| with proper conduct in their profession.
|
| In other words, the types of things I would expect people to
| be talking about on tea overlap heavily with defamation per-
| se.
|
| If the users were careful to make all of their statements
| opinions, that defense would work. However, I doubt that is
| the case. Instead, I expect many users to include example of
| what their ex did that led to their opinion; which gets
| directly into the realm of factual statements.
|
| The provider protections are real, and likely protect the app
| from direct lawsuits (or, at least from losing them), but do
| not protect the app's users. A few news stories about an
| abusive ex going after their former partner based on what
| they posted in the app could be enough to scare users away.
| You don't even need to win the lawsuit if your goal is to
| harass the other person.
| tptacek wrote:
| It does, but those bars to defamation claims are based on
| the US Constitution more than they are on state law. I
| think another way to put that is that I gave the maximally
| generous interpretation to the plaintiff there.
| mullingitover wrote:
| It's hilarious that we earnestly debate whether women should
| be allowed to have a space to speak anonymously about
| whatever the hell they want, but it's completely unquestioned
| that _4chan_ is a perfectly legal operation.
| josteink wrote:
| I guess a significant difference is than 4chan is fully
| public. Whatever anyone says there can be observed by
| anyone and refuted by anyone. You can't secretly slander
| anyone there.
|
| What happened on the tea app were probably not knowable,
| observable or refutable for those actually being doxxed or
| slandered.
|
| That isn't me saying 4chan is absolutely morally in the
| clear, but it's still quite a significant distinction.
| fn-mote wrote:
| The difference _for you_ is in the public or private
| nature.
|
| It seems like your argument is based on (1) the
| discussion being slander (assumption); and (2) the idea
| that you could refute it if it were public (good luck,
| low credibility, also most men would immediately respond
| with vulgar name calling and - at least if anonymous -
| threats).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> women should be allowed to have a space to speak
| anonymously_
|
| It was only anonymous for the women speaking there, but not
| for the men they were speaking about, hence the justified
| outrage, since anonymous strangers are gossiping/slandering
| you in a public online space behind a 2$ entry fee.
|
| Would you also support if men had their own such public
| "safe spaces" to gossip anonymously about real women with
| their names? I can assure you it would be shut down
| immediately.
|
| So then why do we allow double standards where only one sex
| should loose their right to online privacy?
| akerl_ wrote:
| So your concern is that it's paywalled?
|
| Because like the earlier comment points out, letting
| anonymous people trash talk real people and name them is
| a core feature of 4chan.
| John-117 wrote:
| The concern is that it is exclusive to only women, not
| only allowing, but encouraging them to post narratives
| about men who are not allowed on the app by policy. How
| is anyone going to verify the truth of these claims
| except the man, who is not allowed to look?
| smeeger wrote:
| no its not. 4chan is meant to be ephemeral. threads
| vanish quickly and they arent archived by 4chan.org. you
| cannot search the website for peoples names and there is
| no data structure for finding and contributing to a
| "file" on individual people. and when doxxing of anyone
| especially a woman occurs it is taken down by any mod who
| notices it because it could create a huge legal headache.
| so youre literally completely wrong. weird
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not earnestly debating anything but the definition of
| libel, which I doubt applies to this app.
| smeeger wrote:
| tea is more akin to kiwi farms than 4chan and kiwi farms is
| controversial even among incels
| sigwinch wrote:
| Well, no. You could implement Tea as a ?chan and everyone
| knows what it's for. When you make an app that attests to
| reputation, expect smart people to contradict your claims
| about enhancing personal safety and security.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Women never lie
| swat535 wrote:
| I wonder if you would make the same comment if the genders
| were reversed.
|
| "Cofee App" for males only, that allows them to post pictures
| of woman they have dated, rate them and include green/red
| flags.
|
| "She is not good enough in bed", "She is too fat", "She has a
| high body count",..
|
| Arguing over the legal definition of the word "Defamation" is
| missing the forest for the trees.
| codedokode wrote:
| > "She is too fat"
|
| Do modern men need an app to understand this?
| ssalka wrote:
| I would imagine Tea enjoys protections from Section 230, same
| as all other social media sites.
| listless wrote:
| This looks like a slam book. Or that's what girls called it
| when I was in high school. Basically just a place where you
| write mean things about people you don't like. And those people
| don't get to see it.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Yes but if you brand it differently it's about safety!
| jjangkke wrote:
| Some observations:
|
| - The fact that this app exists solidifies the data that a small
| group of men/women do most of the dating on tinder etc while the
| vast majority land dates far less if none at all.
|
| - This creates distorted market supply and demand where those
| small group of men/women become sought after and its only human
| nature in that they value their supply less than the rest.
|
| - Toxic behavior is expected from that small group of highly
| attractive people that do all the dating.
|
| - It was only a matter of time before such app would run into
| legal issues or attract angry individuals. Now the damage to the
| leaked identities will be prolonged. With the AI tech today, the
| extent to which a damage can be doned with the information from
| the leaks is unknown.
|
| - As for the company behind Tea, they are done. They face a
| monumental class action lawsuit as well as ongoing individual
| civil/criminal cases that will arise from the leaked identities,
| in particular the photo of driver licenses as well as selfies,
| usernames, emails drastically increase the surface area for
| damages.
|
| - The users of this site and those that have directly posted
| images, details have opened themselves up to significant
| liability from not only the men they have targeted but from law
| enforcement.
|
| - We'll see some new laws being formed from this case. Once
| again, we see the hidden dangers of blindly trusting large
| popular platforms with sensitive data but the twist with Tea here
| is the defamation activity that opens up its users to both civil
| and criminal liability.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The fact that this app exists solidifies that a small group
| of men /women do most of the dating on the quick fleeting
| connections on tinder etc while the vast majority on a few if
| not none at all._
|
| I don't follow.
|
| > _This creates distorted market supply and demand where those
| small group of men /women become sought after_
|
| Isn't that true in the real world as well? I'm not exactly a
| hunk; people weren't tripping over themselves to ask me out,
| whereas some of my friends and acquaintances did have to
| figuratively beat people off with a stick.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| It's true in the real world, but dating apps make it much
| more exaggerated.
| firefax wrote:
| >Isn't that true in the real world as well?
|
| I suspect the folks complaining about "markets" in online
| dating are not the kind of people who can connect offline.
|
| To be fair, I think online dating _has_ gotten worse -- sites
| like OkCupid used to match you based on shared affinity...
| the issue there is you could be a very high match on shared
| values but not someone 's "type" visually -- imagine being
| shown the girl of your dreams only to find out the feeling is
| not mutual :-)
|
| Conversely, I feel like people sometimes forget that they
| opted into these interactions, it's not like someone strolled
| up in a bar and began talking at them.
|
| Anyways... if you're frustrated with apps, I'd suggest doing
| just that. Talk to people.
|
| I met my last girlfriend at a bus stop. Before that, on a
| porch -- I was walking by and struck up a convo.
|
| If you can't connect with people organically, no amount of
| tech can save you.
| chneu wrote:
| anyone talking about "markets" in dating is a redpiller.
| That's redpill talk. They probably also "neg" women and
| talk about eugenics-adjacent stuff.
| msgodel wrote:
| I think making prostitution illegal was probably a mistake.
| This used to be confined to brothels and everyone shamed it.
| throw838384 wrote:
| Is there a way, to verify if potential partner uses this app? Or
| if they are in "are we dating the same guy" type of group?
|
| I take doxing, stalking, revenge porn and cyber bullying very
| seriously! And I would pay good money for a background check, to
| stay away from such people.
| more_corn wrote:
| Easy post negative information about yourself on there.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You need to verify you're a woman with some form of ID before
| you can get into the app. Faking an ID and a picture can't be
| that difficult in the age of AI (especially not when the
| company that's supposed to verify you is this callous with
| their users' PII), but it's not as quick and easy as you
| suggest.
| generalizations wrote:
| There is now.
| codedokode wrote:
| Ask her?
| goku12 wrote:
| Do you expect abusive people to answer honestly? The
| perceived anonymity on the app is a double edged sword.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Would you want your own app usage available to other people?
| I'm going to guess not. This is a gross request, not surprised
| you're using a throwaway account, as you seem to know this is a
| shameful thing to ask for.
| goku12 wrote:
| And whatever happens on that app is not gross? If a revenge
| porn or csam site is busted, won't people want to know who
| were on it so that they can stay away from the potential
| predators? Isn't that why sex offenders' lists exist?
| Honestly, this app should be treated no less. The fact that
| they were able to remain on App and Play stores in the name
| of 'women's safety' demonstrate how grossly sexist, populist
| and vindictive the corporate structure in Apple, Google and
| the others have become. Binding one side to strict dogma and
| unwavering standards, while allowing the other side to
| anonymously wreak havoc on reputations is precisely the type
| of moral bankruptcy that's being challenged and assailed
| here.
| jjangkke wrote:
| - The fact that this app exists solidifies the data that a small
| group of men/women do most of the dating on tinder etc while the
| vast majority land dates far less if none at all.
|
| - This creates distorted market supply and demand where those
| small group of men/women become sought after and its only human
| nature in that they value their supply less than the rest.
|
| - Toxic behavior is expected from that small group of highly
| attractive people that do all the dating.
|
| - It was only a matter of time before such app would run into
| legal issues or attract angry individuals. Now the damage to the
| leaked identities will be prolonged. With the AI tech today, the
| extent to which a damage can be done is unknown (ex. deepfake,
| impersonations, further doxxing).
|
| - Tea user's driver licenses as well as selfies, usernames,
| emails, posts about their dates will drastically increase the
| surface area for lawsuits, fraud and exploitation by malicious
| agents.
|
| - The users of this site and those that have directly posted
| images, details have opened themselves up to significant legal
| and criminal liability. Given these apps were probably popular in
| large city centers like California, NY have heavy punishment for
| digital harassment and privacy violations on top of the damages
| that can be claimed against them by the men who's information and
| details were posted.
|
| - Tea is largely insulated from what the users post which means
| that their biggest exposure might be just neglect and failure to
| secure data which comes with a slap on the wrist. Which will make
| it harder for Tea's userbase to claim large damages against it.
|
| I read more details about this case and its beyond egregious.
| Unencrypted firebase and full public buckets. There is no hacking
| involved, the tokens were being used to pull data from roughly
| all 30,000 users of Tea and were only blocked short while ago.
|
| Allegedly, 60GB of photos, user personal information, driver
| license, gps data being shared on torrent. A map of all 30,000
| users tied to GPS data is being posted as well.
|
| Given the extreme neglect to secure their data, I now believe Tea
| will be open to even bigger legal liability possibly criminal
| even.
| wosined wrote:
| Let's be real you wrote men/women only to be PC. You really
| meant small group of men.
| packetlost wrote:
| No, it really does apply to both. Women who are not dating or
| are in a stable relationship won't use that app.
| jjangkke wrote:
| People with stable values and relationships most likely
| won't be on these apps. The wide acceptance of hookup
| culture via apps is not universal.
|
| In some cultures, mentioning dating apps will immediately
| lead to negative assumptions and connections are done
| through vetted networks and specific establishments where
| "hunting" activity is allowed, some with even more boundary
| pushing that would be impossible in Western culture.
| gruez wrote:
| Not sure about what "some cultures" you're talking about,
| but AFAIK "dating apps" is the #1 answer (or at least in
| the top 3) to "how did you meet your partner" in many
| countries. They're not just for hookups. Many even market
| themselves as being for committed relationships, or have
| features to facilitate that (eg. filters).
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Yes but for the women who _are_ on the app, the
| distribution of dates is much less skewed. (I assume.)
| packetlost wrote:
| Oh yeah, my whole point was the a selection bias.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Let's be real you wrote men/women only to be PC. You
| really meant small group of men.
|
| Let me share a message I got from a woman I met a couple
| years ago on a dating site: "Just a side note about the
| dating thing on here. I get very annoyed with how horribly
| men take care of themselves or even try to communicate. Most
| men today on these sites are repulsive. It was refreshing to
| see you smile, and look nice. Thank you for that."
|
| So it's not a bunch of red-pill alpha guys. I'm an average
| guy with basic manners and a _lack of creepiness_. Heck I was
| near my all time high weight at the time. Every single woman
| on those things has at least one story about a guy she met
| that will make you cringe from his behavior. My fav was the
| guy who sent a woman flowers before even meeting her - _at
| her workplace_! Dude the cyberstalking you need to do to pull
| that off is CREEPY AF - not romantic.
|
| If you want to be in that top 10 percent of men the bar is
| incredibly low.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| > Allegedly, 60GB of photos, user personal information, driver
| license, gps data being shared on torrent. A map of all 30,000
| users tied to GPS data is being posted as well.
|
| Yeah, I wouldn't worry about the allegedly part, 4chan is
| dissecting that torrent as we speak, it's quite the party.
| cmxch wrote:
| A case for ironclad data privacy laws that allow people to pierce
| the veil and request deletion.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Sad that a common response to "we might not want this app to
| exist" is "well, if you weren't cheating, you wouldn't have a
| problem with it".
|
| Why do people want to live in a panopticon of their own creation,
| with random anonymous strangers morally policing, judging each
| other with zero consequence to them?
|
| Don't think we'll ever learn our lesson when it comes to privacy,
| it will be Eternal September forever.
| duxup wrote:
| I think for many people see <cause> and any criticism of
| something that claims to be relate to that cause is seen as
| criticism of the cause and that's a full stop when it comes to
| thinking much further.
|
| The irony in this case being that this app operates like a lot
| of creep subreddits and forums out there with people posting
| photos of other people without their permission and gossiping /
| telling stories about them...
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I agree that you could make a Tea app for every faction's
| favorite cause, and use "safety" as the justification: report
| your local communist, report your local infidel, report your
| local secret white supremacist, report your local secret
| Western imperialism agent, report your local suspected
| jihadi, report a homosexual, report a suspected illegal
| immigrant, report a local adulterer, report an apostate,
| report a kulak.. etc. _chefkiss_
|
| Witch Hunt as a Service, with a delightful UX, a little
| gamification, and soon integration with your favorite apps.
| Coming to an App Store near you.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I think this is also called 'politician's logic':
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidzkYnaf6Y
| scarmig wrote:
| It's a useful app, as it helps men avoid the type of women
| who'd use such an app.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| How would you even identify who is on the app?
| zetanor wrote:
| The app conveniently offers its users' driver's licenses to
| the public.
| oc1 wrote:
| It's so sad that legally you can't even say this was an
| intrusion. All data was already public. Probably vibe
| coded by the ceo who has no technical competence in
| whatever he vibe coded.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The leak contains drivers' licenses, but also location
| information. Someone on 4chan made a map of all the
| coordinates they could find and posted a public link.
|
| So much for the "anonymous" app.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I mean, if you were put on the app by an ex, how would
| you ever find out?
| Fogest wrote:
| I feel like that is part of the problem with it. Not only
| can somebody post about you make things up about you. You
| also may never know. And it could end up silently
| impacting you. Say you apply for a job and a female HR
| person checking your job application decides to use this
| app to do a "background check" on some of the males
| applying. If she sees someone on their saying you
| sexually assaulted someone, she probably isn't going to
| choose to interview or hire you. And she probably won't
| even tell you why. And the claim against you could be
| totally bogus.
|
| This is the scary reality of an app like this, especially
| if it continued to go more mainstream.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Blaming women for wanting to seek out safety in this way is
| strange.
|
| However there is something to be said about the crowd you
| find yourself with. If you assume this app to be necessary, I
| would assume your social standards are not high enough.
| defrost wrote:
| Tell us more about the lofty social circles that have no
| psychopaths.
|
| What's the bar they cannot clear?
| 05 wrote:
| The type not into nonconsensual sex?
| mystraline wrote:
| How fast would an app for men, to identify false accusers,
| liars, afterwards regret, baby-trapping attempt, sabotaging
| contraceptives, and other false claims, get shut down for
| 'evilness towards poor innocent women'?
|
| Just as Parieto indicates that the bulk of male sexual
| assaults are done by a few, also indicates that the bulk of
| female assaults and claims of sexual assault are also done
| by a few.
|
| Apps like Tea only paint all men as abusive thugs. If this
| were done, say to black people, this app would have been
| shut down and a lawsuit in federal court filed. But men are
| OK to harass, libel, and demean.
|
| Good on anonymous for exposing this obvious double
| standard. And I hope they get sued by everyone.
| bawolff wrote:
| Because our entire civilization is built on recipricoal
| alturism, which requires reputation so that in the event
| someone defects it carries negative consequences to discourage
| defection.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| We're in agreement. Is an anonymous takedown app the solution
| for reputation management that enables civilization? If
| someone is trying to destroy your reputation, on which your
| entire livelihood depends, should you at least know who the
| accuser is, how reputable they are, what evidence they have?
| Do you want to give the Internet a magical button to destroy
| you on a whim?
| bawolff wrote:
| I actually agree with you that this sort of thing can have
| bad outcomes and thus comes with significant risk for
| abuse. Part of the reason reputational systems work in real
| life is that the people bad mouthing other people also face
| reputational consequences if they do so unfairly (over a
| long enough time period where it becomes obvious), which is
| something missing from this type of app.
|
| But regardless i do understand the appeal. Dating apps
| suffer from basically being a low-information market place.
| There are of course the malicious people, which everyone
| has an interest in removing from the app. However even
| ignoroing that its a bit of a lemons market (if you excuse
| how dehumanizing the metaphor is). Its very hard to tell if
| someone is a good date just from their profile, and people
| who are good dates end up in relationships and exit the
| market quickly while bad dates stay in the market for a
| much longer time. Allowing some sort of review system does
| solve that problem - its worked in other domains, like uber
| drivers or what resturant to go to. So i certainly
| understand the appeal of why people would want this.
| grokgrok wrote:
| And these apps represent an attempt to privatize the state
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| To be fair none of this would be possible without the
| state-created identity infrastructure.
| standardUser wrote:
| I mostly agree, but it's different for women due to how
| frequently they are subject to violence and how comparatively
| defenseless they are compared to the average man. Many women
| (and men) would gladly give up some privacy in exchange for
| (perceived) safety. And any man who doesn't understand that is
| either lying or has never known a woman.
| redeeman wrote:
| yeah because ALL women are the same, right? you seem kinda
| sexist here
| standardUser wrote:
| Low effort comments are against the site guidelines etc.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| What recourse would a man have against a woman who
| slanders him using this app just because X? Any person
| can have mental issues irrespective of gender.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| It's fair that men and women have different challenges here.
| But humans are squishy and chaotic and self-interested,
| they're not angels of pure wisdom, fairness and justice.
| Giving someone a repercussion-free button to destroy someone
| else the instant they feel slighted, vindictive, threatened,
| jealous, disrespected, is a recipe for disaster. There's a
| reason these apps have not once worked sustainably, they
| always turn into a vile cesspool that brings the worst out of
| mobs.
|
| I don't have a fix for this, it is entirely fair to want
| justice for the defenseless. At the same time I have a strong
| hunch that there is no problem-solution fit here, at least
| not with this sort of app.
| tonymet wrote:
| Maybe this is a good time to think about what policy could help
| discourage these horrific practices (it sounds like their storage
| was unprotected)
|
| * App Store review requires a lightweight security audit /
| checklist on the backend protections.
|
| * App Store CTF Kill Switch. Publisher has to share a private CTF
| token with Apple with a public name (e.g. /etc/apple-ctf-token ).
| The app store can automatically kill the app if the token is ever
| breached.
|
| * Publisher is required to include their own sensitive records (
| access to a high-value bank account) within their backend . Apple
| audits that these secrets are in the same storage as the consumer
| records.
| tonymet wrote:
| * Mandate 3rd party auditing once an app reaches > 10k users
|
| * App publishing process includes signatures that the publisher
| must embed in their database. When those signatures end up on
| the dark web, App Store is notified and the App is revoked
| fn-mote wrote:
| > * Mandate 3rd party auditing once an app exceeds 10k users
|
| You have a lot of interesting suggestions.
|
| I would love to see some kind of forced transparency. Too bad
| back-end code doesn't run under any App/Play Store control,
| so it's harder to force an (accurate) audit.
| tonymet wrote:
| thanks. Yeah I think there are a lot of ways to decouple
| App store from publisher and auditor . That way the
| publisher can retain autonomy / control , while still
| developing trust with the consumer.
|
| We could do better in our trade at encouraging best
| practices in this space. Every time there's a breach , the
| community shames the publisher . But the real shame is on
| us for not establishing better auditing protocols. Security
| best practices are just the start. You have to have
| transparent, ongoing auditing and pen-testing to sustain
| it.
| tonymet wrote:
| also i remember maybe Facebook trying to do this when they
| acquired Parse. For a while they were promoting developers
| host their backends on Parse / FB .
|
| The idea has merit. You have to relinquish some control to
| establish security. Look at App Store, Microsoft Store ,
| MacOS App store -- they all sandbox and reduce API scope in
| order to improve security for consumers.
|
| I'm more on the side of autonomy and trust, but then we
| have reckless developers doing stuff like this, putting the
| whole industry on watch.
| beeflet wrote:
| just use your brain and don't upload your face and driver's
| license to a gossip website. when I was growing up, it was
| common knowledge that you shouldn't post your identity online
| outside of a professional setting.
|
| The onus is on users to protect themselves, not the OS. As long
| as the OS enables the users to do what they want, no security
| policy will totally protect the user from themselves.
| tonymet wrote:
| The app store is auditing & restricting functionality within
| the iPhone, but the backend protections are a wild west.
|
| "use your brain" is no substitute for security. This is a
| hacker forum. We think about how to protect apps. Even smart
| people have slipped up
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| This is becoming more unfeasible as it becomes required to
| access online services like reddit, nexusmods, verification
| on dating apps. Sending facial, and documentation data is
| becoming mandated by governments across the world.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > just use your brain and don't upload your face and driver's
| license to a gossip website
|
| Meanwhile, in the UK, new legislation requires me to upload
| my face and driver's license just to browse Reddit.
| aydyn wrote:
| You only require ID verification for NSFW subreddits,
| right?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Nsfw includes subreddits that discuss beer.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| You know, what's funny about NSFW is that a lot of things
| tagged NSFW are actually regularly discussed _at work_!
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| While true, using that logic I can say porn is also
| discussed _at work_ if you work in the porn industry :)
|
| On a more serious note, implementing such a law without
| also providing a 0-knowledge authentication system ready
| to use by the government is just so unbelievably stupid
| (for multiple unrelated reasons).
| arrowsmith wrote:
| All of Reddit is NSFW. Why are you on Reddit, you should
| be working!
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| And requiring KYC to access a subreddit marked NSFW is
| somehow legitimate why, exactly?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Subreddits now 18-only in the UK now include:
|
| r/ukguns r/cider r/sexualassault r/stopsmoking
|
| Think of the children!
| ronsor wrote:
| The fact that UK politicians cannot use their brains is a
| separate issue. May I interest you in a VPN?
| qualeed wrote:
| > _just use your brain and don 't upload your face and
| driver's license to a gossip website._
|
| It isn't just gossip websites requiring this, and it isn't
| just gossip websites suffering breaches.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Yeah, just upload the pictures of unsuspecting guys.
|
| Sorry, well deserved ladies. It just made my day. ROTFL.
|
| And please provide an app with all the names and pictures of
| the ladies who used it. So that I can easily check who not to
| date.
| adamrezich wrote:
| Good thing our children will learn all about this at their
| mandatory Internet Literacy Fundamentals course they have to
| take in high school.
|
| Oh wait--no such thing exists!
|
| It's up to us to teach this to our children. There's no hope
| of getting the current generations of Internet users to grasp
| the simple idea that app/website backends are black boxes to
| you, the user, such that there is absolutely nothing
| preventing them from selling the personal information you
| gave them to anyone they see fit, or even just failing to
| secure it properly.
|
| Without being a developer yourself or having this information
| drilled into you at a young age, you're just going to grow up
| naively thinking that there's nothing wrong with giving
| personal information such as _photos of your driver 's
| license_ to random third parties that you have no reason to
| trust whatsoever, just because they have a form in their app
| or on their website that requests it from you.
| tonymet wrote:
| education is helpful, but it's also inadequate. we need
| good drivers, and good driver safety systems. they go hand
| in hand.
|
| even the most savvy consumers slip up, or are in a hurry.
| it's impossible to make a perfect security decision every
| time
| 9dev wrote:
| Nice, some unsolicited victim blaming!
| gruez wrote:
| >* App Store CTF Kill Switch. Publisher has to share a private
| CTF token with Apple with a public name (e.g. /etc/apple-ctf-
| token ). The app store can automatically kill the app if the
| token is ever breached.
|
| How do you enforce the token actually exists? Do app developers
| have to hire some auditing firm to attest all their infra
| actually have the token available? Seems expensive.
| tonymet wrote:
| it could be made available just to apple servers via ACL or
| protected token. but no one else .
| gruez wrote:
| That still doesn't make sense. How does the ACL work? What
| prevents the usual shenanigans like cloaking to prevent
| legitimate detection from working? Moreover what secrets
| are you even trying to detect? The app API token?
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Yes, pushing companies away from mobile apps and towards PWAs
| or even ordinary websites _does_ sound like an excellent idea.
| tonymet wrote:
| it could be an enhanced certification like "Enhanced
| SEcurity" or "End to End security" to allow gradual adoption.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| So like those EV certs that turn the address bar green.
| tonymet wrote:
| better, in that the app store has more weight and more
| leverage to establish more comprehensive auditing.
|
| The EV certs failed because general SSL identity is
| pretty weak. Consumers don't know how to use it to
| establish trust. There's no enforcement on how the names
| are used. for example, my county treasurer has me
| transfer thousands of dollars on a random domain name.
| benlivengood wrote:
| In this case it appears to be a public Firebase bucket;
| shutting down the app wouldn't help. Quite possibly access to
| Firebase was mediated through a backend service and Apple
| couldn't validate the security of the unknown bucket anyway.
| tonymet wrote:
| I partially agree. At least the threat of app shutdown would
| be enough consequence for the publisher to take things
| seriously
| benlivengood wrote:
| I think iOS and Android already holds the threat of app
| store removal over developers' heads.
|
| Presumably the risk/reward still favors risky practices.
| tonymet wrote:
| but it's not contingent on backend violations, only
| frontend ones. I'm proposing decoupled ways for app store
| validation to audit backend security.
| tonymet wrote:
| Also about validating the backends, apple has the resources
| to provide a level of auditing over the common backends. S3,
| Firebase -- perhaps the top 5. It's easy to provide apple
| with limited access to query backend metadata and confirm
| common misconfigurations.
| dabockster wrote:
| The world is moving away from App Stores and walled gardens.
| Figure out other options.
| tonymet wrote:
| that sounds preposterous . can you qualify that?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Linux is up to 5% of the desktop. Gog and Itch.io are DRM-
| free, and are slowly gaining ground against Steam.
| Fediverse networks are slowly gaining ground against
| traditional social media. Signal is more popular then ever.
|
| There will always be lowest-common-denominator users, but
| there is clearly _some_ demand for an alternative to the
| biggest 5 websites...
| tonymet wrote:
| i see thanks for clarifying
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| >There will always be lowest-common-denominator users,
|
| Interesting play, calling 95% of users "lowest-common-
| denominator". Those silly, blabbering morons that don't
| understand that they should be running Bazzite on their
| Framework laptops instead of using evil evil sofware.
|
| >there is clearly some demand for an alternative to the
| biggest 5 websites...
|
| This demand doesn't pay, and also happens to be some of
| the most demanding, entitled users you'll have ever seen.
| TZubiri wrote:
| >Apt install app
|
| Mmmhmm
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Meanwhile, an Android app for some random banking or
| government thing will require an attested boot chain
| measured all the way down to the stage 0 ROM burned into
| the SOC. That's not to say the open ecosystem isn't
| better, but to say it's winning enough to guarantee
| sustained general purpose viability is simply untrue.
| bluescrn wrote:
| The world was moving away from App Stores and walled gardens.
| And then I woke up, and returned to grim reality.
| Rendello wrote:
| > Publisher is required to include their own sensitive records
| within their backend.
|
| Now that's a creative solution! Every admin must have a table
| called `MY_PERSONAL_INFO` in their DB.
| tonymet wrote:
| wouldn't it be funny if the app store had to review it and
| make sure the personal info was sensitive and possibly
| humiliating enough . "sir your app has been denied because
| MY_PERSONAL_INFO table requires at least 3 d-pics"
| bawolff wrote:
| Make company liable for damages when breached.
|
| If you want companies to care about security then you need to
| make it affect their bottom line.
|
| This wasn't the work of some super hacker. They literally just
| posted the info in public.
| tonymet wrote:
| I agree, but relying on lawsuits is far too slow and costly .
| We can reduce the latency of discovery and resolution by
| adding software protocols.
| bawolff wrote:
| Having the threat of lawsuits is not really about the
| actual lawsuit, its about scaring people into being more
| careful. If you actually get to the lawsuit stage, the
| strategy has failed.
|
| > We can reduce the latency of discovery and resolution by
| adding software protocols.
|
| Can we? What does this even mean?
|
| [Edit: i guess you mean the things in your parent comment
| about requiring including some sort of canary token in the
| DB. I'm skeptical about that as it assumes certain db
| structure and is difficult to verify compliance.
|
| More importantly i don't really see how it would have
| stopped this specific situation. It seems like the leak was
| published to 4chan pretty immediately. More generally how
| do you discover if the token is leaked, in general? Its not
| like the hackers are going to self-report.]
| tonymet wrote:
| The signatures would appear in the drop . A primitive
| version would be file meta data or jfif. Even the images
| themselves or steganography could be used
| bawolff wrote:
| I guess, but it seems a bit like a solution that only
| works for this specific dump - most db breaches don't
| have photos in them.
|
| My bigger concern though is how you translate that into
| discovering such breaches. Are you just googling for your
| token once a day? This breach was fairly public but lots
| of breaches are either sold or shared privately. By the
| time its public enough to show up in a google search
| usually everyone already knows the who and what of the
| breach. I think it would be unusual for the contents of
| the breach to be publicly shared without identifying
| where the contents came from.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| That's a reactive measure. Certainly, it's worth pursuing.
| Though like the notion that you can't protect people from
| being murdered if you only focus on arresting murderers,
| there is a need for a preventative solution as well.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is the only way to deter this. Negligence and
| incompetence needs to cost companies big money, business-
| ruining amounts of money, or this is just going to keep
| happening.
| itake wrote:
| the problem is what are the damages? how much are those
| damages?
|
| My SSN / private information has been leaked 10+ now. I had
| identify fraud once, resulting in ~8 hours of phone calls to
| various banks resulting in everything being removed.
|
| What are my damages?
| bawolff wrote:
| I would suggest that damages should be punative, not to
| make the victims whole. So i dont think it matters.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Punitive damages are no-go in Europe given they would
| mostly result in money transfers from the ruling families
| to common people.
| bawolff wrote:
| Have you seen the GDPR? Its basically the definition of
| punative damages.
| standardUser wrote:
| There has to be a better way than just adding another
| deterrent to starting a company. Could there be an industry
| standard for storage security? Certification (a known hurdle)
| is better than "don't fuck up or we'll fine you to death".
| bawolff wrote:
| Certification is essentially "don't fuck up or we'll fine
| you to death" with extra steps. Especially because it
| mostly comes down to the company self-verifying (auditors
| mostly just verify you are following whatever you say you
| are following, not that its a good idea).
|
| Its not like anyone intentionally posts their entire DB to
| the internet.
| standardUser wrote:
| Those extra steps help insult from penalties and lawsuits
| in a lot of cases.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I think fines are very reasonable. If you can't safely do
| the thing, you should be punished for doing it. If you
| can't safely safely do the thing then there is no issue.
| sigseg1v wrote:
| Regulate software development. Other industries already do
| this.
|
| You could: - make Software Engineer a protected title that
| requires formal engineering education and mentorship as
| well as membership to your country's professional
| engineering body (Canada already does this) - make
| collecting and storing PII illegal unless done by a
| certified Software Engineer - add legal responsibility to
| certified Software Engineers. If a beach like this happens
| they lose their license or go to jail. And you easily know
| who is responsible for it because it's the PEng's name on
| the project - magically, nobody wants to collect PII
| insecurely anymore or hire vibe coders or give idiots
| access to push insecure stuff - bonus: being a certified
| Software Engineer now boosts your salary by 5x and the only
| people that will do it actually know WTF they are doing
| instead of cowboys, and that company will never hire a
| cowboy because of liability. The entire Internet is now
| more secure, more profitable for professionals, and dumb AI
| junk goes in the trash
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| For writing lists with one item per line, Use two line
| breaks on HN to start a new line
|
| Like this
| TZubiri wrote:
| Maybe the idiot that published this didn't even form an llc,
| "waste of 200$"
| spixy wrote:
| GDPR makes company liable for damages when breached.
|
| That is why Tea did not operate in Europe.
| swat535 wrote:
| > Make company liable for damages when breached.
|
| This won't be enough, you have to make PEOPLE liable for
| breach.
|
| Making a corporation being liable is useless, it's a legal
| Person and it can simply declare bankruptcy and move on.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I like the ctf one, but it would probably be hidden way deeper
| than the rest of the info.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| More power to app store reviewers? Please no. They already deny
| apps for random reasons and figuring out why is often a hair
| pulling experience.
| tonymet wrote:
| i agree about the power concerns, but where would you assign
| the authority if not the app store?
| danparsonson wrote:
| This is the kind of thing government regulation is useful
| for, when it works.
| tonymet wrote:
| In practice they delegate certification to a legacy and
| expensive certification authority
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread; others?
|
| _Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on
| viral app_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44682914 - July
| 2025 (17 comments)
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| it should have never been allowed to be published anyway. not
| trying to justify what is happening, but these kind of apps are
| historically abused and create more problems than they
| intentionally try to solve.
| trallnag wrote:
| Damn, this app is going down quicker than coalfax
|
| Edit: Nevermind, looks like Tea has been around for quite some
| time already. But it kinda flew under the radar with a fairly
| small user base.
| exiguus wrote:
| Kind of meta toxic behaviour to download the data from a App that
| has the goal to prevent woman from men toxic behaviour.
| az226 wrote:
| Doxxers getting doxxed is peak irony.
| jahewson wrote:
| Let's not kid ourselves, the goal is to shame men in an attempt
| to control them.
| archagon wrote:
| Maybe if all these creepy men just dated each other and left
| women alone, the problem would solve itself.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Great suggestion, very practical and well intentioned. On
| that note, I had another idea; toxic women should stop
| associating with men. They should take themselves off the
| dating apps and stop ruining the lives of any men that
| might be unfortunate enough to pair up with them. My
| suggestion is just as practical as your suggestion I think.
| The toxic women can self-identify and voluntarily exclude
| themselves just as well as the creepy men.
| chneu wrote:
| >They should take themselves off the dating apps
|
| Then they can't complain about how horrible people are.
| Unfortunately, being a victim is a large part of many
| people's personalities. This is especially true for the
| "chronically single" people on dating apps. It's never
| their fault people don't want to date them! It's everyone
| else who is horrible.
|
| Years ago when I was on the apps and went on dates it was
| obvious who these people were. They rarely actually go on
| dates because every person they match with is a predator
| to them. Then, if an actual date happened, it would
| quickly go nowhere because they're treating you as if
| you're a predator. The whole vibe with these people is
| awkward and judgmental. Then folks wonder why their
| dating app experience is bad.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't think that's the actual goal, or outcome.
| aaaja wrote:
| This is such excruciating incompetence by the app developers I'm
| wondering if it was intentional. Done to punish the women who
| dared to speak up about vile men.
|
| I just hope they can pursue legal action for this, whether it was
| a deliberate trap or not.
| motohagiography wrote:
| for someone who thought Tea was a good idea, what would be the
| objection be if this leaked contributor data were used to
| populate a similar app to warn men off?
| Frost1x wrote:
| A rather brilliant idea I must say.
| motohagiography wrote:
| obviously it would be malicious and unethical, but since that
| didn't seem to stop Tea users, I'd be interested in what
| their arguments against it would be.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| There's no objection, but it doesn't work because men compete
| while women collude.
|
| This has evolutionary origins. A man can, theoretically, father
| around a thousand children or more in the time it takes a woman
| to bear one. Sperm are cheap so those who need sperm (i.e.
| women) don't need to fight with each other. There's plenty to
| go around. Eggs are scarce so males of myriad species fight
| each other to the death over them.
|
| It's just biology.
| robotnikman wrote:
| With all the state/countries starting to do ID verification, this
| is a good lesson in what can go horribly wrong with these types
| of policies.
| throwacct wrote:
| This x100.
| SomaticPirate wrote:
| "An app was created to help women stay safe on dates and avoid
| creeps, proceeds to be hacked by creeps"
|
| Not a great look here.
|
| However, Tea could have done a modicum of cybersecurity work (or
| hired an outside firm) to prevent this. If they are claiming to
| want to keep women safe (and not just running a gossip board)
| then this should be a red alert for them. No public
| acknowledgement is concerning...
| Levitz wrote:
| An app that was created to publicly share images and public
| information of people got the images and public information of
| the people sharing it exposed.
|
| I don't know how can anyone feel wrong about this without
| feeling even worse for what was already taking place.
| anonfordays wrote:
| >However, Tea could have done a modicum of cybersecurity work
| (or hired an outside firm) to prevent this.
|
| I have no doubt in my mind that _this is what they did._ An
| "outside firm" vibe coded this and delivered the results.
| loeg wrote:
| "Safety" is doing a lot in this headline. It's a gossip app.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Here are some statistics for you to consider:
|
| * Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, approximately 310 are
| reported to the police.
|
| * Of those reported, only about 13 cases are referred to a
| prosecutor.
|
| * Ultimately, only about 7 cases lead to a felony conviction.
|
| * For every 100 rapes reported, only 18 result in an arrest.
|
| * Fewer than 7% of reported rape cases lead to a conviction.
|
| * In some studies, the conviction rate for rape has been
| reported as low as 3.2% in certain jurisdictions.
|
| Sources:
|
| https://rainn.org/articles/what-expect-criminal-justice-syst...
|
| https://www.uml.edu/news/stories/2019/sexual_assault_researc...
|
| If you could imagine what girls and women go through, some on a
| daily basis, for years, since childhood, I think you might have
| a better understanding of why a "gossip app" might actually be
| a pretty sensible option for avoiding sexual assault and worse.
| mystraline wrote:
| And as a man, do you know what happens when you report sexual
| assault?
|
| You get laughed at. Hard.
|
| So yeah, I'd like to see these broken down between cis-,
| hetero-, homo-, and trans-.
|
| And why are cis-lesbian-women also reporting higher numbers
| of sexual assault than man/woman relationship? No men in that
| relationship.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5511765/
|
| The rainn articles are propaganda with a specific slant.
| amelius wrote:
| Isn't Apple supposed to protect these app users? I suspect a
| lawsuit is in the making.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| There's nothing Apple can really do about backend security of
| apps.
|
| Conceivably these storage endpoints might've never been
| directly exposed to mobile clients, instead going through other
| proxies or CDNs.
| chneu wrote:
| I think what they meant is that Apple is allowing a legally
| dubious app to operate.
|
| Not that apple should enforce minimum security, but that the
| app shouldn't be allowed on the App Store in the first place.
| For obvious reasons.
|
| Supposedly, if your photo is posted on Tea you can contact
| Apple. Then Apple will force Tea to take your information
| down.
| Beijinger wrote:
| LOL, well deserved. https://youtu.be/WjfpryoQ0Mk
| Beijinger wrote:
| Why the downvote? It is just pictures and names. Both disclosed
| against their will but, and this is the ROTFL part, this is
| exactly what the ladies did. Uploading pictures and names of
| unsuspecting male victims and violating their privacy.
|
| Let ladies have some of their own medicine.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| "Breached"
|
| 1st sentence: "exposed database"
|
| We need a more nuanced headline here. They did nothing
| responsible. 404 should title this story with something that will
| blame them first and the 'hackers' 2nd.
| zahlman wrote:
| My general observation thus far has been that submissions from
| 404media are rarely anything that I'd consider quality content
| for HN.
| prophesi wrote:
| I wouldn't go that far. What they uncover with their FOIA
| requests that the general public would otherwise never know
| about tends to be quality content. And, like the Wired, their
| FOIA-based articles aren't paywalled.
| ch_fr wrote:
| Yeah, the term "breached" was a very poor choice, because it
| sounds like "this was breached recently" instead of telling
| "the database could be seen by anyone ever since the app's
| conception, and it only came to light today" which has much
| worse implications.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| This app's data store was "breached" in the same way that one
| breaches a castle by walking across the lowered drawbridge,
| through the open gate, past the empty guard stations.
| gaws wrote:
| No one "breached" the site. The pictures sat on a public-facing
| Firebase bucket, ripe for the taking.
| indycliff wrote:
| My guess, hired the absolute lowest paid developers and got what
| they paid for.
| kashnote wrote:
| I'm a firm believer that if you want to start a tech company, at
| least one of the founders has to have a technical background.
| Even if you outsource all the work, you need to be able to ask
| the right questions related to security.
|
| It's not just that this database was accessible via the internet.
| It was all _public data_. Storing people 's IDs in a public
| database is just... wow.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Tech background isn't sufficient. They need to have security
| background. Some of the worst people I've met with respect to
| security have been technical enough to have the wrong level of
| confidence.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Doctors need to study 5 to 8 years and pass rigorous exams
| Attorneys the same Structural architects and engineers the same
|
| We have a couple of decades more until we lock tech up, up
| until now it was all fun and games, but now and in the future
| tech will be everywhere and will be load bearing
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Tech is special! Think about the margins, the gains, the $$$!
|
| I bet on greed. It always wins.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| By then we'll just launder the blame onto the AIs
| alibarber wrote:
| But now we have amazing vibe coding tools that mean that you
| don't need to be technical or whatever - you can just deliver
| results. After all, the best LinkedIn influencers and founders
| don't care about how something is delivered, just what.
|
| Yeah, we've finally, nearly, just got to the point where
| realizing that treating IT and security and such as simply a
| cost centre to be minimised maybe quite wasn't leading to
| optimal security outcomes - to throwing it all away again.
| jackdawipper wrote:
| a few more of these incidents and they'll care a lot more
| redeeman wrote:
| thats a joke right?
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Isnt there like millions of misconfigured firebase dbs in the
| wild with no auth, some including fortune 500 companies?
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/misconfigured...
| anal_reactor wrote:
| This is legit funny
| ok123456 wrote:
| We need to stop allowing companies that are not directly engaged
| in financial services to request government IDs.
|
| Facebook shouldn't legally be allowed to demand an ID any more
| than this disaster of an "app."
|
| Now tens of thousands of people will be subject to identity theft
| because someone thought this was a neat growth hacking pattern
| for their ethically dubious idea of a social networking site.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| A secure Know Your Customer API would be a useful service for
| Apple and Google to provide to developers. It could scan the ID
| and reveal individual pieces of information with permission to
| the application or multiple applications. Forgive me if it
| already exists and this app just wasn't using it.
| arianvanp wrote:
| Apple is launching such a service in iOS26
|
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/232/
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Ah, nice that it's a web standard. Looks like Google is as
| well. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/digital-
| credentials-api-or...
|
| Link to the related web standard https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-
| data-model-2.0/
| ok123456 wrote:
| Or we could deny providing "app" developers with any such
| information.
| codedokode wrote:
| I am not going to show my ID to Google, especially given that
| it is a foreign company with dubious data collection history.
| ronsor wrote:
| You are going to show your ID to at least one foreign
| company with dubious data collection history, because the
| government will eventually force it on you.
| EnderWT wrote:
| This is mDL (mobile driver's license) here in the US, but
| it's a new technology and not widely available or adopted
| yet. https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/digital-identities-
| mdl
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Interesting; thanks. That should connect to browsers'
| Digital Credentials API the other user mentioned.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| The crimes of creating or posessing a fake ID are distinct from
| the crime of knowingly using one, an act which has the peculiar
| name _" uttering"_.
|
| Simple solution: decriminalize uttering to any person who is
| not an employee of the government or a regulated bank.
| Revisional_Sin wrote:
| Unfortunately for some of us, the UK has gone the opposite
| direction. We now have to verify our age (or use a VPN) before
| accessing certain websites.
|
| https://theconversation.com/porn-websites-now-require-age-ve...
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| This is fine if you have a secure tool to access. It's not
| okay if you just try to spin up your own solution.
| killerstorm wrote:
| There are verifiable credentials protocols which would let a
| site to check something (and prove that they checked it)
| without de-anonymizing the user.
|
| It can be done with fairly basic cryptography. But the
| infrastructure around it would grow only if there's a demand.
| Otherwise people go with lowest denominator.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Shouldn't a _single_ mention of sex details make this a
| pornographic site, and thus subject to 18+ non-anonymous
| registration?
| bilekas wrote:
| So it wasn't "breached" ... It was just so badly made that the
| bucket was public. Vibe coding ?
| elicash wrote:
| Lots of us were bad at this even before AI.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Oh no, they doxxed the users of the doxxing app. Shocking (tiny
| violin emoji)!
| jackdawipper wrote:
| In 2008 when the GFC every company we worked IT for on contract
| fired their IT staff first. Two weeks later, we had bonanza
| period right through into the next year. They realised the hard
| way that those lowly cheap IT staff were quietly keeping them
| afloat. We charged a lot to fix their problems they created
| because their CEO thought IT was a waste of money.
|
| This will prove security in IT coding is necessary, so enjoy
| watching the drama unfold.
|
| IT security bonanza time. It wont be long.
| fHr wrote:
| hahahhahaha
| edm0nd wrote:
| Someone dropped a map from all of the photos metadata
|
| RIP
|
| https://x.com/vxunderground/status/1948850061493850598
| WrongOnInternet wrote:
| Not to get all conspiratorial, but if I was an incel, or other
| type of woman-hating-man, with an axe to grind, creating an app
| to "protect" women and their dirty secrets, then having their
| data "breached" would be a pretty diabolical revenge plan. Only
| women can join the app, but the only person running the app is a
| man? Nothing suspicious about that...
| thekevan wrote:
| Just yesterday I saw tweets from someone popular in tech Twitter
| talking about how great it was that he helped the person who made
| this.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The trend has been for all things related to sex, dating and
| relationships to be aggressively male hostile. But I think it's
| certainly peaked. Off topic, any notice how anti -male bumble is?
| Trash app.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| At this rate what is even the point of dating for men? An angry
| ex can just ruin your reputation.
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| Not sure, but think this may have been the original thread:
| https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/511313558
|
| >DRIVERS LICENSES AND FACE PICS! GET THE FUCK IN HERE BEFORE THEY
| SHUT IT DOWN!
|
| >Tea App uploads all user verification submissions to this public
| firebase storage bucket with the prefix "attachments/": [link,
| now offline]
|
| >Yes, if you sent Tea App your face and drivers license, they
| doxxed you publicly! No authentication, no nothing. It's a public
| bucket. I have written a Python script which scrapes the bucket
| and downloads all the images, page by page, so you can see if
| you're in it: [pastebin link]
|
| >The censoring in picrel was added by me. The images in the
| bucket are raw and uncensored. Nice "anonymous" app. This is what
| happens when you entrust your personal information to a bunch of
| vibe-coding DEI hires.
|
| >I won't be replying to this or making any more threads about it.
| I did my part, God bless you all. Regards, anon
|
| Being so careless with people's personal data should be a major
| crime, tbh. If I manipulated thousands of people to let me scan
| their passports and various other bits of personal info, then
| just left the copies around the city for people to find, I'd be
| prosecuted, and rightfully so.
| ipnon wrote:
| The irony of a doxxing app being wrecked by the anonymous is
| too much for me!
| udev4096 wrote:
| Are you being serious right now? No one forced those people to
| upload their data to this sketchy site. Everyone with one brain
| cell would know the repercussions of uploading IDs to a no-name
| site
| mr_00ff00 wrote:
| Exactly, this is why if I walk down a street that looks
| sketchy and I get assaulted/robbed, it's not a crime and no
| one can be charged!
|
| Any bad behavior should be legal if the victim should have
| realized the warning signs.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| i think you are assuming a level of computer literacy that
| doesn't exist in the general population. most people seem to
| not actually know where data goes when they put it in their
| phone, how that data is used, or what actually happens on
| computers in general. They mostly appear as magic to them.
| udev4096 wrote:
| I am being downvoted for being real. How is the general
| populous not aware of it? That's wild. Again, _you_ have to
| be aware of this. It 's like privacy 101
| tmerc wrote:
| The general population hasn't taken privacy 101. They get
| asked to email their id to their doctor. If turns out the
| doctor also hasn't taken privacy 101.
| more_corn wrote:
| Naw. That's victim blaming. People have a right to
| believe that if an online service or app requires
| identify verification that the data will be protected. If
| you provide your credit card to uber you assume they put
| a password on the database and do the things required to
| protect it.
|
| The idiot no-technical founder failed to do even the most
| simple and obvious data protection.
|
| Vibecoding is not an excuse. Ask how to secure the data
| and the AI will answer.
| yifanl wrote:
| The problem is as follows: There is a subset of the
| population that tends to trust things you say, and this
| subset is fairly large.
|
| The solution is that we need to make it so that the
| majority no longer trusts anything people say.
|
| There will be no negative knock-on effects for this, I'm
| sure.
|
| --
|
| To be less glib, I don't really see a good outcome of this
| in the long term. If everyone developed the right level of
| op-sec given the amount of bad actors on the internet, we'd
| effectively never communicate with another person again.
| 9rx wrote:
| "Do not share personal information online" is a warning
| that has been heeded since the internet was created. You
| don't need tech savvy to understand that message, just as
| you don't need to know anything about zoos to understand
| "Do not enter the lion cage".
|
| With tech savvy it is possible to understand the dangers
| well enough to dismiss the common advice in certain cases,
| but if you don't have it -- you had better listen to what
| others are telling you. If you wish to dismiss it, you are
| on your own.
| Bridged7756 wrote:
| Victim blaming isn't right. Yes, they could have exhibited
| more caution. No, it's not their fault.
| udev4096 wrote:
| It's the only way people learn. Real world is not going to
| hold your hand, real world is full of facebooks, not
| signals
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Vigilante justice is wrong, but at the same time, I have a
| hard time calling registered users of a Kiwi Farms clone
| "victims."
| 9rx wrote:
| Of course it is right. Victims need to be blamed, else
| they'll just stupidly do it again. That's what "blame" is
| for. But, sure, if 'Tea' snuck up behind these people then
| there would be some room for sympathy.
|
| But this case is more like you sticking your fingers into
| an electrical socket, after being warned continuously not
| to do that, and then crying that it was the utility
| company's fault for putting something dangerous in your
| face.
|
| We've been told since the advent of the internet to not
| share personal information online. If you want to take the
| risk, you have to accept the consequences. However, in this
| case the story is even worse as the intent of these people
| was to violate that rule not just for themselves but _for
| other people_ as well.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| If I lend you my car, and you park in Berkeley leaving your
| laptop open on the passenger seat... Yes it's your fault my
| window got smashed and I'd like you to pay for it. Is it
| your fault your laptop got stolen? Maybe, that's just
| semantics. But my window being broken is your fault because
| we all know thieves exist and look for items on seats.
|
| So if you upload your id to a flash in the pan website,
| who's fault is it when the rookie website turns out to have
| expectedly low security?
| srcoder wrote:
| The car was at least be locked and have windows closed.
| In this case, it was an unlocked car with doors and
| windows open.
| hedora wrote:
| Look at what this site does.
|
| You upload other people's personal information on it to run
| background checks on them.
|
| So, many of the victims probably haven't heard of the
| company.
| _moof wrote:
| "No one forced these people to get on that non-airworthy
| airplane."
|
| People should not have to understand every technical field in
| order to participate in society. This is what regulatory
| bodies are for.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| > Being so careless with people's personal data should be a
| major crime, tbh. If I manipulated thousands of people to let
| me scan their passports and various other bits of personal
| info, then just left the copies around the city for people to
| find, I'd be prosecuted, and rightfully so.
|
| Good analogy. Also, this is the main point of the EU GDPR.
| tinyoli wrote:
| It is, in the EU.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| California car dealerships are sometimes visited by the DMV
| inspector, an actual officer of some kind technically.
|
| If they find any driver license photo copies, even turned over
| inside an unlocked desk drawer, the fine to a dealership is
| $10k per occurrence.
| tandr wrote:
| Is it weird that internet companies do not have this kind of
| oversight?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| how much money can their lobbiests throw at the gub'mnt
| compared to the US car dealership associations?
| technion wrote:
| Given it's now "fixed", here's the scraping code so you can
| verify how this went down:
|
| https://pastebin.com/CPBiqd1E
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| I'd like to start seeing legal jeopardy for companies that are
| careless with customer information. Make developers scared to
| retain anything they don't absolutely need.
| calexanderaz wrote:
| What Tea Got Wrong (and how to avoid it)
| https://youtu.be/mMvfBUNNKIY
| DaSHacka wrote:
| They posted an official response:
|
| https://www.teaforwomen.com/data-breach
| megadopechos wrote:
| "Your data privacy is of the utmost importance to us."
|
| No it ain't.
| oc1 wrote:
| > At 6:44 AM PST on 7/25, we identified unauthorized access to
| our systems and immediately launched a full investigation to
| understand the scope and impact of the incident. Here's what we
| know at this tim
|
| The first sentence is already a lie as there was never
| authorization in place followed by more lies.
| tpmoney wrote:
| Not to be overly pedantic but authorization and security are
| two different things. If I leave my front door unlocked and
| open, that doesn't mean Bob the Homeless Hobo is authorized
| to enter my house.
| chneu wrote:
| That page is nothing but lies. Wow. They admit to lying to
| their users(about data retention) and then lie more. That's
| incredible.
| nonhaver wrote:
| if im understanding correctly this was a public bucket? aside
| from the obvious leaking of data couldnt this also be subject to
| a DoW (denial of wallet) attack where a user could auto download
| all the images constantly on a VPS and cause a massive bill?
| chneu wrote:
| according to the company this was an old bucket they used prior
| to 2024 when they moved to a more robust system.
|
| So...they were storing people's information long term in a
| publically accessible bucket when users did not know. In fact,
| I believe users were told their IDs/selfies were immediately
| deleted(not stored), then Tea turned around and says they were
| legally required to store those photos. Tea had to address this
| in their press release, apparently.
| realsolipsist wrote:
| Just wanted to add...I can't sneed
| oc1 wrote:
| Wait, the app does what?
|
| > The app aims to provide a space for women to exchange
| information about men in order to stay safe, and verifies that
| new users are women by asking them to upload a selfie.
|
| What exactly does this mean? Which information is exchanged
| without consent of these people? This seems to me more
| problematic than the actual topic of the data breach.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| You can use that app in different ways:
|
| 1) you dated a guy on tinder, he became all pushy on your first
| date, touched you inappropriately even though you said no. Or
| some guy became violent during your relationship and you even
| found out he has a history of that.
|
| 2) you dated a nice guy but he dumped you for whatever reason,
| and now you want to get back at him so you make up stuff like
| mentioned above, and post it there.
| eastbound wrote:
| 3) You're in competition with someone at work and you want to
| make his life difficult. You want to blackmail someone into
| promoting you, etc.
| raincole wrote:
| In other words it's a slander platform. Got it.
| smeeger wrote:
| you forgot the most common use cases in practice: a man you
| work with slighted you in some small way. now hes going to
| have sexual assault red flags. the HR lady who already hates
| men will look you up on tea and decline to hire you because
| you dont have green flags.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| That's PR speak for saying that it's a Kiwi Farms clone. I'm
| sure the two userbases even share their sense of
| righteousness regarding their own actions.
|
| This case couldn't be more clear cut. It's horrid, and the
| people running the sites should be held accountable. Two
| wrongs don't make a right, especially when it will inevitably
| cost innocent lives, sooner or later.
| dash2 wrote:
| Gossip about the opposite sex is probably the world's oldest
| social activity. The problem is that the internet lets it
| happen at industrial scale, and obviously that can be misused
| or have dangerous unintended consequences.
| chneu wrote:
| it also doesn't disappear. Before the internet you could say
| something, laugh, and move on. It disappeared.
|
| Now if someone says something online it can be read for years
| and often without context of when it was originally written.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's the digital version of a whisper network. Whisper networks
| have been around as long as humans. Informal ways for people
| (often women) to share warnings will always self assemble when
| formal systems don't protect them.
|
| That said, you;re right to raise concerns about consent and the
| ethics of sharing information about people without their
| knowledge. These systems inherently involve trade-offs. When
| the risk is violence or death, the cost of a false negative
| (saying nothing) is obvious. So people naturally lean toward
| maximizing sensitivity, even if that means lower specificity.
| That;s not ideal, but it's understandable in a world where
| formal accountability is inconsistent at best, and finding out
| after the fact isn't an option.
|
| Their existence reflects a failure elsewhere. If we want to
| reduce the need for them, the solution isn't to shut them down
| but to make them obsolete. The solution is building systems and
| cultural norms where violence and coercion are reliably called
| out and acted upon.
|
| If that idea feels scary or unfair, that's the emotional
| context many women are already living in. Understanding that is
| the first step toward addressing why these networks exist in
| the first place.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_network
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Outsourcing job was it? Modern programmers are literally terrible
| at all basic stuff (who stores ID images in the db and then in
| the clear, do you have many other mental issues or what?) (I see
| startups like Resend making the same mistakes and still people
| use them, so there isn't much punishment even from people with
| half a brain) and AI is going to make it all so much worse. And a
| public bucket. I think it should be criminally liable to be
| _that_ sloppy.
| juandsc wrote:
| I don't think it's a modern programmers problem, in fact, I
| think we can argue we are much better than 20 years ago at
| least in terms of security.
|
| There is a much higher concern for data validation and no one
| used HTTPS 20 years ago. Literally there were social networks
| with people uploading photos and personal stuff which didn't
| even have HTTPS.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| But that was because no one told them. Now they are told and
| taught. A lot of systems Warn even for opening something
| publicly... And yet.
|
| I check all CVE's of the software my clients use because we
| need to figure out why things are broken and often this is a
| start -> unpatched CVE's. Most (by far) CVE's are not 'honest
| mistakes' or missed corner cases because rocket-science; they
| are just sloppy programming. Something that should never pass
| review. We DO know better but people ship things and hope for
| the best (including the case in this post etc).
| juandsc wrote:
| > But that was because no one told them. Now they are told
| and taught.
|
| That's precisely my point.
|
| > Most (by far) CVE's are not 'honest mistakes' or missed
| corner cases because rocket-science; they are just sloppy
| programming.
|
| This is actually true, but it's true because we have way
| better tooling and safer languages, which means we don't
| see nearly as many buffer overflows or memory management
| issues.
|
| It's not that you didn't have negligent programmers back
| then.
|
| > Something that should never pass review. We DO know
| better but people ship things and hope for the best
| (including the case in this post etc).
|
| That's not new though. We've seen similar things happen in
| the past multiple times.
|
| 20 years ago code review was literally a bunch of meetings
| in a room or talk with another developer in person. Having
| something like github where you make a pull request, passes
| the automated test suite and requires a code review, etc.
| simply wasn't done. If in 2005 that already existed it was
| extremely bleeding edge.
|
| I do have concerns about the code quality issues introduced
| by the abuse of LLMs, but until right before that was a
| thing, definitely the code quality in general has improved
| a lot.
| poemxo wrote:
| On X, one of the leaked pictures seemed to be a DoD ID card, and
| I wondered why Tea needed proof of someone's identity. Then I
| remembered Uber and Lime both want your drivers license. Facebook
| and Instagram supposedly request it too if your account gets
| locked. This is not a new normal I like.
| odiroot wrote:
| That "Tea" app seems like a real GDPR nightmare anyway.
| irusensei wrote:
| It's almost poetic that this happens on the same day UK demands
| website to collect personal identification. I'm looking forward
| to the shitshow in the upcoming months.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| What a moment to be a woman dude...
| mandmandam wrote:
| For all the gloating in here about doxxers getting doxxed, there
| sure are a lot of HN accounts exposing themselves as utter creeps
| in here.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| It is the nature of the user base here. For a group so loud
| about privacy, users here seem to be very gleeful about these
| women having their personal information released.
| mandmandam wrote:
| It reveals a chronic and widespread lack of basic empathy.
|
| A women gets assaulted on a date. She warns other women, on a
| website created for that purpose. Her drivers license, chat
| history, and passport are then revealed to the open web...
| and this forum _celebrates it_ , with a giddy glee.
|
| As if all the women on there were lying. As if women must not
| be _permitted_ to warn each other about predatory men.
|
| I held a faint hope that we were brigaded... Since when do we
| celebrate _this_? But clicking through to a few of the users
| past comments, that hope died.
|
| I've _never_ been quite so disgusted by this forum. This is
| vile; a stark sign of deep, deep rot in the HN community.
| energy123 wrote:
| Repeal section 230 and end this Black Mirror dystopian madness.
| red_acted wrote:
| Bro, I'm just vibing. Wym I have to care about data security...
| shakingmyheadsmh
| John-117 wrote:
| I would not be disappointed if some actual hacking was done to
| bring down the entire app. I don't think the Tea app realizes
| just how many competent people dislike them, and they clearly
| have very few competent people of their own.
| egeggrg wrote:
| <script>alert('hahah');</script>
| egeggrg wrote:
| <script>alert("hahah");</script>
| The_President wrote:
| Gentlemen, we're working on a new app called Eyeroll. It's a
| revolutionary new dating app, where our users can rate the women
| they have dated based on favorable and/or unfavorable attributes.
| Every month, our marketing team will generate a scoreboard of
| profiles that score highest on all mainstream attributes, and our
| search and filter function will rival that of Amazon (including
| the much requested sort by lowest first.) We're seeking
| $23-to-$23.5 million in funding to get our product over the
| finish line.
| codedokode wrote:
| This reminds me of people saying "a honest person has nothing to
| hide". A honest woman who has nothing to hide, would post stories
| under her name and write her address, GPS coordinates and phone
| number in case someone needs clarifications or has objections to
| the post.
| excalibur wrote:
| 4chan is still a thing? I thought it was hacked to death.
| jennyholzer wrote:
| i thought the CIA cut its funding
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-26 23:02 UTC)