Data breaches, misinformation and the unnecessary aggravation of past connections are critiques of the new women-only dating review app Tea.
According to the app’s website, Tea for Women, “that’s why (founder Sean Cook) built Tea” — to exploit women.
The app Tea was created to be a safe place for women to share their negative or harmful experiences with men and to act as a “virtual whisper.” The app also allows women to upload pictures and search for men by name.
Since it is marketed as a safe app for women, the data breach Tea is experiencing is especially shocking to me.
“Users on the notorious message board 4chan got a hold of users’ sensitive data — including government IDs, which had at one point been used as a verification tool by the app — and leaked it elsewhere online,” NPR journalist Alana Wise said regarding the data breach.
This proves that the app is ultimately unsafe for every party involved.
Fortunately for people who downloaded the app this year, according to the app’s website, a legacy data storage system was compromised. This resulted in “an unauthorized actor” accessing their “identifier link where data was stored before February 24, 2024.”
Unfortunately, this massive breach affected 1.7 million users whose personal information was accessed.
The company, Tea Dating Advice Inc., is not taking the necessary precautions to keep people’s important information safe. It’s all the more disgusting that the app is designed and heavily marketed with the intention of improving women’s safety.
Though the app is supposed to be a safety tool so that women can become more informed in the online dating sphere, the spread of misinformation can become more than problematic and impact relationships.
“Critics worry about the platform’s capacity for spreading misinformation, enabling cyberbullying, or facilitating defamation against innocent individuals who may be misrepresented by disgruntled former partners,” Vera Emoghene, a journalist for Rolling Out, noted. This leads the platform to center on petty, entertainment-focused gossip rather than serious safety resources.
The app allows users to post reviews anonymously, which makes the spread of misinformation easier and does not allow the opposing party’s opinion or voice to be heard. This echo chamber could exacerbate relationship issues that are new and old, which influences the current hostile climate of gender division.
I am all for platforms that aim for women’s safety, but Tea seems to be doing more harm than good for society. Not to mention, the founder is a man, for crying out loud!
I hope that he meant well and did not intend for the negative results from the platform he created to surface, but this is something that has become harmful to real people and their relationships — not just something you see online, and not just for one gender.
To me, the idea of reviewing a negative experience with a male partner is something that sounds like it would solve many problems in theory, but is ultimately something that does not seem healthy for either side of the party.
Sophie St. James is a junior English major from Central, South Carolina. Sophie can be reached at [email protected].
