How Tinder, Hinge, and Their Company Proprietor Maintain Rape Beneath Wraps

The Relationship Apps Reporting Mission is an 18-month investigation. It was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and The Markup, now part of CalMatters, and copublished with The Guardian and The 19th. 

When a younger girl in Denver met up with a smiling heart specialist she matched with on the relationship app Hinge, she had no manner of realizing that the corporate behind the app had already obtained stories from two different girls who accused him of rape.

She met the 34-year-old physician with inexperienced eyes and thinning hair at Highland Faucet & Burger, a sports activities bar in a stylish neighborhood. It went properly sufficient that she accepted an invite to return to his house. As she emerged from his rest room, he handed her a tequila soda.

What transpired over the subsequent 24 hours, in accordance with courtroom testimony, reads like each individual’s relationship app nightmare.

After sipping the drink, the girl began to lose management. Her reminiscence blurred. She fell to the bottom, and the person began to movie her. He put her in a headlock, kissing her brow; she struggled to free herself however managed to seize her issues and go away. He adopted her out the door, holding her sneakers and attempting to power her again inside, however she was in a position to name an Uber, vomiting within the automobile on the way in which dwelling.

She awoke at dwelling, soaking moist on her rest room ground, the important thing to her home nonetheless in her door. She continued vomiting for hours. When she got here to, she reported the assault to Hinge.

Hinge is one among greater than a dozen relationship apps owned by Match Group. The $8.5 billion world conglomerate additionally owns manufacturers like Tinder (the world’s hottest relationship app), OkCupid, and Loads of Fish. Match Group controls half of the world’s on-line relationship market, operates in 190 nations, and facilitates meetups for hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Match Group’s official safety policy states that when a consumer is reported for assault, “all accounts discovered which can be related to that consumer can be banned from our platforms.”

So why, on the evening of Jan. 25, 2023, was Stephen Matthews nonetheless on the app? Simply 4 days earlier than, Match Group had been alerted when one other girl reported him for rape. Just a little greater than per week later, he was reported for rape once more. This time, the survivor went to the police.

None of those girls knew that the corporate had recognized about his violent habits for years. He was first reported on Sept. 28, 2020. By then, Match Group’s security coverage was already in place.

Even after a police report, it took almost two months for Matthews to be arrested — the one factor that acquired him off the apps. By then, no less than 15 girls would finally report that Matthews had raped or drugged them. Almost each one among them had met him on relationship apps run by Match Group.

On Oct. 25, 2024, a Denver judge sentenced Matthews to 158 years to life in prison after a jury convicted him of 35 counts associated to drugging and sexually assaulting eight girls, drugging two girls, and assaulting yet one more for a complete of 11 girls. Attorneys for the ladies mentioned a lot of that violence may have been prevented.

“It’s surprising that for years after receiving stories of sexual assault, Hinge continued to permit Stephen Matthews entry to its platforms and actively facilitated his abuse,” mentioned Laura Wolf, the lawyer representing the girl whose police report led to the arrest. Following finest practices for reporting on sexual assault, the Relationship Apps Reporting Mission is honoring survivors’ requests for anonymity. Matthews’ lawyer, Douglas Cohen, declined to remark. A letter that The Relationship Apps Reporting Mission despatched on to Matthews in jail went unanswered.

Match Group’s attain is so huge — its mission is “to spark significant connections for each single individual worldwide” — that folks are more likely to meet through its apps than out on the bars, at church, or via buddies.

However Matthews’ case reveals that whilst these apps have made it simpler for us to attach with a seemingly infinite pool of potential lovers, they’ve additionally made it simpler for individuals who commit sexual abuse to succeed in a seemingly infinite variety of potential targets.

In 2022, a crew of researchers at Brigham Younger College printed an analysis of a whole lot of sexual assaults in Utah. They discovered assaults facilitated by relationship apps occurred quicker and had been extra violent than when the perpetrator met the sufferer via different means. Additionally they discovered that perpetrators who use relationship apps usually tend to goal susceptible folks. Virtually 60 p.c of sexual assault survivors self-reported a psychological sickness.

Match Group has recognized for years which customers have been reported for drugging, assaulting, or raping their dates since no less than 2016, in accordance with inner firm paperwork. Since 2019, Match Group’s central database has recorded each consumer reported for rape and assault throughout its total suite of apps; by 2022, the system, often known as Sentinel, was accumulating a whole lot of troubling incidents each week, firm insiders say.

Match Group promised in 2020 that it might launch what’s often known as a transparency report — a public doc that may reveal knowledge on hurt occurring on and off its platforms. If the general public had been conscious of the dimensions of rape and assault on Match Group apps, they might have the ability to precisely assess their danger. As of February 2025, the report has not been launched.

As an alternative, as folks continued to get harm, the corporate dithered over what damning info ought to be hidden. “Will we solely publish the place we’re required by regulation?” reads a slide in a 2021 presentation proven a number of occasions to Match Group workers in addition to exterior security companions. “Will we push again on how a lot we’re required to disclose, or can we attempt to transcend what’s required?”

No on-line house is risk-free. However whereas Match Group has lengthy possessed the instruments, monetary sources, and investigative procedures essential to make it tougher for unhealthy actors to resurface, inner paperwork present the corporate has resisted efforts to unfold them throughout its apps, partly as a result of security protocols may stall company progress.

“The obsession with metrics and having to stay with them is irritating and probably harmful,” one worker wrote in 2021 after the corporate discovered that the investigative information nonprofit ProPublica was planning a narrative. “This isn’t the way in which we had been meant to work and other people’s lives are in danger.”

The identical individual requested their superiors: “‘How a lot would you personally pay to cease only one individual being sexually assaulted by a date, one youngster being trafficked or one susceptible individual being pushed to suicide by a predator?’ I really feel that if I requested members of our employees that query individually, they might put a excessive worth of their very own cash on it – However as a gaggle no one is able to hear that but.”

Since 2021, Match Group has publicly promised to enhance the protection of their merchandise and share knowledge, however firm insiders say security has not improved. A quick hiring spree sparked by congressional and media scrutiny has been largely scaled again, in accordance with former workers. In 2024, the remaining workers from the central trust-and-safety crew Match Group arrange in response to elevated scrutiny had been let go and their jobs outsourced to abroad contractors. Dealing with strain from Wall Road, Match Group eliminated CEO Bernard Kim in early February 2025 as he struggled to chop prices and finish the regular decline in subscribers to Match Group’s strongest app, Tinder.

Members of Congress have repeatedly requested knowledge from Match Group on sexual hurt. In February 2020, 11 members of Congress wrote to then-CEO Shar Dubey asking for particulars on how the corporate responds to stories of sexual violence. In July 2023, two Democrats, then-Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois adopted up after we inquired on the standing of their efforts. The corporate has nonetheless not offered the information.

In September 2024, the Home of Representatives passed a bill that requires shoppers to be notified if they’ve interacted with a consumer on a relationship app who has been banned for defrauding shoppers of cash or private monetary info. However the invoice stopped in need of addressing the difficulty of sexual assault on the apps, and it died within the Senate.

Our evaluation of a whole lot of pages of inner firm paperwork, together with 1000’s of pages of courtroom data, securities filings, and analyst stories, coupled with dozens of interviews with present and former workers and survivors of sexual violence discovered girls who report being raped get no traction, whereas accused rapists like Stephen Matthews maintain swiping — and assaulting.

Our personal testing on Match Group apps reveals that as of February 2025, not a lot has modified. Banned Tinder customers, together with these reported for sexual assault, can simply rejoin or transfer to a different Match Group relationship app, all whereas conserving most of their key private info precisely the identical.

The Relationship Apps Reporting Mission despatched Match Group a four-page letter detailing our findings. The corporate responded with a brief assertion. The assertion didn’t dispute that Match Group has fastidiously documented the extent of hurt on firm apps for years with out sharing that info with the general public. It additionally defended the corporate’s efforts to make platforms protected.

“We acknowledge our function in fostering safer communities and selling genuine and respectful connections worldwide,” the assertion offered by Kayla Whaling, senior director of communications, learn. “We are going to all the time work to put money into and enhance our methods, and seek for methods to assist our customers keep protected, each on-line and once they join in actual life.”

The corporate mentioned it vigorously combats violence. “We take each report of misconduct significantly, and vigilantly take away and block accounts which have violated our guidelines relating to this habits,” its assertion learn. Our personal testing discovered in any other case.

Beginning in April 2024, The Relationship Apps Reporting Mission created a collection of Tinder accounts that we subsequently reported for sexual assault. Quickly after, Tinder banned the accounts, and we began investigating how straightforward it might be for a banned consumer to create new accounts.

Repeatedly, we discovered that customers, quickly after being banned, may create new Tinder accounts with the very same identify, birthday, and profile pictures used on their banned accounts. Customers banned from Tinder had been additionally in a position to join Hinge, OkCupid, and Loads of Fish with out altering these private particulars.

To get across the Tinder ban, we used methods generally urged by on-line guides and boards that don’t require a number of technical information to grasp. We had been in a position to confirm three methods that allowed banned Match Group customers to repeatedly bypass being flagged when creating new accounts.

In its assertion, Match Group forged itself as an business chief in deploying expertise to advertise security, together with “harassment-preventing AI instruments, ID verification for profiles, and a portal that helps us higher help and talk with regulation enforcement investigating crimes. … Each individual deserves protected and respectful experiences. We’re dedicated to doing the work to make relationship safer on our platforms and past,” the assertion mentioned.

Sept. 28, 2020 — the date Denver heart specialist Stephen Matthews raped a lady who reported him to Hinge — can be the date Tracey Breeden was introduced on as Match Group’s head of security and social advocacy.

Breeden was a flashy rent. “With Tracey approaching board, we’re reaffirming our dedication not simply to be security leaders within the relationship house, however throughout your entire tech sector,” then-CEO Shar Dubey mentioned.

Sporting a trademark black leather-based jacket and quick, slick-backed hair, Breeden glided by the nickname “Twister” throughout her 15-year profession in regulation enforcement. What made her enticing to Match Group was her most up-to-date job at Uber. She helped the worldwide ride-hailing firm revive its status after a collection of scandals — from persistent stories of harassment of ladies workers to allegations that it was ignoring sexual assault that occurred throughout Uber rides.

Breeden spearheaded a security report in 2019 that instructed the general public what Uber knew about almost each downside, together with nationwide stories of intoxicated drivers, site visitors fatalities, and incidents of sexual violence. The report grew to become a key metric of success for the corporate.

In hiring Breeden, Match Group hoped to duplicate this success throughout its portfolio of apps. “Firms,” she mentioned in a press launch asserting her arrival, “have a duty to assist guarantee protected experiences for his or her customers.”

Breeden’s crew garnered public consideration for its new security measures, together with partnerships with NGOs, non-obligatory AI-assisted photograph verification, and a regulation enforcement portal the place police and prosecutors can request knowledge.

She additionally fostered a partnership with Garbo, a startup that supplied low-cost background checks. It launched on Tinder in 2022. Consultants level out that background checks are usually not all the time dependable as they pull from outdated databases, and research means that most individuals who commit sexual abuse don’t encounter the felony justice system. For instance, Matthews had no felony document.

Throughout this time, Match Group invested $100 million into security as a recurring value, the corporate mentioned, and boasted about Breeden’s “central security crew.”

Her crew of veteran security professionals referred to themselves as “The Avengers,” even donning superhero costumes at firm occasions.

However Michael Lawrie referred to as this “security theater.”

Lawrie labored for Match Group for almost a decade, shaping and main a security crew for one of many firm’s smaller manufacturers, OkCupid. Generally working 80-hour weeks, he spent hours, even days, sniffing out savvy customers who tried to thwart bans by creating a number of accounts.

Over a 30-year profession in content material moderation, Lawrie mentioned, he noticed many customers like Stephen Matthews. “You’re coping with one repeat offender. I’ve handled god is aware of what number of repeat offenders,” he mentioned.

A yellow Publish-it notice on the aspect of Lawrie’s pc listed out a few of his obligations: “Rape flags. … Examine miscreants.”

As of late, Lawrie is attempting to begin an advocacy group for content material moderators and different front-line security staff. However, he mentioned, he’s executed with relationship apps.

“I don’t assume they’re protected sufficient in the mean time,” he mentioned. “They’re gonna worsen. …I’m hoping relationship websites vanish.”

Lawrie mentioned he was initially enthusiastic about Breeden’s rent. He mentioned she spent her first few months on the job speaking to every model’s security crew, and instructed him that she was “very impressed” by the work OkCupid was doing.

Every of Match Group’s greatest apps offered their self-described strengths and weaknesses to Breeden’s crew, in accordance with an inner spreadsheet. At Hinge, these weaknesses included a “very rudimentary warning system with no focused comms and no comply with via” and “no approach to discover” the unique profile “of a nasty actor who has created a number of profiles.”

Breeden was confronted with an existential downside. “Our present ban classes gained’t permit us to reply the general public’s greatest query: Am I prone to be harmed on my date?” reads a slide in a presentation drafted by her crew in April 2021. Whereas every of Match Group’s apps had a system of reporting and banning violent customers, the knowledge was disorganized, and not one of the apps talked to one another.

Lawrie hoped Breeden would enhance security on the firm. However he rapidly grew annoyed that neither she nor Match Group management listened to his pleas for what they actually wanted to make platforms safer: To rent educated — and costly — investigators and combine highly effective moderation instruments throughout all of the apps.

OkCupid already had these instruments. Lawrie was utilizing them every single day.
A kind of was the Sentinel system, which had been up and operating throughout Match Group’s apps for no less than 5 years earlier than Breeden arrived. It really works like this: When a consumer is banned for one thing severe — like sexual assault — a case is created in Sentinel with the cellphone quantity and e mail tackle related to their account. In interviews, a number of present and former workers described how these stories flow into via every of Match Group’s apps. The system is designed to ban anybody who makes use of that info. It additionally grabs the unique profile’s IP addresses, pictures, and birthdate.

Such a system appears strong at first look — however not one of the Match Group’s apps require customers to supply photograph identification (the sort wanted to purchase alcohol or board an airplane), so as soon as an individual is kicked out, they will simply begin a brand new account with completely different contact info. A fast search yields scores of on-line boards with clear steps and recommendations for the best way to rejoin the apps. As well as, inner firm paperwork present info on IP addresses, pictures, and birthdate weren’t used to ban a consumer if they seem on one other Match relationship app.

Lawrie’s crew at OkCupid knew Sentinel may solely achieve this a lot.

So his crew deployed different instruments to repair its shortcomings, together with one that might mechanically ban a profile that was linked to a cellphone quantity, photograph, or URL that had been beforehand banned — even when the consumer made an account with a unique e mail or IP tackle. This device was designed to be proactive relatively than reactive, in order that the profiles of alleged perpetrators like Matthews wouldn’t resurface after they’d been reported.

Inner firm paperwork from 2019 and 2020 present 1000’s of stories of “severe bodily assault,” abuse, or violence on OkCupid that had been deemed severe sufficient to get customers banned from all of Match Group’s apps. That is among the many info the corporate saved from the general public.

Breeden and Match Group management praised Lawrie and his crew at OkCupid, he mentioned, for his or her thorough investigative work and for dealing with among the firm’s most tough circumstances. But, he mentioned, Match Group by no means constructed out a talented, skilled investigative unit at different manufacturers just like the one he headed up at OkCupid. Beneath Breeden’s management, he mentioned, they confronted strain to hurry up investigations and prepare outsourced labor to make use of sophisticated moderation instruments.

Every week after a damning article in 2021 revealed that content material moderators with little coaching had been requested to quickly take care of violent sexual content material throughout Match Group’s manufacturers, then-CEO Dubey despatched out an all-staff e mail addressing the controversy. She CC’d Breeden, acknowledging that the model’s security groups weren’t all on equal footing.

As Match Group ready internally for the story to interrupt, Lawrie was requested to write down a report for Breeden outlining his crew’s accomplishments “to verify when Tracey describes and acknowledges what you might be doing individually to rejoice the nice work that you’re doing.”

Lawrie used that report back to protest.

“Most professionals aren’t judged on what number of circumstances they will hurry via in an hour,” he wrote. The best way Match Group expects its trust-and-safety and help groups to work “principally diminishes their abilities and makes them production-line staff.” Breeden declined to remark for this story, citing a nondisclosure settlement.

Lawrie left the corporate in 2022 and mentioned most of his small crew that was ferreting out malicious customers additionally left as a consequence of a unfavourable office atmosphere. He mentioned a lot of their work was outsourced to contractors with little coaching and extreme quotas.

He now cautions anybody utilizing a relationship app to grasp that they’re not within the enterprise of defending customers.

“You’re by yourself just about,” he mentioned.

As Lawrie was getting pushed out of Match Group, Matthews saved showing on the corporate’s apps.

One crisp fall night in 2022, one of many Denver heart specialist’s outdated medical faculty classmates was on Hinge when her cellphone display stuffed up with a well-recognized face.

Matthews was being promoted on the app as a Standout, a preferred profile that Hinge’s algorithm thinks you’ll like. To match with a Standout, customers should ship the individual a rose. They get one free rose per week, however they value $3.99 a pop after that. His classmate didn’t ship Matthews a rose.

By this level, Matthews had already been reported for rape no less than as soon as to Hinge. Courtroom paperwork present that he had already allegedly sexually assaulted 9 girls and drugged 10. Not solely did the apps permit him again on, they featured Matthews’ profile.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, folks acquired bored with forking cash over for relationship apps. Match Group nonetheless made a hefty revenue, however its progress flatlined. Its inventory cratered, shedding almost half its worth between October 2021 and April 2022. That month, an analyst from J.P. Morgan wrote that the agency had obtained extra messages about “the underperformance of MTCH shares in current weeks than every other matter.”

In Might 2022, Match ousted Dubey and put in Bernard Kim as CEO, a former govt on the gaming firm Zynga that popularized viral video games like “FarmVille.”

Whereas Dubey spoke regularly about belief and security and labored carefully with Breeden, Kim hardly talked about security when he started his time at Match Group, as a substitute emphasizing the necessity for continued fast growth to drive long-term shareholder worth.

Lawrie mentioned that Kim, together with his background in gaming relatively than relationship apps, had no real interest in love. “He simply desires to earn money. He’s simply there to extend income,” Lawrie mentioned. “If he’s taking a look at a backside line, then it’s simpler to have a lawsuit than it’s to supply security. I do know which one he’s gonna decide.” Match Group declined to make Bernard Kim obtainable for an interview. Messages despatched to Kim straight went unreturned.

Whereas the strain between progress and security exists throughout the tech sector, it’s particularly excessive at relationship apps firms the place executives have to fret about fixed churn — customers leaving the apps when they’re now not on the lookout for dates. Each time Match Group delivers on its promise, it additionally loses clients.

In February 2024, six relationship app customers filed what they hope will be certified as a class action lawsuit. They argue Match Group makes use of “addictive” options to encourage compulsive use whereas not resulting in any actual improve in off-app relationships. “The app is designed particularly to hook them, and to maintain them paying subscription charges — to not assist them discover love,” lawyer Ryan Clarkson mentioned. Match Group filed to dismiss the lawsuit in September, noting in its quarterly report that it “will defend vigorously” in opposition to the allegations.

Regardless of Kim’s efforts, Match Group’s inventory value continued to drop, and through that point, so did any point out of belief and security. In over a 12 months of quarterly investor calls, Kim solely referenced security efforts as soon as.

Workers who pushed for these initiatives had been compelled out or laid off, together with Breeden — a pacesetter who was so satisfied of her personal invincibility that she confirmed as much as an occasion wielding a Captain America defend.

Match Group fired its energy rent in October 2022. Layoffs hit her crew over the subsequent a number of months. In February 2024, the remaining essential investigators and regulation enforcement liaisons on Breeden’s central security crew had been proven the door.

Lawrie mentioned group chats of former Match Group workers have been gossipping concerning the cutbacks.

“You’re not gonna see them taking security significantly ever once more,” he mentioned, including that the one factor that he thinks would possibly change that’s laws.

4 months earlier than Matthews was arrested, a put up on a Fb group in Denver blew up, proper round Christmas.

Over and over, girls furiously detailed unfavourable experiences they or their buddies had with Matthews.

Some girls described him as “sketchy.” Others referred to as him “horrible” and “not protected.” A number of girls instructed an analogous, darkish story: that they had been supplied drinks, blacked out, and sexually assaulted.

The thread reached 150 feedback. Two girls wrote the identical factor: that they’d been ready for somebody to put up concerning the heart specialist.

The flood of Fb feedback mirrored particulars within the police stories launched the next 12 months. Almost all the 16 girls included within the district lawyer’s preliminary complaints had been supplied tequila. Eight recalled taking part in Jenga. Six talked about a scorching tub.

As these tales circulated on this small nook of the web in December 2022, the Denver heart specialist stayed on Match Group apps.

These lucky sufficient to know concerning the Fb group — and who had the foresight to test for Matthews on it — could be saved from a nasty date or worse. However the truth that he may nonetheless log into Tinder and Hinge left him with a pool of 1000’s of unsuspecting girls whom he may — and would — proceed to match with.

The Relationship Apps Reporting Mission is conscious of 4 further girls who’ve accused Matthews of drugging and/or raping them who weren’t a part of the felony criticism. Every of those girls met Matthews on a Match Group app throughout a single 12 months between the summers of 2020 and 2021.

Throughout the years Matthews was on their apps, Match Group employed and fired Breeden. It made loud guarantees on sexual violence, introduced initiatives and product strains, and promised a transparency report. Nevertheless it was not straight with the general public, which meant the ladies matching with Matthews on Match Group apps weren’t conscious of the chance they confronted.

Match Group’s partnership with Garbo, the background test firm, additionally fell aside in the summertime of 2023. “It’s turn out to be clear that the majority on-line platforms aren’t legitimately dedicated to belief and security for his or her customers,” Garbo wrote in a searing blog post.

After spending a lot vitality speaking about monetization, gamification, and progress, Kim started to publicly acknowledge this downside. Talking on the Citibank convention within the fall of 2023, he mentioned the corporate was investing in new options to verify “girls have a very good expertise whereas they’re within the product. They really feel protected. They really feel safe. And so forth.”

The “and so on.” doesn’t appear to incorporate elevated transparency about security. As an alternative, in Might 2023, Tinder launched a “female-focused bundle,” a curated checklist of “high-quality profiles.” It’s unclear how Tinder determines these high-quality matches. Hinge’s Standout function, which has similarities, had beforehand promoted Matthews.

The truth is, below Kim’s management, all mentions of a transparency report disappeared from the corporate’s annual influence report. Satirically, this was across the similar time that new laws in Europe required tech firms to disclose reports of “non-consensual habits” and different points. Match Group can be required to submit a transparency report back to the European Union on the scope of hurt on their platforms later this month. Lawmakers in India and Australia are additionally demanding transparency.

That is precisely the state of affairs Breeden and her crew contemplated three years in the past. “What if publishing in a single jurisdiction sparks a requirement in one other?” learn a slide in the identical inner presentation the place Match Group’s trust-and-safety leaders puzzled whether or not they need to “push again on how a lot [they] are required to disclose.”

After Match Group printed a disappointing earnings report in February 2025 that fell beneath analysts’ expectations, it additionally introduced that Kim would get replaced by former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. Tinder’s income, gross sales, and subscribers had all gone down.

As Match Group struggles to reverse its decline, it’s additionally conscious that its status is within the highlight. Earnings calls and shareholder letters over the primary three quarters of 2024 point out that the corporate is aware of it’s a enterprise crucial to make girls really feel safer on its platforms. Match Group introduced in a brand new vice chairman to move belief and security whose job partly focuses on complying with elevated world transparency necessities. The corporate is experimenting with requiring faces in pictures and rolled out a “Share My Date” function so that you will be tracked whereas assembly up with a web based stranger. On Tinder, it orchestrated a “main ecosystem cleanup” geared towards figuring out pretend profiles and getting scammers off the app.

However neither the cleanup nor monitoring a date out of your cellphone would have stopped Matthews — a person who by no means sought to cover his id, who assaulted his dates in his own residence — from discovering and harming girls.

4 years after Matthews’ first documented assault, he walked right into a wood-paneled courtroom in Denver and was sentenced to 158 years to life in jail. “I’ll sentence. I can’t heal,” Choose Eric Johnson instructed the room crammed with survivors and members of the family.

“Numerous girls have suffered and can proceed to endure,” mentioned Laura Wolf, an lawyer who represented the girl whose police report triggered Matthews’ arrest. “Hinge and different relationship platforms have taken no steps to make sure the protection of the product they’re promoting, matching unsuspecting girls to recognized predators with out pause or concern.”

Match Group didn’t make it straightforward for the Denver prosecutors to convict Matthews. A search warrant was issued to Hinge in July 2023. Two months later, prosecutors had been nonetheless empty-handed — with the choose within the case asking at a listening to if he wanted to begin “dragging folks in to get stuff executed.” It wasn’t till February 2024 that the Denver District Legal professional’s Workplace mentioned they lastly obtained paperwork returned by Match Group.

Matthews will seemingly by no means go away jail. Match Group executives presently face no costs. However the firm knew about Matthews, and it is aware of about 1000’s of different abusive customers. It has the information that might assist customers keep away from harmful conditions, but it surely hasn’t shared it, leaving hundreds of thousands of individuals at nighttime.

Lawmakers around the globe are beginning to ask for solutions from essentially the most highly effective power in trendy relationship. In June, Colorado handed a regulation, triggered by the Matthews case, that forces relationship app firms to inform the state lawyer basic what safety measures they are taking to protect users. Though the regulation leaves room for the opportunity of further transparency sooner or later, it doesn’t presently require the corporate to inform the state, or the general public, how many individuals are raped or assaulted after utilizing its platform. Within the U.S., we’ve simply scratched the floor. In most states, there’s little that requires Match Group to share info with you — or with Congress.

The truth is that if Stephen Matthews had been launched as we speak, he may get proper again on a relationship app. Match Group is aware of this — and now so do you.

Stephanie Wolf contributed reporting. Statistical journalist Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett led The Markup’s testing of Match Group apps.

This text was originally published on The Markup and was republished below the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.