How does Tinder develop the features that keep you safe?

Who decides what it takes to stay safe online, and how do they know which features benefit us?

At Tinder, an integral part of the dating app’s safety features is Rory Kozoll, Senior Vice President of Product Integrity at Tinder. Kozoll leads a team that develops in-app tools and resources aimed at keeping user interactions respectful and secure.

Tinder has launched a number of new safety updates and features. Most notably, the long press reporting feature allows you to tap and hold a chat message to directly initiate the reporting process. This means you can now easily report harassment, hate speech, or other offensive text that violates the app’s Community Guidelines.(opens in new tab).

According to a recent survey conducted by Opinium on behalf of Tinder, 72% of 18-25 year olds are just as concerned about emotional safety as they are physically. The study, which broadly explored online interactions, found that 40% of 18-25 year olds have witnessed hate speech online and 30% said they regretted sending a harmful message online. I understand that you are acknowledging In addition to this, Tinder is expanding on the existing “Does This Bother You?” and “Are you sure?” features to broaden the categories of hate speech, harassment, and sexual exploitation.

For women and marginalized genders, sexual harassment, non-consensual and message reception may occur.

How does Tinder know which safety features users need?

Kozoll spoke to Mashable about how Tinder’s safety tools are developed and the four main sources of information that go into that process.

“Our members tell us that something is bothering them.” We work with many external partners to inform, both in the gender safety field, the LGBTQIA field, and other underrepresented groups.”

A fourth source is “a little more art than science,” says Kozoll, referring to “product intuition.” Tinder employees use the app to report and discuss their experiences to report what they think needs to be changed on the platform.

Tinder’s “Does This Bother You?” feature was born from a real-life experience.

In the case of Tinder’s “Does This Bother You?” The tool uses machine learning to flag potentially offensive messages and prompts message recipients to see automated messages when harmful words enter the conversation. This prompt allows users to report bad behavior immediately, if desired.

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Prior to the release of this feature, Kozol and his team were examining offensive message categories. When it comes to what Kozoll describes as “more positive talk” (reading sexually explicit messages), a key factor to consider is consent.

“People open the doors for more positive stories. We don’t want to force it,” he says.

Kozoll and his team say they are constantly observing real-world examples of problems people might encounter with their apps.

“I was out to dinner with my wife and we were walking to a restaurant in Santa Monica. This car was driving with these young men and one of them leaned out the window and yelled at me.” I could see a young woman, alone, walking behind us. “They kept driving, but I instinctively turned around and said, ‘Are you okay? Do you want to walk with us? It turned out that he was walking with his hands.” At that moment, Kozor’s wife said to him:

“That was the seed. Just because you don’t know if these messages are a problem for this person, it doesn’t hurt to just ask if they’re okay. And it’s like, ‘Does this bother you? I came from,” he added.

What is the actual role Tinder wants to play here?

Of the challenges the Tinder team faces when considering safety needs, Kozol said: to have ”

“We think of ourselves as party hosts and we have invited all these guests. We hope people will hit it off and meet exciting and new people. We want people to talk We’re not there to teach you, but when someone looks across the room and says something like, “I don’t feel very comfortable here,” we You must intervene and help resolve the situation. Leaving the party, that’s the role we’re trying to play,” he says.

So why did Tinder open up about hate speech? Kozoll says it has something to do with the way language evolves in society.

“Languages ​​are always evolving, emojis are always evolving. People are getting more and more creative and not trying to get around what we are doing. So we have to adapt really quickly until then,” he says.

“We will continue to update these models as we learn more,” adds Kozoll. “This is a never-ending stream of work, evolving these machine learning models and keyword lists to better identify the contexts in which these words appear and new words appearing in the dictionary. increase.”

Read more about how to stay safe in the world of online dating: