Starting this week, Tinder users will be able to conduct criminal background checks on their potential dates. Launched in partnership with Garbo, a background check provider that aims to make public safety information more accessible, the feature is designed to make Tinder users feel more secure.
But experts who specialize in sexual violence and surveillance say the move is misguided and could reinforce biases inherent in the criminal justice system.
According to Albert Fox Kahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, background checks are crude tools that obscure some fundamental nuances, including the fact that most people accused of sexual assault do not interact with the criminal justice system. According to the sexual assault organization Rainn, only 310 out of 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to the police.
“[The tool] suggests that participation in criminal proceedings is an important risk factor in finding those who will pose a danger in the future, but the vast majority of offenders do not have a criminal record,” Kan said.
Moreover, this feature may reinforce discrimination against blacks and browns who have been disproportionately targeted by the police. “Tinder fails to understand that all U.S. criminal history data is irreparably skewed by discrimination, giving a deeply biased view of who is ‘at risk’ and who is ‘safe’.
Garbo’s background check tool allows Tinder users to search if someone has a criminal record using their name, phone number and age. “We know that the biggest indicator of future mistreatment or violence is the history of such behavior. Whether it’s online dating or the dozens of other ways we meet strangers in today’s digital age, we need to be aware of whether we’re potentially putting our security at risk,” Garbo founder Katherine Cosmides said in a statement announcing the tool.
But using past violent criminal charges to predict future acts of violence is tricky, says Nicole Bedera, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan who studies gender and sexual violence with a focus on college sexual assault.
For example, victims of domestic violence who engage in self-defence are often penalized in the criminal justice system for these acts, she said. “In some cases, yes, people who have committed an act of violence and found guilty of it in a criminal court will continue to commit acts of violence in the future. But you also have people in that category who don’t belong there.”
[This could] make people have a false sense of security when they really aren’t.
Nicole Bedera, University of Michigan
It’s this complexity, she says, that makes a tool like background checks ineffective and useless in weeding out unsafe matches.
Hipera is concerned that the harm from this tool could outweigh any benefit, especially if it gives Tinder users a false sense of security. The low reporting and conviction rate for sexual assault means that even those who have committed violent crimes in the past may not be flagged by background checks because they were never reported.
“We’re really talking about a small handful of people who have ever been convicted of one of these crimes,” Bedera said, which means it can “give people a false sense of security when they’re actually not.”
Tinder did not respond to a request for comment at time of publication, but said in its announcement that the company is also partnering with the National Domestic Violence Hotline “to provide survivors with 24/7 access to resources and information, including a direct chat connection on Garbo.”
Bedera believes Tinder’s resources would be better spent on activities they see on their platform, such as taking down someone who engages in harassment. She also suggested that Tinder invest in sex education.
“I would love to see Tinder work on a solution that we know is actually effective in preventing sexual assault,” Bedera said, “that supports comprehensive sex education in public schools.”
There are many issues with privacy and surveillance, Kahn said, including making information that may be incorrect or biased available to a wide audience with little means of correcting an error. “The normalization of this kind of surveillance of data brokers also creates a whole host of red flags,” he said, pointing out the misconception that past crimes are the ultimate predictor of future crimes. “Every time Silicon Valley sells us a crystal ball for surveillance, they claim to predict who will be a threat in the future, but (at best) it may just increase the harm of how people have been profiled in the past.”