Tinder Penalizes Users for Racist Swipes

Date: April 9th, 2015 2:09 PM
Author: A game of "

Swiped Minorities Left? Your Profile May Be Invisible to Tinder's "Most Attractive" Users

In the world of Tinder, casual racism is as pernicious as in the real world, and with the same consequences, say its creators.

OK, maybe refusing to swipe African American women right isn't as disgusting as expressions of hatred in generations past, but as far as the popular dating app is concerned, you ought to face the same stigma. Tinder refuses to release its complicated algorithms explaining who sees whom, but company officials did recently confirm that certain user behaviors are penalized with increasingly "lower profiles".

"It's really nothing more than fair play," says the App's co-founder Justin Mateen. "If your behavior towards people of color is so out of tune with the times, your views probably shouldn't be passed to future generations, and certainly aren't anything we welcome at Tinder."

IMAGE

Observers and tech-wizards have commented since the App's debut that more "attractive" users tend to be shown profiles of other users deemed more attractive, based upon swipe patterns and facial analysis software. Mateen also holds that this is nothing new. "Our goal is help create community," he writes. "Not everyone belongs in every community."

And while he would not confirm that the dating app's software records and stores each of your swipes, he acknowledged that if a user rejected the photographs of a certain number of users of color, pictures and profile information were stored -- potentially to be accessed by groups that monitor hate online.

Is Tinder Tinkering Too Much?

Asked whether swipe preferences are just personal and not signs of anything more ominous, Mateen again re-iterated the software company's goals of creating "twenty-first century community, absent the ugly hang-ups of a pre-internet America."

"It's not just about race or color," Mateen responded. "Newer generations of the software will also phase in matching users with other users of various gender identities, regardless of initial settings," he said. "And should users consistently swipe people left because they are male or homosexual, well there are consequences to that too."

SHARE THIS


ON A MOBILE DEVICE?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2851425&forum_id=2#27657700)