No online dating for you!
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/siege-dating-app-bans/
Tinder, Bumble and other dating apps are using images captured from inside the Capitol siege and other evidence to identify and ban rioters’ accounts, causing immediate consequences for those who participated as police move toward making hundreds of arrests.
Women and men have in some cases also turned the dating apps into hunting grounds, striking up conversations with rioters, gathering potentially incriminating photos or confessions, then relaying them to the FBI. Using the dating apps to pursue members of the mob has become a viral pursuit, with tips shared on Twitter and some women changing their location on the dating apps to Washington, D.C., in hopes of ensnaring a potential suspect.
These are the platforms that have banned Trump and his allies
The moves cast a spotlight on how some unlikely sources have helped expand a digital dragnet for participants in a siege with deeply online roots, fueled by viral conspiracy theories, organized on social media and live-streamed in real-time.
They also show how people are attempting to use the same tools to fight back, including by contributing to a wide-scale manhunt for dating-app users who played a part in the violent attack.
Some Trump allies have speculated that antifa was responsible for inciting violence and storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. No evidence supports this claim. (The Washington Post)
Amanda Spataro, a 25-year-old logistics coordinator in Tampa, called it her “civic duty” to swipe through dating apps for men who’d posted incriminating pictures of themselves. On Bumble, she found one man with a picture that seemed likely to have come from the insurrection; his response to a prompt about his “perfect first date” was: “Storming the Capitol.”“Most people, you think if you’re going to commit a crime, you’re not going to brag about it,” Spataro said in an interview.
After swiping right in hopes she could get more information out of him, she said he responded that he did visit the Capitol and sent more pictures as proof. She later contacted the FBI tip line.
Some onlookers have celebrated the viral hunt as a creative form of digital comeuppance. But some privacy advocates said the episode reveals a worrying truth about pervasive public surveillance and the opaque connections between private companies and law enforcement. Some also worry about people being misidentified by amateur investigators and other risks that can arise when vigilantes try to take crime-fighting into their own hands.
“These people deserve the right to seek a partner in one of the few ways we have to socialize during the pandemic, and seek love,” said Liz O’Sullivan, technology director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York-based nonprofit group fighting discriminatory surveillance.
“It’s one more example of how these tech companies can impact our lives without our feedback,” she added. “What if this was happening to Black Lives Matters protesters? … At the end of the day, it’s just so much power.”
On dating apps like Bumble, women are trying to identify pro-Trump rioters in D.C.
Both Bumble and Match Group — which owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, PlentyofFish and Match — said they were working to remove users known to be involved in the Capitol siege from their platforms.
“We always encourage our community to block and report anyone who is acting against our guidelines, and we have already banned users who have used our platform to spread insurrectionist content or who have attempted to organize and incite terrorism,” Bumble said in a statement. “As always, if someone has or is in the process of committing a potentially criminal act on our platform, we will take the appropriate steps with law enforcement.”
A Bumble official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because company officials have received violent threats following past policy changes, said app employees have reviewed images taken inside and around the Capitol during the siege and banned accounts that “spread insurrectionist content or who have attempted to organize and incite terrorism.”
Bumble uses software to scan users’ dating profiles and biographies for “text content that promotes the insurrection or related activities,” the official said. Accounts can be banned for promoting racism, encouraging violence or spreading falsehoods about Trump’s election loss.
Dating apps have also worked to ban anyone who has been arrested or publicly identified by law enforcement as having taken part in the attack.
Match Group said it has banned rioters’ accounts based on long-established rules against promoting or inciting violence. Match spokeswoman Vidhya Murugesan declined to say how many had been punished in this way.
“We have, and will continue, to ban any users wanted by the FBI in connection with domestic terrorism from all of our brands, and we always cooperate with law enforcement in their investigations,” Murugesan said.
Many women in Washington over the past two weeks had taken notice of a surge in conservative men on dating apps, many wearing Make America Great Again hats or other markers of support for President Trump rarely seen in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
The FBI has set up an anonymous tip line for reports on people who might have breached the Capitol. In a statement last week, the bureau said they’d received more than 100,000 “digital media tips” from a wide range of sources.
Federal investigators have used airline passenger manifests, video live streams, social media posts, news reports, cellphone location data and other evidence to support their charges and find suspects.
Law enforcement officials would not say how many tips came from dating apps but have said they are reviewing all evidence. More than 100 people have been charged in connection with the riots, and hundreds of other cases remain under investigation.
“Even your friends and family are tipping us off,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono said at a recent media briefing. “So you might want to consider turning yourself in instead of wondering when we’re going to come knocking on your door. Because we will.”
The overlapping issues of law enforcement, privacy and user safety are complicated for dating apps. Police or prosecutors seeking data — especially if they have search warrants — give companies little room to object unless they are already encrypting data in ways that can’t be readily retrieved, as Apple and some other companies have done with some kinds of user communications.
Using publicly available data to purge users who may have been involved in a crime — especially one as visible and troubling as the Capitol attack — requires tougher trade-offs.
Some would argue it’s unfair to delete the account of someone merely on the grounds of the Capitol that day, as opposed to someone known to have entered the building or committed other crimes, such as vandalism and theft. But a dating app’s users may reasonably expect not to be connected with somebody known to participate in an illegal insurrection designed to disrupt a democratic process.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/siege-dating-app-bans/
Tinder, Bumble and other dating apps are using images captured from inside the Capitol siege and other evidence to identify and ban rioters’ accounts, causing immediate consequences for those who participated as police move toward making hundreds of arrests.
Women and men have in some cases also turned the dating apps into hunting grounds, striking up conversations with rioters, gathering potentially incriminating photos or confessions, then relaying them to the FBI. Using the dating apps to pursue members of the mob has become a viral pursuit, with tips shared on Twitter and some women changing their location on the dating apps to Washington, D.C., in hopes of ensnaring a potential suspect.
These are the platforms that have banned Trump and his allies
The moves cast a spotlight on how some unlikely sources have helped expand a digital dragnet for participants in a siege with deeply online roots, fueled by viral conspiracy theories, organized on social media and live-streamed in real-time.
They also show how people are attempting to use the same tools to fight back, including by contributing to a wide-scale manhunt for dating-app users who played a part in the violent attack.
Some Trump allies have speculated that antifa was responsible for inciting violence and storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. No evidence supports this claim. (The Washington Post)
Amanda Spataro, a 25-year-old logistics coordinator in Tampa, called it her “civic duty” to swipe through dating apps for men who’d posted incriminating pictures of themselves. On Bumble, she found one man with a picture that seemed likely to have come from the insurrection; his response to a prompt about his “perfect first date” was: “Storming the Capitol.”“Most people, you think if you’re going to commit a crime, you’re not going to brag about it,” Spataro said in an interview.
After swiping right in hopes she could get more information out of him, she said he responded that he did visit the Capitol and sent more pictures as proof. She later contacted the FBI tip line.
Some onlookers have celebrated the viral hunt as a creative form of digital comeuppance. But some privacy advocates said the episode reveals a worrying truth about pervasive public surveillance and the opaque connections between private companies and law enforcement. Some also worry about people being misidentified by amateur investigators and other risks that can arise when vigilantes try to take crime-fighting into their own hands.
“These people deserve the right to seek a partner in one of the few ways we have to socialize during the pandemic, and seek love,” said Liz O’Sullivan, technology director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York-based nonprofit group fighting discriminatory surveillance.
“It’s one more example of how these tech companies can impact our lives without our feedback,” she added. “What if this was happening to Black Lives Matters protesters? … At the end of the day, it’s just so much power.”
On dating apps like Bumble, women are trying to identify pro-Trump rioters in D.C.
Both Bumble and Match Group — which owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, PlentyofFish and Match — said they were working to remove users known to be involved in the Capitol siege from their platforms.
“We always encourage our community to block and report anyone who is acting against our guidelines, and we have already banned users who have used our platform to spread insurrectionist content or who have attempted to organize and incite terrorism,” Bumble said in a statement. “As always, if someone has or is in the process of committing a potentially criminal act on our platform, we will take the appropriate steps with law enforcement.”
A Bumble official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because company officials have received violent threats following past policy changes, said app employees have reviewed images taken inside and around the Capitol during the siege and banned accounts that “spread insurrectionist content or who have attempted to organize and incite terrorism.”
Bumble uses software to scan users’ dating profiles and biographies for “text content that promotes the insurrection or related activities,” the official said. Accounts can be banned for promoting racism, encouraging violence or spreading falsehoods about Trump’s election loss.
Dating apps have also worked to ban anyone who has been arrested or publicly identified by law enforcement as having taken part in the attack.
Match Group said it has banned rioters’ accounts based on long-established rules against promoting or inciting violence. Match spokeswoman Vidhya Murugesan declined to say how many had been punished in this way.
“We have, and will continue, to ban any users wanted by the FBI in connection with domestic terrorism from all of our brands, and we always cooperate with law enforcement in their investigations,” Murugesan said.
Many women in Washington over the past two weeks had taken notice of a surge in conservative men on dating apps, many wearing Make America Great Again hats or other markers of support for President Trump rarely seen in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
The FBI has set up an anonymous tip line for reports on people who might have breached the Capitol. In a statement last week, the bureau said they’d received more than 100,000 “digital media tips” from a wide range of sources.
Federal investigators have used airline passenger manifests, video live streams, social media posts, news reports, cellphone location data and other evidence to support their charges and find suspects.
Law enforcement officials would not say how many tips came from dating apps but have said they are reviewing all evidence. More than 100 people have been charged in connection with the riots, and hundreds of other cases remain under investigation.
“Even your friends and family are tipping us off,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono said at a recent media briefing. “So you might want to consider turning yourself in instead of wondering when we’re going to come knocking on your door. Because we will.”
The overlapping issues of law enforcement, privacy and user safety are complicated for dating apps. Police or prosecutors seeking data — especially if they have search warrants — give companies little room to object unless they are already encrypting data in ways that can’t be readily retrieved, as Apple and some other companies have done with some kinds of user communications.
Using publicly available data to purge users who may have been involved in a crime — especially one as visible and troubling as the Capitol attack — requires tougher trade-offs.
Some would argue it’s unfair to delete the account of someone merely on the grounds of the Capitol that day, as opposed to someone known to have entered the building or committed other crimes, such as vandalism and theft. But a dating app’s users may reasonably expect not to be connected with somebody known to participate in an illegal insurrection designed to disrupt a democratic process.
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The bloodlust against the Capitol raiders, from those who accepted the 2020 riots and neighborhood takeovers as the cost of doing their political business, has been disappointing to watch.
@horace said in No online dating for you!:
The bloodlust against the Capitol raiders, from those who accepted the 2020 riots and neighborhood takeovers as the cost of doing their political business, has been disappointing to watch.
I’m cool with giving an absolute lesson to those that went inside. Never again has to be understood.
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
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@mik said in No online dating for you!:
We are doomed to an Orwellian society, but it won't be Big Brother. It will be us.
Yes. Already it's impossible to express an opinion -- any opinion, on any topic -- without calling down 10,000 objections on your head.
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@horace said in No online dating for you!:
The bloodlust against the Capitol raiders, from those who accepted the 2020 riots and neighborhood takeovers as the cost of doing their political business, has been disappointing to watch.
I’m cool with giving an absolute lesson to those that went inside. Never again has to be understood.
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
@loki said in No online dating for you!:
@horace said in No online dating for you!:
The bloodlust against the Capitol raiders, from those who accepted the 2020 riots and neighborhood takeovers as the cost of doing their political business, has been disappointing to watch.
I’m cool with giving an absolute lesson to those that went inside. Never again has to be understood.
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
I agree they need to be dealt with harshly. You may be more optimistic than I am that this will establish a new precedent of lower tolerance for mob violence and destruction. I think the double standard regarding political affiliation of the mob will be going strong into the future.
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@horace said in No online dating for you!:
The bloodlust against the Capitol raiders, from those who accepted the 2020 riots and neighborhood takeovers as the cost of doing their political business, has been disappointing to watch.
I’m cool with giving an absolute lesson to those that went inside. Never again has to be understood.
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
@loki said in No online dating for you!:
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
THis.
While it's true (and inexcusable) that there are many who excused the violence last summer, those who see an equivalence between the two situations need to use a higher resolution lens.
Sam Harris' recent podcast took aim at both the left and right's favorite (mis)interpretation of Jan 6th. The right's claims of equivalence to last summer, and the left's 'Capitol Police reaction as white privilege' narrative. Give it a listen.
“Don’t make me repeat myself”
- history
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You know what would be good? If we had trained professionals tasked with enforcing our laws. Since we don’t, we just have to trust in these concerned citizens to use their best judgement.
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@loki said in No online dating for you!:
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
THis.
While it's true (and inexcusable) that there are many who excused the violence last summer, those who see an equivalence between the two situations need to use a higher resolution lens.
Sam Harris' recent podcast took aim at both the left and right's favorite (mis)interpretation of Jan 6th. The right's claims of equivalence to last summer, and the left's 'Capitol Police reaction as white privilege' narrative. Give it a listen.
@jon-nyc said in No online dating for you!:
@loki said in No online dating for you!:
Go forward anybody who vandalizes property or destroys businesses should receive a massive consequence as well, although less than the assault on democracy.
THis.
While it's true (and inexcusable) that there are many who excused the violence last summer, those who see an equivalence between the two situations need to use a higher resolution lens.
Sam Harris' recent podcast took aim at both the left and right's favorite (mis)interpretation of Jan 6th. The right's claims of equivalence to last summer, and the left's 'Capitol Police reaction as white privilege' narrative. Give it a listen.
Yes, he claimed that it is "idiotic" to draw any equivalence between armed takeovers of entire neighborhoods about which the police were cowed into doing nothing, and in support of which local politicians came forward, and the Capitol raid. I agree there is a qualitative difference, I strongly disagree that there is an obvious quantitative difference in terms of a "threat to our society". And I cannot help but notice the correlation between those with an historical axe to grind against Trump, and the strength of their claims that this Capitol raid - as ephemeral and ridiculous as it was - was next level in terms of importance and severity.
