Yeah, naming it “Tea” is really the cherry on top. I’d love to know more about the people behind this. It’s hard to believe that anybody would be this oblivious. I guess the same kind of people who wouldn’t secure their database.
Comment on Women Dating Safety App 'Tea' Breached, Users' IDs Posted to 4chan
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 3 weeks agoI’m all for groups of safe spaces for women. Especially when it’s designed to keep them safe while dating. I have my doubts that Tea was that. Even if it was advertised as such, “tea” is slang for the word gossip. I’ve heard stories from several sources that it was used to dox people as well. Not saying what happened to the users is right. I think some users here are just feeling smug that this might cause the app to fail or shut down.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Could you share said sources? It’s irrelevant though because justifying this doxxing SHOULD mean that the entirety of 4chan is a justifiable dox target. If you don’t believe that, then you should be against it happening against Tea users. They’re at the very least guilty of the same thing (in this case. 4chan is guilty of much more heinous things than just this).
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I 100% agree that it isn’t relevant to the doxxing. I dont think the doxxing is warranted at all from either side. Most of what I saw about the app is just from various social media users as well as the Google PlayStore reviews. Personally I find it hard to believe the app wasn’t made with the purpose to dox people just based on the name alone. The ads make it seem like a safespace for women and if that’s all it was meant to be then it for sure had a very unfortunate name.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
What does the name have to do with doxing?
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
A group of people with the intention of privately sharing details of people in order to track their behavior is definitely going to lead to doxxing. Maybe I’m getting the wrong idea, but it sounds like they are sharing the names of people they went on dates with. I assume that would include the city or town the date occurred which would infer where abouts they live. Given enough “reviews” of a single person I’m sure there would be sufficient info to call it doxxing.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
www.cnn.com/2025/07/…/tea-app-dating-privacy-cec
It’s a bit like Rate My Professor, but for dating.
Honestly I cyncially expect this kind of app might inevitably exist for rating people of all genders, but the reason this app exists has directly to do with the violence women face from intimate partners.
The point is that men who are enjoying the doxxing of women who have used this app are ignoring the context, or even have a warped sense of the context, as if this is narrowly about (legitimate) privacy concerns.
Even if the concerns about the app are justified, the revenge enjoyment betrays a much harder to defense view that all the women who used the app are equally cupable, or that doxxing women using the app is equivalent to women doxxing abusive men through the app.
Men are not all equally privileged, but there is a broad inequality both to how violence is distributed and how that plays out in dating situations. Women are not wrong to fear men. One in three women have experienced sexual or physical violence, most of that violence being perpetuated by men.
Since this is the context for the use of this app, it’s not neutral to doxx its users or to claim it’s fair because men feel (legitimate) concerns about the app’s privacy violations.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I agree 100% that women face many more dangers especially in the dating scene than men. I’m all for having resources available for them to remain as safe as possible.
I don’t see how a Rate My Professor type app would work well for dates. I feel like people would only spend the time to rate poor dates. If you had a really good date with someone, you would presumably start dating them so why would you let everyone else know they are a good person to go out with? I have no doubt there are some awful people out there that others should be warned about, but this type of app is a bit too risky to justify that in my opinion.
The background check feature sounds much more legit, but I don’t think a group chat feature needs to exist along side it.
All that being said, anyone enjoying the doxxing of others is just an asshole. There’s definitely nothing fair about it from either side.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
yeah, the app has obvious flaws, and the Rate My Professor style approach succeeds or fails depending on the quality of the users and moderators, and could easily be useless or become toxic - either way, I’m not defending this aspect of the app, it’s clearly problematic.
Regardless I understand why women would want a resource like this, and that doesn’t seem true for those in the comments who see the doxxing as deserved for using this app.
Nevermind the rest of the context, like 4chan being a bastion of right-wing, misogynist trolls who would target an app like this for political reasons. Lemmy users approving on 4chan doxxing of women is a major red flag … it might have something to do with how many Lemmy users come here for being banned for their behavior on Reddit. Reddit isn’t sending their best and brightest, and it shows.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
There is absolutely no problem checking out a perspective date for criminal records or if they’re on the sex offenders register. But they don’t need an app to do that they can just reverse image search on Google themselves.
The app added that to give legitimacy to its gossip feature. If lots of women have been on a date with the same guy and all have a story to tell that story is going to get told regardless of whether there’s an app enabling it or not.
Men not being able to even view the content on the platform and see if anybody is posting about them is an inherent problem with the fundamental design of the app.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Sure does sound pretty toxic.