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Women’s ‘red flag’ app Tea is a privacy nightmare
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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You sign up and then a while later, your personal information gets leaked to the public. Not sure what its other purpose is.
That's corporate social media/apps in general. Does this thing basically let people list crappy things that happened to them by specific humans?
It's basically a slander app, from what I can tell.
it seems its an app that helps women flag potential dating candidates as being dangerous or red flags.
there is the potential for doxxing that comes with that, but I can absolutely understand its use and need when not abused in that manner.
i wonder if there's the potential for a different app with more encryption and a way to prevent doxxing and abuse.
There's definitely a use case, but there's an inherent power imbalance to these products that makes sure they will always be misused. The submitters are anonymous, and it's up to the person being reported on to prove the accusations are false.
Or, they're supposed to be anonymous.
The person doesn't even know they're mentioned in the app.
Which is even worse, because unless someone tells them, they're blissfully unaware.
With most forms of Libel, at least the victim will see it in a timely manner.
How do you warn people about a potential dating candidate being dangerous without doxxing the potential dating candidate? "Hey, watch out for [anonymous person]" doesn't sound very useful.
...you know? that's a fair point. I'm not sure how it would work. but it would be nice to know some stuff if its important.
Encryption, sure.
Preventing doxxing? I highly doubt it. But hey, it's women doing it so it's ok and anyone who criticizes that is an incel.
wha? i didn't say anything about incels. or that doxxing is ok.
You would have to have everyone take a polygraph or something (not that they actually work but a lot of people don't know that so maybe it would prevent them from lying in the first place). There's no way to prevent people from lying for whatever reason they have and there's no way to detect whether or not the thing they have posted is truthful.
The truth is as much benefit as the app may have when used properly the risk of abuse is far too high for it to ever be workable.
If you have a smoke alarm in your house that occasionally explodes and sets your house on fire, but the rest of the time actually works as a fire alarm, then it's not a useful product, as even if the chance of it exploding was less than 1% it would still eventually blow up your house, whereas if you never installed the alarm there was every possibility your house will never catch fire. So game theory suggests that you are better off without it.
Same with this app, sure it might prevent you experiencing a bad date but there's every possibility that it will also cause you not to date somebody who's actually a nice person. You are far better off just making that judgement yourself as you always did. And to be clear given human nature, the likelihood of the "fire alarm exploding" is probably a lot higher than 1%
it also lists criminal history that might not be disclosed on a dating profile. and other information that might be a red flag.
Regardless of the actual truth of that information.
indeed. there's the potential for abuse and doxxing. but I think the app could be done in a safe way. and with much less leakery.
How would you implement the app in its current concept, without the possibility for abuse? It seems inherent to the very idea of it.
Meowmeowbeans social pressure where people will refuse to meet or associate with people who have not been vetted and verified by meowmeowbeans members. So people who want to meet meowmeowbeans users would have to join to get screened otherwise they can get lost.
Solves the issue of people who never signed up to the social media site having strangers uploading personal photos, videos, names, and stories to a profile page they never consented to. Which is reminiscent of doxing in its current state.
So meowmeowbeans certification among consenting members would be the better route to go and socially making those not in meowmeowbeans outcasts. At least there is choice now for people to not be part of the community driven database of people.
off the top of my head, I don't know. i just feel the concept is intriguing and that the idea is a nice one.
just the abuse potential is far too high I suppose. but it would be nice to know if someone had stalked someone else, may have spoken or behaved in a violent manner, etc.
but I suppose at that point you might as well fingerprint and process any potential suitors lol. 😅
the sentiment is great, however.
Yeah, it's one of those things that would be nice if it weren't for all those pesky malicious parties
I am going to say with even the downsides I think the idea is worth it.
My friend sucks to her creeps and maybe she could have saved herself from at least two abused cases.
Maybe like light system based around how often and how a users submits. This person submits a lot of negative responses red light. This person submits rarely green light?
The problem is also how much data do we really want to keep? How little can we keep?
So, like the Chinese national merit system? That's super fair and nothing ever goes wrong.
the what? i am not familiar with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
Having no experience with the app whatsoever, I can only guess, and I’d guess that it does as you suggest, though there may be varying levels of specificity involved.