How Tinder, Hinge, and Their Corporate Owner Keep Rape Under Wraps

The Dating Apps Reporting Project is an 18-month investigation. It was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, and co-published with The Guardian and The 19th.

In just a few minutes, anyone with an internet connection can download a dating app and create a profile. In seconds, you can match with people down the block to the other side of the world. You don’t need an ID. You don’t need to use your real name. You don’t even need to be who you say you are.

Digitally facilitated date rape is not just an unlucky scenario—it is an inherent and regular danger of dating internet strangers.

Match Group—the $8.5 billion global conglomerate that owns brands like Tinder (the world’s most popular dating app), OkCupid, Hinge, and Plenty of Fish—has known for years which users have been reported for drugging, assaulting, or raping their dates since at least 2016, according to internal company documents. Since 2019, Match Group’s central database has recorded every user reported for rape and assault across its entire suite of apps. By 2022, the system, known as Sentinel, was collecting hundreds of troubling incidents every week, company insiders say.