Dating Apps Are Cracking Down on Romance Scammers

glamour.com:

Tinder changed the way we date by mainstreaming the swipe: Swipe left to reject, swipe right to see if there’s a spark. Now, in the age of pernicious romance scams, Tinder is going hard on another feature: the block.Tinder, which is owned by Match Group, said recently it was introducing a feature that lets users block someone’s profile as soon as it’s suggested by the app.

Previously Tinder members could only block someone after there was a match and one party subsequently filed a report. Now, blocking can happen right away.

Tinder says this is an “easy way to avoid seeing a boss or an ex” on the app; it’s also a mechanism for blocking malicious accounts before there’s even a chance of swiping right.

Another new feature in Tinder, Long Press Reporting, speeds up the process for filing complaints. App users can just press on an offensive or shady message and report bad behavior from there.Tinder’s head of trust and safety product development, Rory Kozoll, says that the new features are part of an initiative to keep Tinder users generally safe and to make the experience “more comfortable for people.”But Kozoll also acknowledges that of the various issues Tinder faces as a platform, dating app spam and scams are the largest problems. “When we measure things that happen on our platform, one way is by volume and one is by impact, and we really focus on impact,” Kozoll says.