Bumble’s sexual assault counselling looks like a bleak admission of inevitability

As the dating app unveils a partnership designed to support people who have been assaulted by those they met through its services, Olivia Petter questions what such a move really says about women's safety in the digital age of dating

(Shutterstock / Boumen Japet)

It sounded like a good idea. At least, that’s what I thought when I heard that Bumble was going to start offering free therapy to people who were sexually assaulted by people they met on the app. Anyone who has sought mental health support through the NHS can attest to the horrendous waitlists (usually 12 months or more for rape victims), and anyone who has paid for it privately can attest to the horrendous price tags (up to £180 an hour in some cities).

The latest data shows that 618,000 women were sexually assaulted in the year to March 2020, while more than 25 per cent of perpetrators reportedly regularly use online dating sites and apps to find victims. With all this in mind, Bumble’s initiative seems like a suitable solution. Except it’s not that simple – sexual violence never is.

Let’s start with the kind of therapy that Bumble is offering. The company has partnered with a global web-based service called Bloom, which is run by Chayn, a survivor-led nonprofit that creates resources to support the healing of survivors of gender-based violence. The service provides support through a series of online courses designed by survivors and “trauma-informed therapists” that take the form of daily messages, twice-weekly video recordings with “grounding exercises”, and activities for participants to do in their own time. There is also a live chat service available on WhatsApp, where people can message a Chayn team member, most of whom are survivors, and expect a response in less than 24 hours. However, that is the only form of live interaction that users are offered.

As for the Bumble partnership, users who report an act of sexual violence with someone they met on the app will be given a code to access up to six free live video sessions with a therapist on a customised version of Bloom, in addition to access to the live chat service. The customised service is set to launch later this year with plans to eventually extend it to Bumble’s sister app, Badoo.

But the thing that bothers me about Bumble’s initiative is not the type of therapy it’s offering. It’s that it deals with the consequences of the problem as opposed to preventing it from happening in the first place. Both are obviously important, but by focusing on the former as opposed to the latter, I can’t help but feel there’s an implication of inevitability, the message being: “You probably will get assaulted by someone you meet on our app, so this is how we can help when you do.”

I’m being cynical, of course. But as a sexual assault survivor myself, with several close friends who have been raped by people they met on dating apps, I’d rather see Bumble strengthen its measures to prevent its users from being assaulted at all. It has a fair few already. Like the ability to block and report anyone making you feel uncomfortable without alerting them; an anti-catfish photo verification tool; and a Private Detector feature that uses A.I. to automatically blur lewd images.

This goes above and beyond what other dating apps are doing (both Hinge and Tinder verify identity via phone numbers and Facebook accounts as opposed to photographs). But by dint of launching its Bloom partnership, Bumble appears to be acknowledging that its own measures aren’t enough to protect its users from sexual violence. Of course, they aren’t, and a smartphone app can only do so much to protect its users from sexual predators. But the app’s messaging makes the partnership feel more like a marketing ploy than a genuinely helpful form of support, one that taps into the increasing awareness around sexual violence through virtue signalling.

It’s no secret that dating apps lend themselves to menacing behaviour. All you have to do is speak to a friend who’s on them to find out just how callous people can be to those they’ve met online. When real-life ties are severed - you’re more likely to have no mutual friends with someone you meet on an app than someone you meet offline - your actions can seem inconsequential. Perhaps that’s why it’s not exactly surprising that a 2017 study from the Pew Research Center found that 36 per cent of online daters found their interactions “either extremely or very upsetting”. Elsewhere, data from 2019 found that reported crimes related to online dating had risen by 382 per cent in recent years.

This makes matters murkier when it comes to sexual assault and harassment, which can, in some cases, thrive undetected in online settings. Despite the fact that the majority of dating apps do have measures in place to protect users, the 2020 Pew Research Center study found that many women were experiencing some form of harassment on them, with 57 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 saying they’d received unsolicited sexually explicit messages or images, while 60 per cent said someone continued to contact them after they said they were not interested.

Safety measures or not, it’s clear that this is a problem that isn’t going away anytime soon. But why is Bumble investing in projects to cope with the fallout of a problem they could arguably work harder to prevent? The Bloom partnership will likely take up a lot of time, money and resources, particularly given that they’re offering live sessions for every person who reports an offence.

Well-intentioned or not, this sends the wrong message to women, one that’s likely only going to make them feel less safe using the app than before, because now Bumble has openly acknowledged that sexual assault is rife enough among its users that a system has been put in place to help those who fall victim to it.

How about enforcing more stringent measures on those who sign up to the app instead? Photo identification is brilliant, and will prevent repeat offenders, but how are these users being vetted? And what’s to stop them from simply downloading another app and finding a victim there? In a world where there really does seem to be an app for everything, is it a completely ridiculous idea to have a centralised database for those who have been accused of sexual assault by dating app users?

I’d like to think that it isn’t - and hopefully dating app companies might one day think the same.