Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of dating app users skyrocketed —alongside criticisms of how platforms handle human rights issues.
What is their role in human rights protection and how are respective issues in the context of dating apps dealt with under international law? It is precisely these questions that the present post will address. A prerequisite for the discussion on whether dating apps—or rather the entities controlling them—breach human rights obligations is of course that they have such obligations.
Against this background, the question raised above should be answered affirmatively. Of course, individuals in which multiple factors such as gender, class, race and sexual orientation intersect are at a higher risk. Unsurprisingly, this spills over into the digital realm. Regarding dating apps, such assaults can either take place on the platform itself e. A study on dating app users in Australia found that Similarly, almost half of all female app users had received unsolicited sexual images according to a U.
Figures from the UK show a sharp increase in reports of rape on such first dates, and roughly ten percent of women in the UK and Australia reported unwanted sexual experiences when meeting with acquaintances from dating apps. Clearly, dating apps have a problem with TFSV—and some seem to handle it particularly badly , both concerning prevention and reports of abuse.
I] , para. The fact that women are so disproportionately affected by TFSV points to its gendered nature which contradicts the non-discrimination principle enshrined, found in Art. Turkey , paras. To combat dating app-related TFSV, different solutions have been proposed, among them mandatory identity verification for users and checks against sex offender registries by the apps.
