Spreading gossip on anyone is extremely evil. It's even more evil when there is a dearth of evidence-seeking objectivity as is commonly the case in society.

Doxxing someone's personal details is independently evil.

Defamation is simply illegal.

There have existed background search services, video chat, location sharing, ID exchange, test results exchange, etc. which do the job without gossip.

> Upon opening Tea, users are presented with local men whose photos have been uploaded, along with their first names. For each of the men, other women on the app can report whether they deem him a “red flag” or a “green flag” and leave comments about him, such as those recounting negative date experiences or vouching for him as a friend.

The potential problems with this seems obvious…

People on the internet love to judge, gossip and people who know nothing are happy to pile on and spread rumors.

Just the ability to post photos reminds me of the old creepy “fashion” subreddits that clearly were not about fashion…

Should be obvious that purposefully publicizing some derivative of reputation is going to be used for more harm than good.

New Federal laws mean that individuals can get certain pictures removed. AI likenesses might circumvent those, but you have to wonder how far to trust (positive or negative) anonymous ratings from someone who put the work into crafting an avatar of some guy.

While there’s a noble pursuit behind it, we’ll never see the trouble that it prevented. Instead we’ll see scams where a guy will provide doctored screenshots from Tea that cannot be independently verified. Of course, he’ll be new in town, or need some money.

They leaked all their users identify verification photos this morning, turns out they were storing them in an open firebase bucket.

It would be in Apple and Google’s best interest to pull these apps immediately. Multiple Supreme Court justices have indicated an interest in narrowing the breadth of section 230 immunity. This app, structured entirely around effecting the reputation of private individuals, provides a relatively clean case to do so. It’s not a stretch that the app could be considered a ‘developer in part’ of the content it hosts, and thus lose section 230 protection.

A narrowing of section 230 would not be good for Apple or Google, though they wouldn’t face any liability for the Tea apps conduct.

Related ongoing thread; others?

Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684373 - July 2025 (67 comments)

They do that openly on TikTok. The love of your life needs an extra for fake soapopera drama..

There were Facebook groups like these in Sweden. Men were given labels such as "fuckboys", "charming appearance, disappointing performance in bed", and "sexually attracted to children"... Whoever think things like these work better because it's women talking shit about men, rather than the contrary, is delusional.