Technology

The app enables the photos to be run through a reverse image search, enabling them to run a basic background check, check against public sex offender databases, and check for photos that might get flagged as being used in “catfishing” — misrepresenting one’s identity online.

The app also features a “Tea Party Group Chat,” which allows users to directly share information about men, and has a rating function, which allows users to share their experiences with Yelp-style reviews, awarding men a “green flag” or a “red flag.”

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/us/tea-app-dating-privacy-cec

It's a bit like Rate My Professor, but for dating.

Honestly I cyncially expect this kind of app might inevitably exist for rating people of all genders (or that dating apps might incorporate this Uber-style rating system), but the reason this app exists has directly to do with the violence women face from intimate partners.

The point is that men who are enjoying the doxxing of women who have used this app are ignoring the context, or even have a warped sense of the context, as if this is narrowly about (legitimate) privacy concerns and the harms caused by the app.

Even if the concerns about the app are justified, the revenge enjoyment betrays a view much harder to defend, that all the women who used the app are equally cupable, or that doxxing women using the app is equivalent to women doxxing abusive men through the app.

Men are not all equally privileged, but there is a broad inequality both to how violence is distributed and how that plays out in dating situations. Women are not wrong to fear men. One in three women have experienced sexual or physical violence, most of that violence being perpetuated by men.

Since this is the context for the use of this app, it's not neutral to doxx its users or to claim it's fair because men feel (legitimate) concerns about the app's privacy violations.