Tinder and other applications owned by Match Group will have their users perform background checks on possible dates. The company has announced an investment in Garbo, a non-profit organization that enables people to do background checks with only their first name and phone number or full name. The investment, the amount of which Match did not disclose, will help make the group’s technology available to users of Match, starting with the company’s most popular app: Tinder.
This means Tinder users can vet their dates with details like their arrest or history of violence. This can dramatically affect who finds success in the app and who does not. Garbo says he collects “public reports and reports of violence or abuse, including arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment and other violent crimes”, and on his website it is accepted that he “police report (s), order (s) of protection / detention orders and other legal documents reporting abuse, harassment or other crimes. “(However, the manual function is currently unavailable.)
In a blog post published last month, Garbo said he would not publish the charges of drug possession to take an ‘active attitude towards equity’. It cites research on the excessive percentage of black people arrested for drug complaints compared to white people. The company also says that drug-related offenses do not meaningfully predict ‘gender-based violence’, and that is what the brand is mainly trying to prevent. Garbo also does not disclose traffic violations.
The background checks on Tinder will not be free, but Match is working with Garbo to find out how it can be priced so that it is accessible to most users. It is unclear whether this is an à la carte feature or linked to the subscriber levels of the brand. The team will begin testing and expanding the capabilities for Garbo on Tinder in the coming months. Once Garbo is integrated into Tinder, other US brands from the Match Group, which includes OkCupid, Hinge and Match, could follow.
Garbo’s tool is not yet available, so we can not test its accuracy, but it may increase the anonymous people on an appointment app, especially on Tinder, which provides personal details such as a surname and full bio on profiles continuously emphasized. Match will not share users’ data with Garbo, but users can do a background check as long as they get the name or phone number of their date, which they will likely want to share anyway if they plan to continue dating.