- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and code reviewed by 404 Media.
The replies in this thread are disturbing, giving me a sense that Lemmy has a misogyny problem; maybe I was naïve, but I expected outrage about 4chan doxxing women trying to protect one another, instead I see lots of revenge enjoyment as if being doxxed on 4chan is justice for … <checks notes> warning one another about dangerous men they encounter when dating?
The inability to empathize and take seriously the threats posed to women or to understand their motivation to protect one another is alarming.
There is no good faith extended, but also no evidence presented that instead of safety the app was just for gossip, it’s just taken as assumed that women are wrong for using Tea and they all deserve to be doxxed.
Your comment was on top for me in my app, so I was like “oh how bad could it be.”. Holy shit you’re not wrong, there’s some disgusting comments that are getting voted up.
I’m low-key disappointed and appalled by these community members who believe these women “deserve” it for … Trying to help each other be safer?
saw this happening here, saw it happening in reddit threads on the topic, saw it all over the media cycle in the comments.
i agree, people’s visceral backlash against this app is steeped in a deep misogyny. most of these comments have a vapid absence of any sort of even basic recognition towards these women as people. talking about them like they’re abstract figures or test subjects up in here.
watching people take somewhat valid privacy concerns as an excuse to let loose their most toxic feelings towards women used to be the sort of thing only losers or emboldened megalomaniacs did in public, even just a decade ago.
in the past years i’ve just seen all my peers, regardless of political affiliation, manipulated into a cult of outrage that serves as another hamster wheel upon which capital may spin.
imtiredboss.png
I’m all for groups of safe spaces for women. Especially when it’s designed to keep them safe while dating. I have my doubts that Tea was that. Even if it was advertised as such, “tea” is slang for the word gossip. I’ve heard stories from several sources that it was used to dox people as well. Not saying what happened to the users is right. I think some users here are just feeling smug that this might cause the app to fail or shut down.
Could you share said sources? It’s irrelevant though because justifying this doxxing SHOULD mean that the entirety of 4chan is a justifiable dox target. If you don’t believe that, then you should be against it happening against Tea users. They’re at the very least guilty of the same thing (in this case. 4chan is guilty of much more heinous things than just this).
I 100% agree that it isn’t relevant to the doxxing. I dont think the doxxing is warranted at all from either side. Most of what I saw about the app is just from various social media users as well as the Google PlayStore reviews. Personally I find it hard to believe the app wasn’t made with the purpose to dox people just based on the name alone. The ads make it seem like a safespace for women and if that’s all it was meant to be then it for sure had a very unfortunate name.
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.
I agree 100% that women face many more dangers especially in the dating scene than men. I’m all for having resources available for them to remain as safe as possible.
I don’t see how a Rate My Professor type app would work well for dates. I feel like people would only spend the time to rate poor dates. If you had a really good date with someone, you would presumably start dating them so why would you let everyone else know they are a good person to go out with? I have no doubt there are some awful people out there that others should be warned about, but this type of app is a bit too risky to justify that in my opinion.
The background check feature sounds much more legit, but I don’t think a group chat feature needs to exist along side it.
All that being said, anyone enjoying the doxxing of others is just an asshole. There’s definitely nothing fair about it from either side.
yeah, the app has obvious flaws, and the Rate My Professor style approach succeeds or fails depending on the quality of the users and moderators, and could easily be useless or become toxic - either way, I’m not defending this aspect of the app, it’s clearly problematic.
Regardless I understand why women would want a resource like this, and that doesn’t seem true for those in the comments who see the doxxing as deserved for using this app.
Nevermind the rest of the context, like 4chan being a bastion of right-wing, misogynist trolls who would target an app like this for political reasons.
Lemmy users approving 4chan doxxing women is a major red flag … it might have something to do with how many Lemmy users come here due to being banned for their behavior on Reddit. Reddit isn’t sending their best and brightest, and it shows. (This is just my speculation, though.)
And even if it was purely a gossip app, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
Tea could easily be used for two extremely different purposes:
The idea of Tea isn’t bad-- I’ve thought about the potential utility of similar apps myself-- but most people who are reacting badly are recognizing that it’s a nearly impossible moderation problem that will be used for bad things too.
of course, the app has obvious problems, but I don’t see that as justifying the gloating and sense of revenge enjoyment happening.
Instead I see a kind of discontent about women I find concerning, which seems ignorant of the widespread violence women experience or what it’s like for women who take risks when dating men.
Men are not all equally problematic or privileged, but they are generally in a position of power relative to women and are acting like the victims here.
They should direct their discontent to patriarchy which creates the situation where violence against women is dismissed or accepted, and which motivates women to use apps to check if the person they are dating has a history of violent behavior.
Patriarchy which perpetuates the narrative that men are natural predators and women natural prey is what victimizes men here, not the women who rightfully fear and feel victimized by the minority of men who are violent.
Why is everything we do, when we band together, seen as suspect and dangerous?
The Tea app is agnostic. While its purpose and main use case was made for the safety of women in the dating scene, it was inevitably used to spread exaggerated or misleading information about otherwise innocent men. Imagine being a privacy-conscious individual, and breaking up with a toxic woman. She could go on to spread lies about you and even upload pictures of you to the reverse image search/ai. So even if you were doing everything right from a privacy standpoint, you’d still end up in someone’s private database, subjected to ai training, shared with the government, or who knows what. While I do see the purpose of apps like these, they can effectively take away someone’s privacy/dignity without them even knowing about it. Now imagine being a 4channer, someone probably even more privacy-conscious than lemmings, and possibly experiencing mental disorders like paranoid schizophrenia or autism; of course they’re drawn to hacking an app that would destroy their privacy. They are not sane individuals, so this event really was inevitable.
I’ve been seeing a lot of misogony here the past week or so. It’s disheartening.
I think you are misunderstanding why people are upset.
It’s horrible that these women were doxxed.
It’s also horrible that a subset of women were doxxing men, which is what brought this negative attention to the site.
Misogyny is real in our society, misandry is real.
Saying things happen for sexist reasons when it was for a logical reason does a disservice to movements that seek equality.
The internet also cheered on the 4chan PII leak that happened recently, not becauase it’s a male dominant space, but because they do shitty things like dox people.
“gossip” is for safety. It’s often information that men don’t want shared so it’s painted like it’s bad. Claiming women shouldn’t gossip is just more misogyny.
There is some of that happening, like when women get together and discuss how they’re being treated it’s “gossip” and implied as immoral.
I think some men might read what you’ve said and think you are denying any toxic gossip exists, it’s important to have nuance and not alienate men who otherwise would be allies, but I think overall your point is well taken.
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