Not too way back, it used to take trial and error and a ladies’ evening to search out out that your date is a strolling purple flag. Now, there’s an app for that.
The Tea Relationship Recommendation app—which permits ladies to anonymously depart suggestions on males—has rapidly captured the eye of social media.
Based and self-funded by former product supervisor Sean Prepare dinner, the app quietly launched in 2023, but it surely has only recently gained momentum. Beating out ChatGPT, this week it turned the No. 1 most downloaded app on Apple’s App Retailer. It has over 4 million customers, the corporate claims.
Prepare dinner first began the corporate after “witnessing his mom’s terrifying expertise with on-line courting—not solely being catfished but additionally unknowingly partaking with males who had prison information,” the corporate web site reads.
Quick Firm reached out to Tea for touch upon this text. A press consultant declined.
The thought behind Tea shouldn’t be new. Equally themed boards have existed for years on-line. For example, within the in style “Are We Relationship the Identical Man?” Fb group, ladies share images and details about their companions to search out out in the event that they had been dishonest, whereas additionally providing assist networks to identify purple flags.
And whereas such teams do routinely get taken down as a consequence of privateness considerations, apps mimicking the mannequin have additionally popped up, with one even taking the group’s title.
Nonetheless, because the Tea app continues to realize traction, it has additionally garnered criticism and raised considerations about privateness, notably amongst male teams.
How does Tea work?
Serving as a type of “Yelp for males,” Tea lets ladies depart suggestions on males they’ve beforehand dated, marking them as a inexperienced or purple flag. Advertising and marketing itself as an app that revolutionizes security in courting for girls, the app additionally has a built-in sex-offender map and a chat part for girls to debate recommendation.
Moreover, a premium paid model of the app provides extra superior security instruments, together with an AI-powered reverse picture search to identify catfishing, a background verify instrument, and prison file and court docket doc searches.
The paid model of the app at the moment prices $14.99 a month, with 10% of the income going to the Nationwide Home Violence Hotline, based on an annual giving assertion printed on the app’s web site.
Quick Firm reached out to the Nationwide Home Violence Hotline to substantiate, however didn’t obtain a remark on the time of publishing.
To entry Tea, ladies need to confirm their gender by submitting a selfie, which is then verified by the app’s workforce.
As soon as accepted, customers can submit a photograph of their companions, touch upon perceived poisonous habits, add design parts like inexperienced or purple flags, or usually ask the neighborhood in the event that they know any “tea” on them. Nevertheless, there isn’t any verification course of to certify that every one claims are truthful.
Quick Firm gained entry to the Tea app and used a few of its options, which had been liable to glitches throughout a assessment of the UX on Friday. Screenshots of the app are disabled.
Males will not be completely satisfied about it
Whereas Tea as an idea may appear helpful for girls in in the present day’s complicated courting world, males on-line are alarmed by the app.
In a single in style Reddit group, r/MensRights, a megathread in regards to the Tea app was began on July 24, following a number of posts by males criticizing the app and asking how you can get posts about them taken down.
On TikTok, a number of posts denouncing the app have additionally gone viral.
“This can be a catastrophe of epic proportions,” one consumer shared on TikTok. “You don’t even need to show you went on a date with this individual.”
Moreover, claims of a “male model” of the app circulated on social media, with customers claiming that it was rapidly taken down as a consequence of inappropriate content material, though its existence has not but been verified.
It’s unclear if Tea’s sudden reputation will land it on the radar of Apple or Google, each of which have prolonged tips that prohibit apps with dangerous or objectionable content material on their app shops. Quick Firm reached out to Apple and Google for remark.
Rising considerations as consumer base skyrockets
It’s not simply males who’ve expressed considerations and even outright complaints about Tea. “It’s so oversaturated. I used to be scrolling, and there’s a bunch of males with no feedback, no something,” one feminine consumer shared on TikTok. “I really feel like that defeats the aim.”
Issues over consumer security have additionally circulated, with some anxious that girls with entry to the app could be sharing the posts with their male associates, which may probably put the nameless customers in hurt’s approach.
In the meantime, the information web site 404 Media lately reported on a knowledge breach wherein private data from Tea customers—together with drivers’ licenses and selfies—was allegedly leaked on the nameless imageboard web site 4chan.
Tea acknowledged the breach after the story was printed through a submit on the app, saying the leaked dataset included 72,000 photos, of which 13,000 had been selfies and different kinds of photograph identification.
Tea’s privateness coverage claims that images are “securely processed and saved solely quickly and can be deleted instantly following the completion of the verification course of.” Nevertheless, the leaked dataset was from “over two years in the past,” the submit says, contradicting the corporate’s personal privateness coverage.
As Tea continues to spark debates round privateness, poisonous courting cultures, and potential ways in which the app may very well be abused, many customers throughout social media are merely highlighting the deeper which means behind the app itself.
“Whereas everybody’s laughing on the stuff posted on that app, I’m truthfully disgusted. My coronary heart breaks for each girl who’s been cheated on, lied to, mistreated, harassed, or worse,” one other consumer shared on TikTok. “There’s nothing humorous about trauma. It’s not cute. It’s not leisure.”
