After Whitney Wolfe Herd, a vice president of Tinder, left the company in 2014, she founded Bumble as a women-focused alternative to the popular dating app. With an interface that required its female users to send the first message to their matches — in theory cutting down on spammy or inappropriate overtures from men — it was a hit, pulling in millions of users and earning plaudits as a “feminist” platform. As of last year, women no longer have to make the first move, but they still steer early conversation with the option to invite men to answer specific questions, such as, “What’s your dream vacation?”
Regardless, Bumble has not been immune to the collective exhaustion that surrounds dating apps more than a decade after their heyday. In fact, women feeling like it was too much work to always kick off the dialogue was part of the reason Bumble changed their signature policy. Now the company is pushing back against allegations that it fails to uphold a critical feature for users of any social platform: blocks.
Last week, Jennie Young, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay who specializes in rhetoric and gender studies, shared a curious email from Bumble’s support staff with her Instagram followers. Young has used her academic background to develop a dating app strategy she calls the “Burned Haystack” method, which has amassed tens of thousands of followers thanks to her close analysis of red-flag communication styles. To give women a better shot at quality dates and real romance, Young advocates for assertive blocking on apps like Bumble — whether a guy is a genuine creep or just not particularly appealing — in order to narrow the field of would-be suitors to the most promising candidates.
But the email Young put on her Instagram page, forwarded to her by a follower and independently reviewed by Rolling Stone, suggested that this would be a fruitless exercise on Bumble. An app user who requested anonymity had written a message to the support team complaining that she was still seeing male users she had already blocked. In response, Bumble made a surprising admission: “Bumble will show you people you have swiped left/blocked on in the past — in case you have changed your mind,” they informed her. Young’s video about the email served as a PSA to her community. “This is patriarchal, predatory, and disrespectful of women,” she wrote in the caption. “We are capable of deciding on our own what we want (and who we don’t).”
The responses came fast and furious. “NO MEANS NO,” wrote one woman on Young’s page. “I will never go back on apps, women are leaving them in droves.” Another commented, “Won’t be using this app again until this is rectified.” The user who had complained to Bumble support in the first place wrote in her reply to the company, “This is a safety issue, a consent issue and a massive violation of boundaries. It’s unethical and disingenuous.” Young’s fans began to bombard Bumble’s support line with similar complaints, demanding to know whether blocking was an effective means of removing someone from their pool of matches. (If not, the app could face market consequences, since Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store both require the apps they sell to have a block functionality.)
Bumble appeared to fine-tune its messaging when handling the backlash from Young and angry users over several days. In several emails reviewed by Rolling Stone, the company suggested that the problem was users who had managed to work around the blocks. “If you’re seeing a profile you previously blocked, this would be because this member has created new accounts,” the support team wrote in one message. Bumble’s own user guide notes that there are “no automatic punishments or ‘shadow bans’ for deleting and recreating your Bumble profile,” though it warns that this can lead to a user being mistaken for spam or a bot, and that users who do this “run the risk of getting warned or blocked from Bumble permanently.” The company had also told the user who had originally raised the complaint that the blocked individuals she kept seeing might be members who have “deleted and recreated their profiles.”
That frustrated member contradicted the “new accounts” explanation in her response to the company. “These are not new accounts,” she fired back. “I know this because I tested this theory by logging off and then immediately on again and ALL of the profiles that I took the time to block were there again. Within a minute.” Eventually, this user received a follow-up from a support employee who identified themselves by name and stated: “I would like to clarify that you should not be seeing someone you have previously hidden or blocked, and the information shared with you previously was inaccurate.”
Some who contacted Bumble instead received a baffling list of troubleshooting recommendations in the case of apparently recycled blocked profiles. These included: “Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data,” “Update the app to the latest version,” “Temporarily disable VPN, antivirus, or security software,” and “Force close the app and reopen it.”
Reached for comment, a Bumble spokesperson did not acknowledge the support team email that kicked off the controversy but said that blocking someone on the app prevents either person from accessing the other’s profile. “We want to make it clear to our community that Bumble does not recycle blocked or hidden profiles,” they said. “The safety and well-being of our community is our top priority, so once a member is blocked or hidden, they will no longer appear to you, and you will no longer appear to them.” The statement continued, “If a previously blocked member appears again, it is likely due to this member creating a new profile. We have measures in place to prevent this behavior, and we are continuously evolving and strengthening our moderation methods to protect our members. If our community sees someone they have previously blocked, we advise that they block and report the new profile so our team can swiftly investigate and take the appropriate action.”
This was the eventual line Young and her fans got in their efforts to pin Bumble down on exactly how they enforced blocks. “I basically tried to back them into a corner to answer the question, and then they finally came out with an answer that sounds like what they should have been doing all along, Young tells Rolling Stone. “But I don’t think they were.”
“I think all the dating apps are pretty shady, but you know, Bumble supposedly is the feminist app,” Young says, describing the sense of disappointment and betrayal felt by women who commented that they were canceling their memberships or would avoid the platform in the future. She likens the feeling to the outrage that met Bumble’s disastrous anti-celibacy ad campaign last year, which sought to appeal to burned-out singles with billboards that said “A Vow of Celibacy Is Not the Answer” and “Thou Shalt Not Give Up on Dating and Become a Nun.” The company — blasted as “Fumble” by critics on social media — quickly apologized and removed the ads.
Dating apps have struggled across the board in recent years, with declines in earnings and customers, and polling showing that more than half of women report negative experiences. What the back-and-forth over Bumble’s block feature shows is that people are inclined to distrust these tech companies as much as they do their potential matches. “Bumble has pivoted, deflected, gaslit … the works,” wrote one redditor who kept up with the entire drama. She was unmoved by the company’s eventual assurances. “Personally, it’s not enough to compel me to get back on the apps,” she wrote.
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