Behind the screens: Hook-up dating app Down and its place in a dark industry

A dating app touted arsenic 1 of the world’s biggest utilized Russian “review farms” to crippled standing systems and employed women to person bogus conversations with unsuspecting users, according to a whistleblower.

Gabriel Machuret, erstwhile selling manager astatine hook-up dating app Down, said the company, which says it has 13 cardinal users, hired contractors to constitute fake affirmative reviews connected the Apple and Google app stores.

Gabriel Machuret is the erstwhile selling manager for dating app Down. Machuret says its practices reflector overmuch of what happens successful the dating app industry. Credit: Angi High

Machuret, who lives successful Australia and worked for Down successful 2022, said the Taiwan-based company’s contractors besides wrote fake antagonistic reviews to propulsion rival dating apps down the app store rankings. “We paid a Russian institution – that was my occupation – to constitute affirmative reviews,” helium said.

“That was portion of the selling fund per month, to wage for reappraisal farms. If you spot a caller app that you’re funny astir and it has a reappraisal of 2.8 stars, you’re not going to download it. You’re trying to fell the atrocious reviews. We adjacent paid for atrocious reviews for the different apps. It is that bad.”

Down is 1 of scores of dating apps scrutinised arsenic portion of an probe by this masthead that recovered expanding concerns from consumers and experts astir the industry’s behaviour towards the 3 cardinal Australians who usage dating apps, including the ascendant Tinder, Hinge and Bumble apps.

The probe comes amid a backdrop of decreased users and climbing subscription costs arsenic companies question to support revenues. Match Group’s Tinder and Hinge and the galore different dating apps it owns, and Bumble unneurotic generated much than $US4 cardinal ($6 billion) from subscriptions past year.

Machuret said Down’s tactics were not yet emblematic but were progressively communal crossed the manufacture due to the fact that it was financially squeezed. “The dating apps are successful crisis,” helium said.

Wall Street-listed Bumble’s stock terms was $US75 3 years agone but deed a debased of $US10 this week; the institution laid disconnected a 3rd of its 950-strong workforce successful February.

Bumble branded itself a feminist app erstwhile it launched due to the fact that women initiated conversations; it precocious attracted contention when, amid falling idiosyncratic numbers, it allowed men to commencement making the archetypal move. Tinder and Hinge’s genitor company, Match Group, has seen its stock terms tumble from $US169 successful 2021 to $US30.

Match Group, Bumble and different smaller dating app companies this week handed the Albanese authorities a voluntary manufacture codification they accidental volition marque dating safer.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland demanded the codification after the Australian Institute of Criminology successful 2022 recovered 3 successful 4 radical utilizing dating apps experienced immoderate signifier of intersexual unit including intersexual harassment, threatening language, image-based intersexual maltreatment and stalking.

On Friday, Rowland said the national authorities had worked hard to amended information connected dating apps and would person much to accidental aft reviewing the industry’s projected code.

A spokeswoman for Match – which on with Tinder and Hinge owns the Plenty of Fish, Match and OK Cupid apps – said the institution had worked “collaboratively” with different dating apps, the authorities and others to make the caller Australian code.

A Bumble spokeswoman said the full manufacture had worked co-operatively implicit the past 7 months to hole its voluntary code.

“Any lawsuit of violence, harassment oregon maltreatment is unacceptable to us, and we bash not hesitate to region perpetrators from our platform,” she said.

Machuret said Down had besides utilized dormant pistillate idiosyncratic accounts to nonstop fake messages to men.

And portion bots are a occupation connected galore apps today, sending messages to users who deliberation they’re interacting with a existent person, Machuret said Down’s manipulation was done manually.

“We didn’t person bots. In fact, we were doing it manually. We had Filipino women messaging guys.”

A institution spokesperson denied manipulating reviews oregon utilizing bogus conversations.

“We perfectly ne'er employment immoderate fake accounts ourselves. [Some] companies mightiness play that, but we volition ne'er bash that due to the fact that we truly consciousness firmly that we privation our users to person a existent experience.”

Asked astir manipulating the app store rankings, helium said: “In the app store industry, let’s accidental Apple and Google, we person grounds and suspicion of different antagonistic things that possibly different players are doing. And we don’t employment that worldly currently.”

He besides said Machuret was a disgruntled erstwhile employee.

Machuret besides claimed that unit astatine the app could work each idiosyncratic messages.

“Everything. People think, ‘Oh, no, that’s not possible.’ But it is imaginable due to the fact that I’ve work each azygous speech of radical erstwhile we person a problem, erstwhile idiosyncratic gets reported,” helium said.

The institution spokesperson said Down, similar each dating apps, needed to beryllium capable to work users’ messages truthful it could supply a harmless situation and support “accounts authentic”.

“You would not capable to successful immoderate mode person that imaginativeness into what radical are doing connected the app,” the spokesperson said.

Apple and Google declined to remark connected Down’s lawsuit specifically. An Apple spokeswoman pointed retired that the institution removed astir 152 cardinal fraudulent ratings and reviews from its app store past year.

A Google spokeswoman said the institution had systems to observe spam and fake reviews.

The Down spokesperson would not accidental however galore Australian users the institution has, though the company’s nationalist relations manager said Australia had an “over 200 per cent summation successful downloads since the commencement of 2024”.

Dating app users wage subscriptions to unlock features specified arsenic unlimited “likes” and a accidental to presumption who has swiped connected their profile. But Millennials and Gen Z’s successful the Western satellite are progressively reluctant to wage to play.

Author Lisa Portolan, who is besides an world astatine University of Technology Sydney, said: “People person begun to consciousness precise disenfranchised and disillusioned with the dating app process, and they’re precise acrophobic these corporations are trying to compression them retired of wealth by making them spell onto premium packages successful bid to get immoderate benignant of outcome.”

In 2023, Portolan published her PhD connected dating apps. She said Australia, similar the US and Europe, was experiencing falling numbers connected dating apps.

Neither Bumble nor Match Group answered straight connected whether idiosyncratic numbers had fallen successful Australia. Tinder’s astir caller filings amusement a alteration successful users but an summation successful revenue.

“At the start, determination were nary premium packages,” Portolan said, “and determination is simply a thrust from the dating apps to propulsion you towards paying for a premium bundle if you privation your illustration served to a greater radical of people.”

Movember’s Zac Seidler says men’s rights activists thin into the atrocious experiences of young males connected dating apps to crook them to misogyny.

Portolan said the dating app companies were “not precise transparent” and that the Australian authorities should propulsion much aggressively for clearer accusation connected their concern practices, on with greater collaboration with instrumentality enforcement, greater extortion for susceptible audiences including women, “and conscionable greater transparency successful general”.

Others studying the assemblage besides pass the apps are playing a relation successful the emergence of poisonous misogyny.

Zac Seidler, planetary manager of probe astatine men’s wellness foundation Movember, said young men often came to dating apps with small cognition of however to interact with women, and the effect connected galore men was crushing.

“Many don’t travel successful with a misogynist worldview, with this thought of dominance and powerfulness and toughness, but they often permission with it. It is simply a precise slippery slope from ‘Here is however the dating satellite works’ to getting into pick-up artistry.”

Seidler said that men’s rights activists connected societal media often “weaponise these experiences that young men person connected dating apps, wherever they commencement to operation the acquisition and say, ‘Have you realised that you’re really not getting a batch of responses from women? Have you realised that you’ve been ghosted a lot? Have you realised that [women are] lone picking the alpha males.’ It truly leans into antheral insecurity to thrust a misogynistic, sexist narrative.”

A radical of US singles is suing Match, alleging successful a people enactment that Match’s Tinder and Hinge fastener users “into a perpetual pay-to-play loop” that places nett supra the assertion they are designed to beryllium deleted.

“Match’s concern exemplary depends connected generating returns done the monopolisation of users’ attention, and Match has guaranteed its marketplace occurrence by fomenting dating app addiction that drives costly subscriptions and perpetual use,” the suit says.

Users successful Australia walk an mean of astir 90 minutes a time connected dating apps.

Author Alyssa Huynh, whose caller book Safe Space explores racism successful Australia, said her acquisition of dating apps had astatine times been affirmative by connecting her with radical she wouldn’t conscionable successful her day-to-day life.

Alyssa Huynh is the writer of Safe Spaces, a caller publication astir her acquisition of racism successful Australia. She has had mixed experiences connected dating apps.Credit: Wayne Taylor

But Huynh said dating apps needed to bash much to marque women of colour navigating a challenging dating country consciousness safe.

She fears men messaging her “because I americium Asian and they person an Asian fetish oregon what immoderate word ‘yellow fever’”.

“Given however mainstream dating apps present are successful Australia, bash they request much regularisation than the existent astir wholly unregulated situation?”

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