OkCupid put users ‘at risk of assault’ by ignoring safety concerns, say former staff

Senior managers at OkCupid oversaw a culture in which safety issues were routinely neglected, and which staff believed put users at risk of assault and rape, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

Workers at the online dating service raised the alarm about serious safety and privacy failures, in particular by one former customer service manager. They say she ignored several requests for help with criminal investigations, one message regarding a potential sex trafficking case and another from a user threatening a mass shooting. She also used her position to read private messages sent by her partner during a brief separation.

“[The former manager’s] negligence could lead to assaults, rapes, etc that could have been prevented but weren’t because of procedural breakdowns,” said a timeline document compiled by OkCupid staff and shared with its parent company Match Group.

“In addition to the moral aspect, this could also easily spill into legal action and/or become a PR nightmare.”

Staff also reported this former manager to HR for discussing reports of sexual assault in a “flippant and dismissive way” around colleagues. In total, staff reported her behaviour to management around 18 times in less than a year before she eventually left the company.

Documents, screenshots and interviews with former OkCupid workers paint a picture of a dysfunctional organisation in which user safety issues were routinely neglected or mishandled. Former staff who reported the issues say the company missed numerous opportunities to act and some say they faced consequences themselves for speaking out.

Michael Kaye, communications director at OkCupid, told TBIJ: “Violent offenders have no place in our physical or online communities; we act on every report received, and vigilantly remove and block accounts suspected of this behaviour from our platform.

“We utilise industry-leading technologies, support federal and state legislation that promotes online safety, and work closely with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served.

“We strongly refute these unfounded allegations regarding improper use of user data and the handling of user requests. We stand behind the policies and processes we have in place to keep our employees and users safe and their data protected.”

Litany of failures

OkCupid was launched in the US in 2004 and was later acquired by the owners of its rival Match.com – a company that has since become Match Group and now operates 45 brands including Tinder and Hinge.

However, OkCupid has struggled to keep up with its newer competitors. March 2024 estimates from intelligence company Similarweb suggest it had less than a million monthly active users in the US, compared with around 8 million for Tinder and 5 million for Hinge.

Sources told TBIJ that OkCupid suffered due to mismanagement and alleged nepotism. Most of those interviewed said the former manager, who was the subject of multiple complaints after being placed into a key role overseeing customer service teams, did not have sufficient experience for the position.

She was also close friends with Marcus Lofthouse, the chief product officer at OkCupid (where he had oversight of her team) and Archer, another Match Group app.

Charlotte*, a former colleague, said the issues quickly became apparent when this customer support manager was hired in June 2020. She raised her concerns with management within weeks.

Charlotte recalled two requests from law enforcement for help with investigations that the former manager had ignored for weeks. “I remember one specifically from a town in Massachusetts […] where a man was saying he had met up with a woman from OkCupid for a date and she had robbed him,” she said.

“The last time I saw it, it was like two months old. I don’t know what happened to it after that.”

Taylor*, who worked on the same team, also remembers the same manager ignoring apparently serious threats and requests.

“Moderation response is time sensitive,” Taylor said. “We would get things like people threatening to go do a mass shooting in our office downtown. That’s not something that can just sit in a queue for a while, we need to stay on top of that.

“We got an email from the Department of Homeland Security that was talking about human trafficking. They were worried that some of the women … were not there of their own free will. Basically [that] it was a front for solicitation.

“[The former manager] didn’t understand the process, had no desire to learn the process, and didn’t really think the processes applied to her. So she just didn’t handle it. She would close cases before [we] could see them.”

The manager also admitted to using her access to internal tools to look at private messages sent by her partner and his brother during a brief separation, according to former staff. When challenged by colleagues, she claimed this was done with the users’ consent.

Former OkCupid workers say she attempted to manipulate performance metrics by bulk-closing hundreds of user requests, including those regarding safety issues, without a response.

She also closed hundreds of requests made under GDPR, the EU’s data protection law, after telling users their information had been purged, according to former colleagues, a practice that could result in substantial fines.

The manager left the company in April 2021 following a Match Group investigation, but remained employed for at least a month after her departure was announced. Lofthouse, her friend who oversaw her team, remains its chief product officer.

‘Radio silence or even retaliation’

Staff reported the former customer service manager’s conduct to either OkCupid management or its parent company Match Group 18 times between June 2020 and February 2021, according to the timeline document.

The timeline raises questions about whether OkCupid and Match Group took appropriate action when they learned of the behaviour.

“We reached out multiple times on multiple issues, got little if any follow up afterward, and wound up with radio silence or even retaliation instead of support,” the document states.

“If these issues are not swiftly resolved, consequences such as exorbitant regulatory fines, preventable assaults and harassment of users by bad actors, a decline in OkCupid’s reputation, and staff turnover will almost certainly result.”.

“The GDPR fines could easily run into the tens, if not hundreds of millions.”

The majority of former staff interviewed by TBIJ also raised concerns about the company’s outsourcing partner TaskUs, which worked with its customer service and moderation teams.

OkCupid staff reported TaskUs contractors making frequent errors when responding to users. One worker “became so frustrated by the refusal to address any of the many performance issues with TaskUs that he created a PowerPoint about them and presented it in [a] team meeting,” according to the timeline document shared with Match Group.

TaskUs, which is headquartered in Texas but recruits the bulk of its staff from the Philippines, is among the leading outsourcing companies serving the dating app market, and has had moderation contracts with Bumble and Tinder. TaskUs has also provided outsourced moderators for Bumble, and one former Bumble worker told TBIJ there were “quality issues” with TaskUs' work.

TaskUs had previously worked with Hinge but lost this contract due to poor performance, according to one former OkCupid worker.

“Their training was so bad that they couldn’t even issue refunds correctly … you click three buttons, it’s not hard,” said Charlotte. Workers had to “run around and clean up after TaskUs” she added.

TaskUs did not respond to a request for comment.

Kaye, the OkCupid spokesperson, told TBIJ: “We also take the utmost care to ensure that all reports are handled with diligence and respect for our users and their privacy. This includes specialised sensitivity training conducted by RAINN for our Trust & Safety teams, mental health support for our moderator teams, and regular reviews with our safety partners to ensure we have the latest technologies and processes in place.

“We will always work to improve our systems to help ensure everyone on our apps feels respected and safe.”

In spite of all its difficulties, Charlotte said she found her role at OkCupid extremely rewarding. “This is not a job that people do for the money,” she said. “It’s a thing that people do because they care, right? And the majority of us [in the trust and safety team], we’d all been victims of some kind of awful shit, and it was really important to us to prevent that from happening to other people.

“During this time, stress from my job and all this other stupid shit completely took over my life and drove me out of a career that I loved.”

Martha*, another safety worker who resigned in the same year, was also left demoralised by her experience. “Anything in customer support and customer safety is a cost centre,” she said. “And if you’re not bringing in any dollars, for some reason protecting your users doesn’t seem to matter.”

* Names have been changed