Yesterday Bumble, the women-centric dating app that also has its own LinkedIn-style networking offshoot, publicly announced it was removing the profile of infamous white supremacist Jack Posobiec after a Twitter user alerted them to his presence.
Though Posobiec — who got married in November 2017 and is just generally an awful, terrible excuse for a person — claimed that the account was just a troll, Bumble confirmed to The Outline that the account was tied to his real Facebook page.
Bumble managed to do something that social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have struggled with for years: Take a firm stance against organized hate on its platform.
As it turns out, this isn’t the first time a dating app has banned a white supremacist. In fact, dating apps actually have a long history of not only explicitly forbidding intolerance and bigotry from their users, but also swiftly banning those who fail to comply.
Last March, Tinder permanently banned a man after he called a woman on the platform a “chink,” stating that “Tinder has a zero-tolerance policy on disrespect. No racist rants. No sexist pigs. No trolling. No jerks who can’t get over their own inadequacies long enough to have a decent conversation with another person on Tinder,” the company’s Vice President of Communications and Brand wrote in a blog post. In August, OkCupid announced it had banned white supremacist Christopher Cantwell ten minutes after being alerted to his presence, citing that “the privilege of being in the OkCupid community does not extend to Nazis and supremacists. Pretty simple.” The company asked users to report “people involved in hate groups.”
“Bumble was founded on the core values of kindness, respect, integrity, and equality,” the company tweeted after it banned Posobiec. “[A]nd we do not tolerate anyone who does not uphold these values on our platform. Bumble has a strong stance against hate, and our team will continue to do our very best to maintain our platform as a safe, inclusive, and empowering place.”
Bumble was created by Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe (who left Tinder after experiencing sexual harassment), and requires women to message first. It was recently valued at “well over $1 billion” by Match Group. The company published a manifesto against “all forms of hate” back in August when Bumble joined forces with the Anti-Defamation League to ban the use of all hate symbols on its platform.
Meanwhile, it took Twitter until last month to start banning Nazis. Posobiec, who has promoted Pizzagate and said repeatedly that his vision for America is a white ethno-state, is still on the platform.
