5 ms·

Lesbian dating app uses facial recognition technology to exclude trans users

6 points by harambae 2y ago

electricdreams 2y ago
I expect a ton of false positives.
pavel_lishin 2y ago
> allegedly being able to detect if a woman is cis or trans with 99 per cent accuracy. Big ol' [citation needed] on that.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  If that claim pushes the correct emotional buttons in their current & potential customers, then its accuracy is 99% irrelevant. Amusing thought: If, when using dating apps to look for boyfriends, most trans women were found to strongly disfavor feminine-looking men - how would the current crop of trans-rights activists react?
- flexibil 2y ago
  On her Twitter account, Jenny Watson pasted some JSON output of a face detection service [1] which seems to match up with Luxand's web API [2]. She hasn't announced which product her app will end up using to distinguish female faces from male faces, but assuming it is Luxand's, they do make a similar statement on their website [3]: > Luxand cloud has consistently demonstrated high accuracy in face detection, recognition, and attribute detection, exceeding 99% in many cases. I'm also skeptical of this claim but in the end I don't think it will matter too much. Either it works as intended, providing an effective dating space for lesbians, or the app gets overrun by intrusive males, which is just more evidence that lesbian spaces are under threat by men who don't respect women's boundaries. Either way she makes her point. [1] https://x.com/dnalerinrehtron/status/1798367224974950677 https://x.com/dnalerinrehtron/status/1798367224974950677 [2] https://luxand.cloud/face-detection-api https://luxand.cloud/face-detection-api [3] https://luxand.cloud/face-recognition-blog/face-recognition-api-luxand-cloud-vs-microsoft-azure-face-api https://luxand.cloud/face-recognition-blog/face-recognition-...
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    > Either it works as intended, providing an effective dating space for lesbians If it works as intended, it'll only be effective for lesbians who have no interest in dating trans women.
    - flexibil 2y ago
      That's all lesbians then. By definition, lesbians are female individuals who are homosexual, i.e. their sexual orientation is towards others of the same sex, which means that their dating pool consists only of other female individuals. This excludes all transwomen, because - also by definition - transwomen are male.
jfengel 2y ago
That seems like a dicey proposition. While "gender critical lesbians" do exist, I believe that they are a smallish fraction. The position of most gay organizations is that trans women are women. You don't have to date them, but you do that by saying "no trans women" in your profile. Excluding them would drive off as many lesbians as it attracted. Further... trans people are still a tiny minority, well under 1%. So you're going to get hammered by the Base Rate Fallacy, excluding more cis women than correctly rejecting trans women. (Especially since trans women are going to self-select to not even try.) The underlying source of this is the Daily Mail, a right-wing British newspaper. It sounds like it's trying to score some kind of political points with right wingers -- who are not exactly known to be a great target market for lesbians. This sounds like a poorly considered idea that is dead before it even gets started.
- flexibil 2y ago
  > You don't have to date them, but you do that by saying "no trans women" in your profile. That would get your account banned on most dating apps, including the most popular one for "lesbian" dating. e.g. this article [1] discusses the experience of a lesbian woman who did just that: > Without the ability to filter out men, who could pick any identity they liked on the app, some female users took it upon themselves to signify that they were only interested in other women by adding it to their bio or including a photo with logos that signified exclusive same-sex attraction. > These women found themselves quite literally forced off the app. > Jen, a lesbian user known on Twitter as @cbucksrules, told Reduxx was suspended after adding "no trans women" to her bio on HER because she was exclusively same-sex attracted. > Jen had joined HER in late 2021 looking for a female partner and assuming a lesbian dating app would be the place to go for such an endeavor. Finding a veritable smorgasbord of 5 o'clock shadows and head tilts, Jen attempted to ensure she would only be contacted by other female users. > "I [wrote] in my bio what I would not consider the opposite sex as a partner nor a woman who was not a proud woman as we would not be compatible." > Shortly after, Jen was suspended. She wrote to HER's customer service and asked why, and received a snarky response from an agent named "Devin" berating her for using "hateful language" in her bio, and asserting "trans women are women." [1] https://reduxx.info/from-her-to-him-the-downfall-of-a-lesbian-dating-app https://reduxx.info/from-her-to-him-the-downfall-of-a-lesbia...
ttyprintk 2y ago
This approach is already in use, and will be tested in court in Australia: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/in-australia-a-women-only-app-is-latest-front-in-the-war-over-trans-rights https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/in-australia-a-wome...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gremlions 2y ago
  It's crazy that it even got to that stage. Men like this have no respect, they seem to think women saying "no" is some sort of challenge. And then use the law to force their will regardless. Hopefully the courts will put a stop to this nonsense.

6 points by harambae 2y ago

I expect a ton of false positives.

> allegedly being able to detect if a woman is cis or trans with 99 per cent accuracy. Big ol' [citation needed] on that.

bell-cot 2y ago
If that claim pushes the correct emotional buttons in their current & potential customers, then its accuracy is 99% irrelevant. Amusing thought: If, when using dating apps to look for boyfriends, most trans women were found to strongly disfavor feminine-looking men - how would the current crop of trans-rights activists react?
flexibil 2y ago
On her Twitter account, Jenny Watson pasted some JSON output of a face detection service [1] which seems to match up with Luxand's web API [2]. She hasn't announced which product her app will end up using to distinguish female faces from male faces, but assuming it is Luxand's, they do make a similar statement on their website [3]: > Luxand cloud has consistently demonstrated high accuracy in face detection, recognition, and attribute detection, exceeding 99% in many cases. I'm also skeptical of this claim but in the end I don't think it will matter too much. Either it works as intended, providing an effective dating space for lesbians, or the app gets overrun by intrusive males, which is just more evidence that lesbian spaces are under threat by men who don't respect women's boundaries. Either way she makes her point. [1] https://x.com/dnalerinrehtron/status/1798367224974950677 https://x.com/dnalerinrehtron/status/1798367224974950677 [2] https://luxand.cloud/face-detection-api https://luxand.cloud/face-detection-api [3] https://luxand.cloud/face-recognition-blog/face-recognition-api-luxand-cloud-vs-microsoft-azure-face-api https://luxand.cloud/face-recognition-blog/face-recognition-...
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > Either it works as intended, providing an effective dating space for lesbians If it works as intended, it'll only be effective for lesbians who have no interest in dating trans women.
  - flexibil 2y ago
    That's all lesbians then. By definition, lesbians are female individuals who are homosexual, i.e. their sexual orientation is towards others of the same sex, which means that their dating pool consists only of other female individuals. This excludes all transwomen, because - also by definition - transwomen are male.

jfengel 2y ago

That seems like a dicey proposition. While "gender critical lesbians" do exist, I believe that they are a smallish fraction. The position of most gay organizations is that trans women are women. You don't have to date them, but you do that by saying "no trans women" in your profile. Excluding them would drive off as many lesbians as it attracted. Further... trans people are still a tiny minority, well under 1%. So you're going to get hammered by the Base Rate Fallacy, excluding more cis women than correctly rejecting trans women. (Especially since trans women are going to self-select to not even try.) The underlying source of this is the Daily Mail, a right-wing British newspaper. It sounds like it's trying to score some kind of political points with right wingers -- who are not exactly known to be a great target market for lesbians. This sounds like a poorly considered idea that is dead before it even gets started.

flexibil 2y ago
> You don't have to date them, but you do that by saying "no trans women" in your profile. That would get your account banned on most dating apps, including the most popular one for "lesbian" dating. e.g. this article [1] discusses the experience of a lesbian woman who did just that: > Without the ability to filter out men, who could pick any identity they liked on the app, some female users took it upon themselves to signify that they were only interested in other women by adding it to their bio or including a photo with logos that signified exclusive same-sex attraction. > These women found themselves quite literally forced off the app. > Jen, a lesbian user known on Twitter as @cbucksrules, told Reduxx was suspended after adding "no trans women" to her bio on HER because she was exclusively same-sex attracted. > Jen had joined HER in late 2021 looking for a female partner and assuming a lesbian dating app would be the place to go for such an endeavor. Finding a veritable smorgasbord of 5 o'clock shadows and head tilts, Jen attempted to ensure she would only be contacted by other female users. > "I [wrote] in my bio what I would not consider the opposite sex as a partner nor a woman who was not a proud woman as we would not be compatible." > Shortly after, Jen was suspended. She wrote to HER's customer service and asked why, and received a snarky response from an agent named "Devin" berating her for using "hateful language" in her bio, and asserting "trans women are women." [1] https://reduxx.info/from-her-to-him-the-downfall-of-a-lesbian-dating-app https://reduxx.info/from-her-to-him-the-downfall-of-a-lesbia...

ttyprintk 2y ago

This approach is already in use, and will be tested in court in Australia: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/in-australia-a-women-only-app-is-latest-front-in-the-war-over-trans-rights https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/in-australia-a-wome...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gremlions 2y ago
It's crazy that it even got to that stage. Men like this have no respect, they seem to think women saying "no" is some sort of challenge. And then use the law to force their will regardless. Hopefully the courts will put a stop to this nonsense.