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Isn't this basically Peeple except gender locked to women? Peeple failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip against anyone. If someone was jealous

Isn't this basically Peeple except gender locked to women? Peeple failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip against anyone. If someone was jealous of another, for example, that person could just write false slander and claim it was real with no evidence. That would have affected the victim for jobs, dates, etc. So it was laughed at by VCs and everyone online and it shut down. How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel timebomb waiting to happen?

webstrand 1y ago
Not only that, I think they're forfeit their Section 230 protections since they're exercising editorial control by excluding males from the platform. So they'd be directly liable for any defamation they publish on their platform.
- mikeyouse 1y ago
  That's not how 230 works - why do people keep parroting this misinformation? https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
  - webstrand 1y ago
    Because it's really good misinformation, thanks for the link. I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional protection.
    - magicalist 1y ago
      > I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional protection. Defamation is still not protected, it's just the person who posted it who is liable. Meanwhile the site's "editorial control" is protected by the first amendment, not section 230.
    - JoshTriplett 1y ago
      Huge credit for actually updating in response to evidence.
  - schoen 1y ago
    It continues to confuse me that the publisher/distributor distinction that section 230 was meant to remove (created by prior Federal court decisions) gets so frequently interpreted as if section 230 had been intended to establish it. To me this feels as if people widely thought that the Apollo Program was intended to prevent people from traveling to the moon, or Magna Carta was meant to prevent barons from limiting the king's power, or Impressionism was all about using technical artistic skills to depict scenes in a realistically detailed way.
  - Nasrudith 1y ago
    Because they seem to want it to work that way and seem to think that by spreading the misinformation that it will somehow change the way the law is interpreted.
  - derbOac 1y ago
    Thanks for posting the link. I had read that before and forgot. I think sometimes confusion about Section 230 maybe points to some legal soft spots. I think there's a trend — good or bad — for courts to see websites as accountable for users' activities on the site when those activities are systematic and collectively illegal or jeopardized, when the website is seen as encouraging the activity. It's not hard for me to imagine a court deciding that the intrinsic nature of the website encourages systematic libel, and is therefore is somehow involved in the creation of post content. Even more specifically, I'm not sure the "good faith" clause of Section 230 even applies to something like Tea in the case of libel, should libel be there. Now, actually showing libel is another thing, but that's also easier for me to imagine today than even a year ago, especially in the presence of a data breach where posters are exposed. I guess I don't see Tea as being held legally responsible for anything about the content of user posts, in the US at least, for the reasons outlined in that article. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.
- pridzone 1y ago
  It would be in Apple and Google’s best interest to pull these apps immediately. Multiple Supreme Court justices have indicated an interest in narrowing the breadth of section 230 immunity. This app, structured entirely around effecting the reputation of private individuals, provides a relatively clean case to do so. It’s not a stretch that the app could be considered a ‘developer in part’ of the content it hosts, and thus lose section 230 protection. A narrowing of section 230 would not be good for Apple or Google, though they wouldn’t face any liability for the Tea apps conduct.
carabiner 1y ago
It's exactly like Lulu which shutdown due to privacy issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(app)
- emseetech 1y ago
  Every couple years someone tries this and it immediately turns into a cesspool because no matter the good intentions of the makers, it attracts the worst kind of person as active users. It gets shut down, everyone forgets, then someone eventually has a brilliant idea... It come from a place of sincerity but defenders imagine everyone would use it for the same reasons they would: Warning people of genuine threats in the dating world. They would never use it for gossip, or revenge, or creative writing, etc. so they don't imagine others would. But at scale, if generously only 0.1% of women in America are bad actors that would weaponize this app, that's over 150k people (not to mention men slipping past security). And the thing about bad actors is that one bad actor can have an outsized effect.
  - carabiner 1y ago
    There needs to be a startup accelerator or VC that solely focuses on recycled ideas. We could have an app that gathers strangers for dinners, one for reviewing people, and so on. Since all of these gained traction at some point, the idea would be you get 1-2 quick puffs of these discarded cigarette butts before selling or shutting down. Just vibe code it, go viral, collect some subscriber fees, then close due to whatever reason.
    - burnt-resistor 1y ago
      TechStars already exists.
    - bigfatkitten 1y ago
      We’ve already got one: YC https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495
  - 1y ago
duxup 1y ago
This also seems like an app ripe for actual creep / abusers to follow / manipulate. The claim that it provides safety really is just that, an empty claim.
- dabockster 1y ago
  The fact that it verifies by ID scan is also not safe at all for a million different reasons. A better way would have been to charge a small subscription fee - like $2/month or something. The fee filters out 99% of the trolls out there (who wants to pay to troll) and also gives the app/website admins access to billing info - name, mailing address, phone number, etc - without the need for a full ID scan. So the tiny amount of trolls that do pay to troll would have to enter accurate deanonymizing payment information to even get on the system in the first place. And it can be made so only admins know peoples' true identities. For the user facing parts, pseudonyms and usernames are still very possible - again so long as everyone understands up front that such a platform would ultimately not be anonymous on the back end. But oh no, that won't hypergrow the company and dominate the internet! Think of all the people in India and China you're missing out on! /sarcasm
  - fragmede 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - whatsupdog 1y ago
      Imagine flipping the genders and writing this comment in another context: "Women will go to great lengths to try and manipulate men. $2/month just gets you less crazy bitches", and imagine the outcry and downvotes. However it's totally normal and acceptable to bunch all men into a singular group and demean 50% of the population.
      - blks 1y ago
        [flagged]
danesparza 1y ago
>> How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel timebomb waiting to happen? By this logic: I suppose glassdoor, yelp, or Google reviews aren't legal either? What about identity verification as part of any employment offer?
- AndroTux 1y ago
  The difference is, on these platforms you're rating legal entities. On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal information about, an individual. Where I come from, sharing personal data of someone without their consent is not allowed.
  - bluescrn 1y ago
    > On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal information about, an individual. Or in this case, sharing personal information about yourself...
    - Bilal_io 1y ago
      No, they'd be sharing the man's photo, name and phone number if I am not mistaken, and obviously without his consent.
  - voxic11 1y ago
    I think its a mostly US based app, in the US sharing your opinion about other people is protected speech.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Sharing your opinion is protected speech, by lying is not always protected speech, particularly if done with the intent to financially hurt someone.
      - gitremote 1y ago
        Do you think a women's dating safety app is mainly about women lying and intending to hurt men, because it's rare for men to stalk or sexually assault women?
arrowsmith 1y ago
> Peeple failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip against anyone Without bias and gossip, who would even want to use the app?
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  Almost everyone? And not in a cheap throwaway comment way, I mean genuinely. The value is that it’s informative not a gossip rag.
  - theflyinghorse 1y ago
    I don't think you understand humans. Spicy social gossip is far more attractive to people rather than anything informative.
exiguus 1y ago
A gray area in my eyes. As a father, I think it's good that my daughter uses the app. You only need to look at the statistics to see how many women are killed by their male partners every year.
- thefourthchime 1y ago
  It's harmful to spread this kind of fear. Statistically it's less than 0.05% of women die because they are killed by their partner. This puts a stigma on men in general as some sort of dangerous savages.
  - guywithahat 1y ago
    It's also leads to racism when people break down relationship violence by race. It's a dumb argument that helps no one
    - cauch 1y ago
      I think the problem is not the statement, but the conclusion. Do we have more physical violence from men towards women than the opposite? I think I saw that the reality is yes. Does it mean that men are biologically coded to be violent, or is it a question of education and culture? If you conclude the second one, it is not "sexist" (on the contrary, it may even be that the culture that creates the problem is itself rooted in sexism and that acknowledging some reality about its existence may help changing this culture), and does not imply prejudice against men, just acknowledging that we need to be careful in case of bad apples. It still means that talking about this requires to be very careful. To react on your example, I think it is a good think to notice if some population have a bigger problem at this subject than others, and we can then identify more easily the places where this problem forms and target these places. But people who concludes "look at violence divided by race, so I can generalise and be prejudicial to everyone in some race and not other" are idiots.
      - hdgvhicv 1y ago
        Men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than women
xhkkffbf 1y ago
I believe that at least one person has gotten a posting removed about himself by complaining directly to Apple. He presumed that Tea wouldn't care. https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870 https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870
- viccis 1y ago
  [flagged]
- kingkawn 1y ago
  [flagged]
singleshot_ 1y ago
“False slander” is not a thing. The answer to your last two questions is found within section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
- pdabbadabba 1y ago
  > “False slander” is not a thing. It's only not a thing because, in the U.S., it's redundant. In other jurisdictions, it might be a thing, because there are places where a claim can be both defamatory and true.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - laughing_man 1y ago
    This is more a question of English than law. Slanderous statements are false by definition. There are countries where "false defamation" could be a term of art. Japan, for instance, where spreading rumors about someone that hurt their reputation is actionable even if those rumors are true. If your boss is having an affair, for instance, and you tell all your coworkers, he can successfully sue you.
givemeethekeys 1y ago
There are large Facebook groups dedicated to "Are we dating the same guy?" / "Are we dating the same woman?" that predate this app.
- Fogest 1y ago
  A lot of these groups have also had people get successfully sued for defamation.
tptacek 1y ago
Defamation (libel and slander) consists of false statements (or direct implications) of fact. Actionable defamation consists either of those false claims that cause quantifiable damages, or that claim things that are per se considered damaging --- a specific and limited list. "This guy is a creeper and treats romantic partners terribly" is pure opinion, and cannot be defamatory. The (rare) kinds of opinion statements that can be defamatory generally take the form of "I believe (subjective thing) about this person because I observed (objective thing)", where "(objective thing)" is itself false. "The vibe I get about this person is that they hunt humans for sport" does not take that form and is almost certainly not defamatory. Under US law, providers are generally not liable for defamatory content generated by users unless you can show they materially encouraged that content in its specifics, which is a high bar app providers are unlikely to clear.
- akerl_ 1y ago
  A general plug that if you read this comment and thought “damn, 1st amendment law sounds complex and interesting”, you may want to check out https://www.serioustrouble.show/ https://www.serioustrouble.show/ , a podcast about legal news with a recurring focus on 1st amendment law and cases
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  But you can ruin a person’s life on a whim. That cannot be allowed.
  - akerl_ 1y ago
    Can you cite that? Because in the US I’m not aware of a law against sharing negative opinions about someone.
    - danparsonson 1y ago
      Right - that's basically the business model of Twitter these days
ssalka 1y ago
I would imagine Tea enjoys protections from Section 230, same as all other social media sites.
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
[flagged]
listless 1y ago
This looks like a slam book. Or that’s what girls called it when I was in high school. Basically just a place where you write mean things about people you don’t like. And those people don’t get to see it.
- boppo1 1y ago
  Yes but if you brand it differently it's about safety!
dmatech 1y ago
Providing a platform for defamation and other tortious speech is generally legally protected under §230. They still have to respond to court orders and DMCA requests, though. This is how sites like Kiwi Farms remain online. That said, commercial apps can sometimes be sued under defective product laws.

webstrand 1y ago

Not only that, I think they're forfeit their Section 230 protections since they're exercising editorial control by excluding males from the platform. So they'd be directly liable for any defamation they publish on their platform.

mikeyouse 1y ago
That's not how 230 works - why do people keep parroting this misinformation? https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
- webstrand 1y ago
  Because it's really good misinformation, thanks for the link. I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional protection.
  - magicalist 1y ago
    > I had no idea that it was effectively unconditional protection. Defamation is still not protected, it's just the person who posted it who is liable. Meanwhile the site's "editorial control" is protected by the first amendment, not section 230.
  - JoshTriplett 1y ago
    Huge credit for actually updating in response to evidence.
- schoen 1y ago
  It continues to confuse me that the publisher/distributor distinction that section 230 was meant to remove (created by prior Federal court decisions) gets so frequently interpreted as if section 230 had been intended to establish it. To me this feels as if people widely thought that the Apollo Program was intended to prevent people from traveling to the moon, or Magna Carta was meant to prevent barons from limiting the king's power, or Impressionism was all about using technical artistic skills to depict scenes in a realistically detailed way.
- Nasrudith 1y ago
  Because they seem to want it to work that way and seem to think that by spreading the misinformation that it will somehow change the way the law is interpreted.
- derbOac 1y ago
  Thanks for posting the link. I had read that before and forgot. I think sometimes confusion about Section 230 maybe points to some legal soft spots. I think there's a trend — good or bad — for courts to see websites as accountable for users' activities on the site when those activities are systematic and collectively illegal or jeopardized, when the website is seen as encouraging the activity. It's not hard for me to imagine a court deciding that the intrinsic nature of the website encourages systematic libel, and is therefore is somehow involved in the creation of post content. Even more specifically, I'm not sure the "good faith" clause of Section 230 even applies to something like Tea in the case of libel, should libel be there. Now, actually showing libel is another thing, but that's also easier for me to imagine today than even a year ago, especially in the presence of a data breach where posters are exposed. I guess I don't see Tea as being held legally responsible for anything about the content of user posts, in the US at least, for the reasons outlined in that article. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.
pridzone 1y ago
It would be in Apple and Google’s best interest to pull these apps immediately. Multiple Supreme Court justices have indicated an interest in narrowing the breadth of section 230 immunity. This app, structured entirely around effecting the reputation of private individuals, provides a relatively clean case to do so. It’s not a stretch that the app could be considered a ‘developer in part’ of the content it hosts, and thus lose section 230 protection. A narrowing of section 230 would not be good for Apple or Google, though they wouldn’t face any liability for the Tea apps conduct.

carabiner 1y ago

It's exactly like Lulu which shutdown due to privacy issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu_(app)

emseetech 1y ago
Every couple years someone tries this and it immediately turns into a cesspool because no matter the good intentions of the makers, it attracts the worst kind of person as active users. It gets shut down, everyone forgets, then someone eventually has a brilliant idea... It come from a place of sincerity but defenders imagine everyone would use it for the same reasons they would: Warning people of genuine threats in the dating world. They would never use it for gossip, or revenge, or creative writing, etc. so they don't imagine others would. But at scale, if generously only 0.1% of women in America are bad actors that would weaponize this app, that's over 150k people (not to mention men slipping past security). And the thing about bad actors is that one bad actor can have an outsized effect.
- carabiner 1y ago
  There needs to be a startup accelerator or VC that solely focuses on recycled ideas. We could have an app that gathers strangers for dinners, one for reviewing people, and so on. Since all of these gained traction at some point, the idea would be you get 1-2 quick puffs of these discarded cigarette butts before selling or shutting down. Just vibe code it, go viral, collect some subscriber fees, then close due to whatever reason.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    TechStars already exists.
  - bigfatkitten 1y ago
    We’ve already got one: YC https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495
- 1y ago

duxup 1y ago

This also seems like an app ripe for actual creep / abusers to follow / manipulate. The claim that it provides safety really is just that, an empty claim.

dabockster 1y ago
The fact that it verifies by ID scan is also not safe at all for a million different reasons. A better way would have been to charge a small subscription fee - like $2/month or something. The fee filters out 99% of the trolls out there (who wants to pay to troll) and also gives the app/website admins access to billing info - name, mailing address, phone number, etc - without the need for a full ID scan. So the tiny amount of trolls that do pay to troll would have to enter accurate deanonymizing payment information to even get on the system in the first place. And it can be made so only admins know peoples' true identities. For the user facing parts, pseudonyms and usernames are still very possible - again so long as everyone understands up front that such a platform would ultimately not be anonymous on the back end. But oh no, that won't hypergrow the company and dominate the internet! Think of all the people in India and China you're missing out on! /sarcasm
- fragmede 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - whatsupdog 1y ago
    Imagine flipping the genders and writing this comment in another context: "Women will go to great lengths to try and manipulate men. $2/month just gets you less crazy bitches", and imagine the outcry and downvotes. However it's totally normal and acceptable to bunch all men into a singular group and demean 50% of the population.
    - blks 1y ago
      [flagged]

danesparza 1y ago

>> How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel timebomb waiting to happen? By this logic: I suppose glassdoor, yelp, or Google reviews aren't legal either? What about identity verification as part of any employment offer?

AndroTux 1y ago
The difference is, on these platforms you're rating legal entities. On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal information about, an individual. Where I come from, sharing personal data of someone without their consent is not allowed.
- bluescrn 1y ago
  > On Tea, you're rating, or rather sharing personal information about, an individual. Or in this case, sharing personal information about yourself...
  - Bilal_io 1y ago
    No, they'd be sharing the man's photo, name and phone number if I am not mistaken, and obviously without his consent.
- voxic11 1y ago
  I think its a mostly US based app, in the US sharing your opinion about other people is protected speech.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Sharing your opinion is protected speech, by lying is not always protected speech, particularly if done with the intent to financially hurt someone.
    - gitremote 1y ago
      Do you think a women's dating safety app is mainly about women lying and intending to hurt men, because it's rare for men to stalk or sexually assault women?

arrowsmith 1y ago

> Peeple failed because they couldn't eliminate bias and gossip against anyone Without bias and gossip, who would even want to use the app?

dyauspitr 1y ago
Almost everyone? And not in a cheap throwaway comment way, I mean genuinely. The value is that it’s informative not a gossip rag.
- theflyinghorse 1y ago
  I don't think you understand humans. Spicy social gossip is far more attractive to people rather than anything informative.

exiguus 1y ago

A gray area in my eyes. As a father, I think it's good that my daughter uses the app. You only need to look at the statistics to see how many women are killed by their male partners every year.

thefourthchime 1y ago
It's harmful to spread this kind of fear. Statistically it's less than 0.05% of women die because they are killed by their partner. This puts a stigma on men in general as some sort of dangerous savages.
- guywithahat 1y ago
  It's also leads to racism when people break down relationship violence by race. It's a dumb argument that helps no one
  - cauch 1y ago
    I think the problem is not the statement, but the conclusion. Do we have more physical violence from men towards women than the opposite? I think I saw that the reality is yes. Does it mean that men are biologically coded to be violent, or is it a question of education and culture? If you conclude the second one, it is not "sexist" (on the contrary, it may even be that the culture that creates the problem is itself rooted in sexism and that acknowledging some reality about its existence may help changing this culture), and does not imply prejudice against men, just acknowledging that we need to be careful in case of bad apples. It still means that talking about this requires to be very careful. To react on your example, I think it is a good think to notice if some population have a bigger problem at this subject than others, and we can then identify more easily the places where this problem forms and target these places. But people who concludes "look at violence divided by race, so I can generalise and be prejudicial to everyone in some race and not other" are idiots.
    - hdgvhicv 1y ago
      Men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than women

xhkkffbf 1y ago

I believe that at least one person has gotten a posting removed about himself by complaining directly to Apple. He presumed that Tea wouldn't care. https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870 https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870

viccis 1y ago
[flagged]
kingkawn 1y ago
[flagged]

singleshot_ 1y ago

“False slander” is not a thing. The answer to your last two questions is found within section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

pdabbadabba 1y ago
> “False slander” is not a thing. It's only not a thing because, in the U.S., it's redundant. In other jurisdictions, it might be a thing, because there are places where a claim can be both defamatory and true.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- laughing_man 1y ago
  This is more a question of English than law. Slanderous statements are false by definition. There are countries where "false defamation" could be a term of art. Japan, for instance, where spreading rumors about someone that hurt their reputation is actionable even if those rumors are true. If your boss is having an affair, for instance, and you tell all your coworkers, he can successfully sue you.

givemeethekeys 1y ago

There are large Facebook groups dedicated to "Are we dating the same guy?" / "Are we dating the same woman?" that predate this app.

Fogest 1y ago
A lot of these groups have also had people get successfully sued for defamation.

tptacek 1y ago

Defamation (libel and slander) consists of false statements (or direct implications) of fact. Actionable defamation consists either of those false claims that cause quantifiable damages, or that claim things that are per se considered damaging --- a specific and limited list. "This guy is a creeper and treats romantic partners terribly" is pure opinion, and cannot be defamatory. The (rare) kinds of opinion statements that can be defamatory generally take the form of "I believe (subjective thing) about this person because I observed (objective thing)", where "(objective thing)" is itself false. "The vibe I get about this person is that they hunt humans for sport" does not take that form and is almost certainly not defamatory. Under US law, providers are generally not liable for defamatory content generated by users unless you can show they materially encouraged that content in its specifics, which is a high bar app providers are unlikely to clear.

akerl_ 1y ago
A general plug that if you read this comment and thought “damn, 1st amendment law sounds complex and interesting”, you may want to check out https://www.serioustrouble.show/ https://www.serioustrouble.show/ , a podcast about legal news with a recurring focus on 1st amendment law and cases
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dyauspitr 1y ago
But you can ruin a person’s life on a whim. That cannot be allowed.
- akerl_ 1y ago
  Can you cite that? Because in the US I’m not aware of a law against sharing negative opinions about someone.
  - danparsonson 1y ago
    Right - that's basically the business model of Twitter these days

ssalka 1y ago

I would imagine Tea enjoys protections from Section 230, same as all other social media sites.

otabdeveloper4 1y ago

[flagged]

listless 1y ago

This looks like a slam book. Or that’s what girls called it when I was in high school. Basically just a place where you write mean things about people you don’t like. And those people don’t get to see it.

boppo1 1y ago
Yes but if you brand it differently it's about safety!

dmatech 1y ago

Providing a platform for defamation and other tortious speech is generally legally protected under §230. They still have to respond to court orders and DMCA requests, though. This is how sites like Kiwi Farms remain online. That said, commercial apps can sometimes be sued under defective product laws.