Safety work repertoires and dating platforms: How users of Tinder and Bumble manage their safety

Abstract

Dating apps enjoy some popularity among those looking for relationships, love, casual sexual encounters, and more. While platforms’ infrastructures provide affordances to mitigate safety concerns, app users are reluctant to rely on platforms alone to keep them safe. This study centers the experiences of dating app users on the popular platforms Bumble and Tinder, and how they manage their own safety. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 42 dating app users in the United States, the article puts forth the notion of safety work repertoires that users develop to protect themselves. Such repertoires include vetting others, strategic (non)disclosure of information, critically considering platform migration, avoiding cross-platform traceability, the careful selection of meeting spots, and looping others in. As platform governance regimes continue to push toward individualization and self-responsibilization, this study suggests that dating app users’ safety work repertoires rely on community-based interventions that collectivize, rather than privatize, safety.