Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on viral app
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
The potential problems with this seems obvious…
People on the internet love to judge, gossip and people who know nothing are happy to pile on and spread rumors.
Just the ability to post photos reminds me of the old creepy “fashion” subreddits that clearly were not about fashion…
Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684373 - July 2025 (67 comments)
On topic: how this doxed person got their details removed - https://x.com/JacobJohnson494/status/1948222924235624870
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4chan thread with details of the hack - https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/511317913
A 60 Gig torrent exists of the data - https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1948787086493901097
18.13GB:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3e5a8c55eb4720b4fbd1d0fb5c45adb0fad53569&dn=tea
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:brl45s3ysyotj6ljolmtnrlvfmyv4y7s&dn=tea&xl=59368985613&fc=57794
Are edited comments unflagged somehow? Weird.
Doxxing someone's personal details is independently evil.
Defamation is simply illegal.
There have existed background search services, video chat, location sharing, ID exchange, test results exchange, etc. which do the job without gossip.
This a naive take. A moderate amount of gossip is good for society. It's a poor man's way of weeding out sociopaths who try to control people using information asymmetry, and who themselves don't have any qualms about spreading falsehoods.
A generic example: Jack tells Bob Alice spiked his promotion (a lie), knowing they are not on speaking terms and thinking Bob won't confront Alice. If Bob gossips to Alice about what Jack said, he is in a healthier position to make an assessment about the situation.
Don't leave the gossiping to sociopaths is what I'm saying.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good by letting those with no moral code run rampant all over the place.
The site is no different from Kiwi Farms, and I'm sure they too believe that they have a just cause. Doesn't matter. Bending over backwards to justify this isn't a naivety-defying smart take, it's just plain horrid.
> A moderate amount of gossip is good for society.
From the article:
> "What clubs does he go to?" another person asked on a different post. "He’s cute."
You think this is social justice? Many jurisdictions have laws against online stalking and doxxing.
I will tell you a very simple way to avoid cheaters if that's your goal. Look at their interests. Do their interests involve meeting people and doing lots of social things? Or are they more of an academic type? If they're the former, odds are they will cheat on you eventually. I basically told my partner directly that it's impossible for any man to truly promise that he will never cheat, but my interests make it extremely unlikely that I will, and she was okay with this assertion.
Frankly I'm against downvoting people simply because I disagree with them, but I think you have to admit you haven't really addressed the problem mentioned in this thread. The whole issue here is the "a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth puts their boots on" phenomenon of the social media virality era.
It's a difficult problem to solve, but if you have a suggestion for allowing people to help others avoid abusive people without ruining innocent people's lives on the way I'm sure some people here would be curious.
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.
New Federal laws mean that individuals can get certain pictures removed. AI likenesses might circumvent those, but you have to wonder how far to trust (positive or negative) anonymous ratings from someone who put the work into crafting an avatar of some guy.
While there’s a noble pursuit behind it, we’ll never see the trouble that it prevented. Instead we’ll see scams where a guy will provide doctored screenshots from Tea that cannot be independently verified. Of course, he’ll be new in town, or need some money.