How is Tea even legal? Isn't this just a legal libel timebomb waiting to happen?
"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.
That is true. But i think untrained and emotionaly involved individuals will have trouble navigating the boundaries of defamation. Instead of writing opinions like “treats romantic partners terribly” they will write statements purporting facts like “this creep lured me to his house, raped me, and gave me the clap”. This is not an opinion but three individually provable statements of facts. Plus the third would be considered “defamation per se” in most jurisdictions if it were false. (The false allegation that someone has an STD is considered so loathsome that in most places the person wouldn’t need to prove damages.)
Unles specifically coached people would write this second way. Both because it is rethoricaly more powerfull, but also because they would report on their own personal experience. To be able to say “treats romantic partners terribly” they would need to canvas multiple former partners and then put their emotionaly charged stories into calm terms. That requires a lot of work. While the kind of message i’m suggesting only requires the commenter to report things they personaly know about. And in an emotionaly charged situation, like a breakup, people would be more likely to exagarate in their descriptions, making defamatory claims more likely.
> Under US law, providers are generally not liable for defamatory content generated by users…
This is true, and i believe this is the real key. Even if the commenters would be liable, the site themselves would be unlikely to become liable with them.
1. To prove that the factual claims made by the defendant were false, and that the defendant should have known they were false
2. That you suffered actual damages from those claims
Very hard to make happen on a dating app.
For example in the US, to sue for defamation you need to prove something is false, whereas in the UK the defendant has to prove that what they said or wrote (and are being sued for) is true.
(I've no idea whether this app had any non-US use, but thought worth adding this comment regardless since it's a general point about defamation law and being discussed on a site with a big international audience.)
Standard disclaimer that law varies by jurisdiction. However, that limited list typically includes claims that the person committed a crime. Many juristictions also include accusing someone of having a contagious disease, engaging in sexual misconduct, or engaging is misconduct that is inconsistent with proper conduct in their profession.
In other words, the types of things I would expect people to be talking about on tea overlap heavily with defamation per-se.
If the users were careful to make all of their statements opinions, that defense would work. However, I doubt that is the case. Instead, I expect many users to include example of what their ex did that led to their opinion; which gets directly into the realm of factual statements.
The provider protections are real, and likely protect the app from direct lawsuits (or, at least from losing them), but do not protect the app's users. A few news stories about an abusive ex going after their former partner based on what they posted in the app could be enough to scare users away. You don't even need to win the lawsuit if your goal is to harass the other person.
"Cofee App" for males only, that allows them to post pictures of woman they have dated, rate them and include green/red flags.
"She is not good enough in bed", "She is too fat", "She has a high body count",..
Arguing over the legal definition of the word "Defamation" is missing the forest for the trees.
Do modern men need an app to understand this?
The claim that it provides safety really is just that, an empty claim.
A better way would have been to charge a small subscription fee - like $2/month or something. The fee filters out 99% of the trolls out there (who wants to pay to troll) and also gives the app/website admins access to billing info - name, mailing address, phone number, etc - without the need for a full ID scan. So the tiny amount of trolls that do pay to troll would have to enter accurate deanonymizing payment information to even get on the system in the first place.
And it can be made so only admins know peoples' true identities. For the user facing parts, pseudonyms and usernames are still very possible - again so long as everyone understands up front that such a platform would ultimately not be anonymous on the back end.
But oh no, that won't hypergrow the company and dominate the internet! Think of all the people in India and China you're missing out on! /sarcasm
That's Pure. And they have more than 5$ I believe.
It is not, indeed.
The first part is its goal: identity is secondary, the main purpose is money. It means a customer can put a fake name and address as long as the money part is considered OK. Most PSPs won't check the cardholder name (it can be used for fuzzy scoring, but exact match is a fool's errand). Address is usually only required for physical goods and won't be checked otherwise. And 3DSecure will shift the blame enough that the PSP won't need to care that much about the details.
The second part is the whole mess that comes with payments. You'll become a card testing pot in no time, and you'll be dealing with all the fuss just to check identities, you'll soon be rising the token payment to a significant amount to cover the costs, and before you realize it half your business has shifted into payment handling.
This is incorrect. The parent acts like it isn't trivial to obtain payment methods that aren't linked to the payer. It seems like a reasonable possibility.
For whom? For people willing to be an asshole on the internet? For people willing to stalk other people online? This sounds exactly like the group of people that would look for ways of paying for something in ways not linked to them, even if that means "borrowing" someone else's identity
The only reason I haven't is because it feels like LinkedIn may have already jumped the shark and I wouldn't really get the value for my money.
You'd get the lulz. That in itself can be mentally satisfying.
Tbh I've thought about trolling LinkedIn myself. It honestly needs to die.
And now you have a better chance at pointing a finger at someone, at the very least. And the thought of that finger pointing would be enough to keep an admin on top of things.
The issue is they decided to roll their own extremely questionable service and insecurely store sensitive images in a public bucket
Multiple SAAS vendors provide ID verification for ~$2/each. They should have eaten that fee when it was small and then found a way pass it onto the users later
- IDs usually contain enough information to totally steal a person's identity (beyond just their name and mailing address).
- IDs usually have secret security mechanisms beyond what's publicly known for a government to verify if an ID is real or not.
- 3rd party business systems can only verify the publicly known security stuff. And because that security stuff is public, it can get faked easily.
- IDs are super easy to fake.
- The only entity that can totally verify an ID is a government, because you'd have to verify the secret security mechanisms as well.
And there's a million reasons why you wouldn't necessarily want a government to verify an ID for a private business transaction.
Have you seen who has the blue checkmarks on Twitter/X now? I'll give you a hint, it's not the people who argue in good faith.
So the same as it was before you could buy them?
You've never visited X (formerly known as Twitter)?
By this logic: I suppose glassdoor, yelp, or Google reviews aren't legal either?
What about identity verification as part of any employment offer?
Some social problems just don't have technological solutions.
Those ten reports could be made by one person. That one person might not even know the person they're accusing. That one person might be a man. That one person might be a bot.
You'd have to ignore the last three decades of online identity, trolling and social media pitfalls to not recognize that.
And please don't compare reviewing a can opener on Amazon to accusing someone anonymously of a heinous crime on an app built by one person.
But I'm not sure I'm going to convince you with words so I'll suggest this:
Go and build this app.
Build it, see what happens. Nobody else has been able to crack this but maybe you can.
It might be relavent to who wins the lawsuit, but sometimes the mere existence of a lawsuit is pretty painful.
I mean if witches didn't do anything surely they wouldn't be hunted down.
A well-designed system will maximize utility for the former, and minimize utility for the latter. An app where women can leave what are practically anonymous reviews for men is not such a system.
This isn't all of the people, but in my experience in life it's more than enough to make this app impossible to filter.
A lot of men have had experiences like this one. Either directly or they know someone it happened to. Yeah #NotAllWomen but way too many will exploit the feminist #BelieveAllWomen culture to gain even trivial benefits. An app devoted to letting women anonymous gossip and engage in reputation warfare without fear of consequence, or even fear that the man might reply in self defense, is going to get flooded with women like the taxi passenger.
Go read some statistics on the number of women harassed, abused, raped, and killed every day—every single day—because they are women.
Go ask your mother, your sister, your wife, your female best friend, when they had their last abusive encounter.
Go ask your friends of both genders what the worst things are that could happen to them when walking home at night, and compare the responses.
Go read some historic accounts of how women were treated for… pretty much all of history.
Go look up news articles of what can happen to women when riding a taxi. Spoiler: it’s not just a threat.
Yes, there are some abusive women out there. Yes, it’s fucked up when that happens to you. But trying to insinuate the levels of violence against men would be even remotely comparable is just plain awful.
By people going on the same sort of rants like you just did.
Some People are terrible, especially when they think they can act without consequences.
Does that excuse men doing bad things too? No.
But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
After the big war, some Germans were quick to point out that their people had suffered when they were displaced from the land they occupied in Poland, for example, and that "both sides had suffered". I assume you're also incapable of understanding why the victims of the Nazi regime were completely aghast by that?
> But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
What do you suggest to do instead? Sexual violence is often a crime with only the perpetrator(s) and the victim as witnesses. In most cases, rape doesn't leave persistent traces. Rape victims tend to be in shock, however, and often need time to process what happened. Your suggestion seems to be that we should question these claims?
Judging these cases correctly is incredibly complicated, and claims of wide swaths of men falling prey to abusive women don't really help anyone affected.
Yes, we should question those claims, and any others. Or everyone who wants to be shitty will do it via that route. It’s basic shitty human behavior.
That it screws actual victims is why people gaming the system should be punished.
But not challenging these claims just makes more victims too. And eventually people will just tune out accusations, because the shittiness has gotten too pervasive. And then the predators/shitty humans will get be doing more actual rape eh? Which is terrible.
This is why it’s also prudent to be very careful who anyone is alone with, favor video recording of public spaces, etc. as well. Because the best way to avoid a situation is to make it as difficult as possible for the situation to occur, and minimize the chances of any ambiguity. Which is also shitty for everyone.
Personally, I also don’t trust the stats because I’ve seen many (5+) women retcon clearly consensual behavior (that they were even bragging about before!) into ‘he raped me’ when someone tried to shame them for it later, or there was some leverage they could get out of it. I had one who literally admitted to me when I investigated that she was doing it to punish the guy for refusing to date her later. Another was fine until she went home and her mom gave her crap about her dating behavior, and then all the sudden it was rape. Until we started to interview her for her story, and then she admitted it was consensual.
I very much believe actual rapes and SA’s occur. I personally have literally never seen an accusation for rape or SA that stood up to even the lightest scrutiny, within the environments I’ve been responsible for. And not because I was trying to avoid them!
The joys of being a manager of mixed sex groups eh?
If we could figure out the actual truth of these situations, then we could punish actual offenders and not constantly be in this BS situation.
That's not what it is intended for, but many people after relationships end can be extremely emotional and sometimes very spiteful. It's not uncommon for people to embellish or lie about the truth to make themselves look better and the other person look shitty. Especially if you're the one being dumped, you may be even more likely to engage in petty behaviour.
I personally have experienced an ex making up a sexual assault story. This kind of app didn't exist then, but she even went as far as reporting me to the police. Luckily the police investigated and could easily discern it was a lie. Going to the police is obviously a much higher burden than using an app, and yet many females still go make false SA claims there. Do you really think it wouldn't be a common problem for people to do the same in an app at a much higher rate?
People often believe things like SA claims without any evidence and will often even attack people trying to defend the person or insist on some kind of proof. It means that someone making up bull crap on these apps is going to be treated like it is true, yet the rates of lies would likely be pretty high.
People can just be so crazy when it comes to relationships/love. Especially when it comes to people in their teens or early 20's, the brain isn't fully developed and dealing with these emotions is even more challenging and leads to even more rash decision making.
The more common it is, the more damaging false claims of it are. It's a self-defeating linear relationship.
I have seen false rape claims, false claims of child abuse, neglect, etc.
With zero repercussions, of course.
I still maintain my pet theory that this is a downstream effect of the normalization of paranoia around pedophiles that began hitting the mainstream in the '80s. The modern world is exceptionally safe, yet to the average person, it feels exceptionally dangerous.
...While I've got the hood up, I'll continue soapboxing.
I've started seeing rare instances such as a young woman walking around a corner and there is a man rounding the same corner, surprising her by mistake, and the woman starts crying or breathing in a panicked way, unable to regulate herself for several minutes. It's not always walking around the corner at the same time, but there's a common pattern of being surprised by a man just going about his day and experiencing a severe fear response to that interaction.
When I look at a lot of cultural related issues today, beyond just gender, I see many signs of pervasive psychological issues. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm very confident that the root cause is more complicated than something you can describe in a single sentence.
The same hypothetical 5% can inflict harm to multiple women, that's why multiple women and girls complained about Epstein and Trump.
But I was friends with my wife's friends before we got married, and in a sample size of ~20 women my age, every single one of them has experienced inappropriate and unwanted touching in social settings. And a large number of them were victims of outright rape.
In comparison, I have many male friends and of them, I only know one who has been wrongly accused of sexual assault (the lady openly talked about doing it to help with a promotion...)
So even if both sides may have a few bad apples, one side is a much more prevalent problem when it comes to the number of victims.
A remarkable fact that's stayed with me: Ken White (@popehat) once said that in his defamation law practice, his largest category of consultations was with clients who'd said negative things about a past romantic partner, who then threatened to sue. I believe his point was those negative things were true most of the time, but difficult to prove, or defend.
Yes, and? The service is protected in the US by Section 230, and Tea doesn't operate anywhere else currently. Individual users who use it defame are, in principal, subject to defamation liability, but in the US (and, again, that’s the only jurisdiction currently relevant), the burden to proving that the description was both false and at least negligently made (as well as the other elements of the tort) falls on the plaintiff (it is often said that “truth is an absolute defense”, but that’s misleading—falsity and fault are both elements of the prima facie case the plaintiff must establish.)
Sure, in a jurisdiction with strict liability for libel and where truth is actually a defense, and/or where the platform itself, being a deep pockets target, was exposed, Tea would be a more precarious business. But that’s not where it operates.
I suspect that's going to be more of a problem for Tea than hypothetical individual defamation cases.
Although having said that, how can you sue someone for defamation if you never find out you're being defamed?
Any woman can say "Don't date [name], he's a bad person" and the victim will never know.
Unless he asks a female friend for a social credit check, all [name] will see is a shrinking pool of opportunities.
"He's a bad person and you shouldn't date him" is an opinion you can legally express anywhere as much as you want.
I mean, I think it depends what you claim in this post.
It’s hardly a rebuttal when I have to go and find all the evidence to prove myself wrong.
I think sometimes folks don't properly threat model what can be done if someone chooses to think about what the consequences for breaking a rule are and letting that guide their actions, rather than striving to avoid breaking them out of some kind of moral principle.
1) The truth is an absolute defense against libel claims, but it is a defense, so you must prove the truth of your claims.
2) Statements of opinion (or that a “reasonable person” would understand to be opinion) are with few exceptions protected. “Firefax is a rapist” is likely to not be considered a statement of opinion. “Firefax is a creepy asshole” likely is. “Firefax is a sexual predator” is probably going to be in a grey area and context and damages will be relevant.
3) The more “public” of a person you are, the harder it is to win a libel case, even the statements were false. For example, let’s say it turns out both that there is some “Epstein List” describing clients and their activities, and also that it turns out Trump doesn’t appear anywhere in that list. Trump is such a public figure (both as a celebrity and as the POTUS) that he would be extremely unlikely to win any libel cases against the internet randos confidently asserting he’s on the list even though that statement would have been a statement of fact, and would have been false.
4) A key part of the “opinion” grey area is whether you imply knowledge of heretofore unknown facts, or your relying on publicly available data. Internet randos might not lose a case, but someone like Elon Musk might if they said something like “I’ve seen the case files, Trump is definitely on that list and has done some sick things”. This is because Musk could reasonably be believed to have had privileged access to the information in question and have non-public facts they are basing their statements on. Internet randos on the other hand are largely going to be considered making their statements on the back of publicly known facts (e.g. photos, business connections, public actions and statements) and general “vibes”
coolcoolcool. I'm sure that never ever gets abused horrifically.
Men's driver licenses were not distributed online. Only women's driver licenses were distributed online.
I assume the app then runs facial recognition.
This may be legal in the US, but not under GDPR. Pictures of faces are biometric data (explicitly listed as such), which falls under additional restrictions beyond personally identifiable information.
A drivers license with the picture blacked out would be less sensitive than the picture itself!
This whole story is an amazing example of why the GDPR is correct about this, IMHO.
Where you come from, people arent allowed to share their own experiences interacting with third parties without the third parties consent?
Sounds pretty oppressive, but there are absolutely many jurisdictions where that is not the case.
Cool, I'm sure Tea is only available to report things about United States citiz... nevermind.
It runs afoul of about a dozen european rights to privacy, imagery and consent laws. And that's just by posting pictures ! Libel and slander are a bunch of others, right to a response is also another... the list is long. It is, once again, yet another dudebro trying to skirt legality.
The EU is welcome to try to enforce its local laws on the US operations of a US business open only to US users, but I don’t think its going to have much success.
https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-10/edpb_2024041...
That boat already sailed and it already happened. "US only operations" does not matter (which is already bullshit, as Tea does not verify that users are US ones, they merely disabled downloading in the play/app store): posting pictures of European citizens runs afoul of European laws. Sure, they can't come and arrest you on US soil. Just don't travel too much.
The document you linked is interesting but I'm skeptical that you actually read it. It effectively says that in practice there's no hope of enforcing actions against entities that are purely in the US unless their behavior has run afoul of state or federal policy.
It does note that if concrete damages are recognized by the court that there is a decent chance US courts will cooperate to enforce the judgment. But the vast majority of GDPR enforcement is punitive as opposed to compensatory so it's not particularly relevant.
I'm also not clear why you think traveling would matter. DPA penalties are administrative in nature, not criminal. They are also likely to be levied against corporations as opposed to individuals. My guess is that the extremely unlikely worst case is your entry or visa application getting denied.
Needless to say, I am very happy about making the US eat shit.
Tea can collect and use photos of EU citizens, if it collected them in the USA, with (all other things being equal) no fear of GDPR violations.
So, yes Facebook can't collect photos of EU citizens, then process and do "stuff" with them in the USA, without violating GDPR, because that'd be the easiest out ever for multinational tech companies.
It is the location of the subject of the personal data collection that matters, not their citizenship.
Steam tried this stuff on in Australia too, saying it had no presence there, but still sold games to Australians. In particular, they didn't want to honour Australia's consumer rights laws regarding refunds. They fought hard in the courts and lost, and it improved steam for almost everyone.
Big tech try on these jurisdiction arguments all the time, but they've repeatedly failed where you are selling goods to, or providing services to, people in those jurisdictions. The US does the same thing. If you sell or provide services to someone in XX state, you need to abide by the consumer laws (and maybe privacy if it is a state like CA) of that state.
This is one of the reasons paypal and Escrow.com have had a competitive advantage. It is hard getting money transmission / escrow licenses in all 50 states like they do. There are many such examples.
Valve did not want to give up its Australian income stream, which is why it went to court.
Two Germans shooting each other in Australia break Australian law, but not German law.
Its the only country in the world where Tea operates or is open to users, what other country’s laws do you think apply to it?
But if your proposed concept of “revenge libel” laws are just, as you say an added penalty for a subset of existing libel offenses, then while they might add more severe sanctions, they don't change the scope of what is prohibited, so they wouldn't change the calculus on whether anything is illegal.
This isn't any different from a friend sharing details of their date with somebody they know (including pictures). If it's a bad date, I'm sure the tone of the conversation would be different (and might include "stay away from this person")
Even the open platforms creep me out. I don’t like seeing unverified accounts of crime in Nextdoor, I think if you see some crime you go to the police. I had a series of in person interactions with a woman which seemed creepy in retrospect, her Nextdoor was full of creepy stuff including screenshots of creepy online interactions. At least this gives everyone clear evidence they should keep away.
Or in this case, sharing personal information about yourself...
…is clearly not the US, which has probably the most expansive understanding of “freedom of speech” in the world.
The USA doesn't even rank in the top 15 on the human freedom index. Most freedom indices don't even put the USA in the top 20. A few don't even put the USA in the top 30.
Also they have very little to do with “measuring” freedom of speech anyway.
* https://www.ibanet.org/Trumps-assault-on-the-First-Amendment
* https://theconversation.com/x-252706
* https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/x-rcna208057
* https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/23/trump-harvard-michigan-dei.htmlI'm just saying that the American definition of freedom of speech (whether the authorities follow it in practice or not) is unusually expansive. Edge cases like hate speech against particular ethnic groups, public insults, open support for terrorist organizations, etc. are much more likely to be legally protected in the US than in other countries, even including other liberal democracies.
Donald Trump is a danger to the fundamental rights granted by the constitution, and the republicans are assisting him in tearing it down.
Also, I was under the impression the constitution referred to everyone on American soil equally when it comes to the fundamental civil rights, which includes freedom of speech, the right to due process, and the right to gather; yet, several people have been detained, without due process, for their speech, or for peaceful assembly.
The constitution protects free speech, regardless of citizenship. Having their visa revoked for inconvenient speech is problematic in itself, but using that as a ploy to strip people of their fundamental rights is completely unacceptable.
The constitution does not protect non-visa-holding people from deportation regardless of the reason the visa was revoked. In this case the visa was revoked because they were supporting a foreign terrorist organization, which is something they promised not to do when applying for a visa. This is not something that needs to be proven in court unless the government is filing criminal charges.
Nobody's rights are being stripped. They're simply being forced to leave the country. They do not have a right to be here.
Imagining a future where I have to pay Tea to promote and astroturf my profile or they lower my rating, and pay bot farms to post glowing reviews
Yes, as far as I understand, you upload pictures of men, either taken in the wild or from dating sites (Tinder) against their will. I am pretty sure that this would be illegal in some jurisdictions. Especially EU.
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.
The problem is the demand is there for such groups and I see posts that range from, “this guy tried to get me to get in his car”, or “man exposed himself to me”, to “man has twice approached children at my child’s school” or “I was drugged and raped after meeting with X on Y dating app”.
Lots of sexual attackers are known to multiple women.
Fact is that in lots of countries rape kits don’t get processed, it’s hard to secure a conviction, many serial sex offenders walk free and many women don’t want to go through a reliving of their trauma in court.
As a result these kinds of groups are very useful, not just for women who are actively dating, but for women who are simply existing in day-to-day public life. We have a president and a supreme court judge who both have been accused of serious sex offenses and nothing happened.
Is there a chance that some man who has done nothing wrong, gets accused by a woman in these groups? Yes of course there is a chance that could happen, but many would prefer to not take the risk of dating someone that has been accused of being a sex offender and the vast majority of posts with confirmation by multiple women confirm that bias.
These groups help keep women safer than without them. There’s a good reason why many women just don’t date at all any more. Covid lockdowns reminded them that they don’t really need it and it’s more hassle than it’s worth.
Sadly the vast majority of men are fine (not all men), but not enough call out the bad and dangerous behavior of a minority of their friends and peers. Until that happens women will be drawn to these apps and groups to try to be safer and not be a part of a sex crime statistic.
The concern of false accusation appears to be... brushed aside. Are you a man? How would you feel if you were falsely accused? Knowing that this could snowball into being doxxed, having your employer informed etc. Innocent men have been jailed for this.
Without bias and gossip, who would even want to use the app?
The answer to your last two questions is found within section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
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.
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.
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.
It feels a bit like saying "there is a bug in software X, but there is also a bug in software Y, so let's not fix the bug in software X".
Of course, men also suffer from problems. It even feels that it is usually also due to machismo or something similar. Sometimes, it feels like the majority of men's problem is in fact self-inflicted by the manosphere. They both complain of suicide rate, army draft, violence against men, but they also promote a culture of not-showing-emotion-otherwise-you-are-not-manly, a-man-is-worthless-if-they-dont-succeed, army-is-manly-and-women-are-weak, a-man-should-show-dominence-and-other-men-are-a-threath, ...
People likes to see things in black or white, but the reality is more complicated, and there is no advantages that does not bring also some disadvantages.
However, homosexual relationships has equal rate of partner violence as heterosexual ones. A bisexual woman that has a relationship with an other woman will double her rate of physical violence compare to relationship with a man (statically). A man who has a relationship with an other man will half his rate of violence. This makes no sense at all (unless we believe that sexual orientation is an factor for violent behavior), unless we add a additional factor of sexual dimorphism. Men are on average larger and more muscular, and there seems to be a correlation between being the larger/stronger and using physical strength/fists during a fight. The smaller person is in return more likely to use tools or other means of violence. Statistically, fist also has a higher probability to do damage than improvised weapons, since people are more proficient in using their fists.
Does it mean men are biologically coded to be violent? No. Is it a question about education and culture. Maybe in some countries/cultures, and it wouldn't hurt to use the education system to teach people conflict resolution. Getting people who are physically larger to not exploit that fact during a heated fight is likely a hard problem to solve on a population level.
I think "any form of violence" is not a constructive direction. First, this ends up being very subjective: between 2 forms of psychological violence, which one is the most violent? Secondly, if indeed it is cultural, it implies that different sub-culture may have different ways of acting, so we can always play the subgroups to make it says whatever we want. But most importantly, it is not very relevant for our context: in the case of the first interactions during heterosexual dating, pretending that men risk as much as women seems a very unconvincing claim, for several reasons (even if under-represented it should be under-represented to an unrealistic level to reach an equal level, and it also does not fit with plenty of cultural tropes (I can find a video explaining explicitly that manly men need to dominate their female partner. I'm sure it exists, but the simple fact that I cannot easily find a video explaining explicitly that womenly women need to dominate their male partner shows it's not that of a trope. On the other hand, I can also easily find videos about "trad wife" that will explain that a womenly woman must be with a dominating man))
For the rest, I think we say the same thing: talking about the visible issues is not a problem in itself, but people instrumentalising these issues to be racist or sexist are the problem.
If it's almost all about the size of the specific two people in a relationship, it's a terrible terrible idea to aggregate that by gender, leading to completely misplaced wariness and judgement.
It looks very clear to me that violent behavior in relationship (and more specifically, in the first few days of dating) is a question of education, not the result of one person being bigger. For example, every parents are stronger than their young children, but only some kind of parent are violent towards their children. If it's a question of education, reducing the problem of the size of the people is a terrible terrible idea: the problem will never go away because you don't understand the source and therefore don't act on the source to fix it.
It feels like some people here are framing the problem in "men vs women" framework, as if it is a competition and they don't want to accept that maybe men behavior is different from women behavior because the way they are raised in our society. I don't really see the point: I'm a man, and yet I don't take it personally. The same way I don't take it personally when someone says "don't accept candy from strangers": I'm a stranger for a lot of kids, and yet I understand why they should be prudent and I understand that, in situation where I have to interact with an unknown kid, I should do things differently (for example not giving them candy), not because I'm a danger for them, but because it is true that there is danger and that they cannot know if I'm a danger or not.
So many men take it uselessly and nonconstructively personally as soon as it is dating.
That's the main argument of the grandparent post. If you're missing that then you're not really responding to what they said.
They went into significant detail so I feel like trying to reword it myself would be worse than suggesting you read the post again.
> If it's a question of education, reducing the problem of the size of the people is a terrible terrible idea: the problem will never go away because you don't understand the source and therefore don't act on the source to fix it.
Nah. Root cause analysis is entirely different from risk analysis. This is about risk analysis. If a woman dates a man that's smaller than her, who should be more worried about violence? That's not the time to worry about why and how to fix society.
> maybe men behavior is different from women behavior
Maybe it is! But then you need a really good explanation for the data in the above post. Or you need to say the data is wrong. But you can't just dismiss it as being defensive.
Exactly, and I've answered that saying I'm not convinced, so, I've asked you if you had further arguments. I've said at the time why it was not convincing, and I've built even more in my previous comment.
> If a woman dates a man that's smaller than her, who should be more worried about violence?
I still think it's the woman, because not every parent beat their children despite them being smaller, which proves that being bigger does not mean being violent. You need something more. In this case, I think it's a culture that implies that violent men are manly and successful, which is present in the manosphere. Because there is no such culture (I guess you can find anecdotical case, far from being as common as the manosphere) that implies that women beating men is somehow "womenly", I doubt it implies that tall women will beat men at the same rate.
> But then you need a really good explanation for the data in the above post.
All the data adds up, everything is pretty well predicted by this model. Not sure which data you think this model does not explain (unless you think that somehow this model implies 0%-100%, which is of course not the case). On the other hand, I doubt anyone has ever proven that being taller in the relationship is really a strong causal factor (and not just correlation, as the manosphere is also into going to the gym) (but happy to get links if you have some).
You never made it clear that you understood the argument, because you went straight from "Not sure what is your point" to "Why would it be". That doesn't look like a request for more convincing, that looks like you never considered it.
> I still think it's the woman, because not every parent beat their children despite them being smaller, which proves that being bigger does not mean being violent.
What. Not every dating relationship involves violence either. We're talking about what's more likely here.
Also children and dates are different in so many ways that even ignoring that factor this doesn't disprove the argument at all.
> Not sure which data you think this model does not explain
If the root cause is culture encouraging men to be physically violent, why would the total amount of physical violence be the same in gay relationships, especially lesbian ones?
I'm not saying that the children example means that "every bigger persons will be violent towards a smaller person", I'm trying to explain that the children example means that "violence is not the result of being bigger, it's the result of the individual propensity to be violent, which itself depends a lot of the individual 'world view'". What I call here 'world view' is how the individual understand the world, their role in this world, what they can or cannot do, ... This is something built based on their parent education, but also their personal experience, what they absorb from the ambient culture and how they identify with different societal messages.
Such influence is taken as obvious in plenty of places: we don't question concepts like "different countries have different cultures and therefore people act differently", or "the education that this person has received had an impact in the way they act now", or ...
I find strange that, when it is a discussion that we can frame as "men vs women", these things that we immediately considered impactful in other situations are suddenly considered as totally non-impactful in this context.
Because of that, it feels unrealistic to pretend that women will obviously be as violent if they were stronger than men and that the only thing that stops them is them being smaller.
> If the root cause is culture encouraging men to be physically violent, why would the total amount of physical violence be the same in gay relationships, especially lesbian ones?
I've mentioned that (when I've said "if indeed it is cultural, it implies that different sub-culture may have different ways of acting"). The propensity of violence depends on the "world view", which itself depends on personal experience, what is the message the society send to the individual their role is, ...
In the case of lesbians:
1) I don't think we can easily say "it's the same". Some studies even say it's more, but then, how do you explain that with your model? But looking into it, it looks like the consensus is that it is a difficult study and that we don't have a good statistical significance: the consensus seems to be that concluding "it's the same" is not scientific right now, all we can say is "it may be the same, but it may also not be the same, we don't know yet".
2) The life experience, the social message they receive, the relationship dynamics, ... are quite different in lesbian couples and in heterosexual couples. And all of this affects the propensity to violence. I can understand that a group where the members grew up in a society that sends the message their sexual attraction is "wrong" or "deviant" does not have, for example, the same self-esteem than a group where it is not the case. It is not fair to pretend that lesbian couples have the same background and the same situation than heterosexual couples.
So, in the case of lesbians, the data you provide is not challenging my model: it can easily be that men may be more violent in heterosexual relationship because of sociocultural message (such as "getting angry is the manly way to deal with frustration") or sociocultural role (such as "men are the breadwinner and are focusing more on their career, so they have more pressure and snap differently than women"), while lesbians may be more violent because of their sociocultural message inside their own subculture (maybe? Maybe for example "in a lesbian couple, we expect to have a butch one and a dominated one") or their life experience (maybe? Maybe for example "low self-esteem of both the victim and the abuser leads to a relationship dynamic that facilitate violence").
I'm also interested to have more information about your view on the phenomenon like the manosphere. I don't think we have a "female manosphere" that promotes the same culture of violence towards the partner (I'm sure there are cases, but that is not at all the same order of magnitude in popularity and mainstreamness). Sure, the people who really fall for the manosphere rhetoric is a minority, but they are the extreme of a Gaussian curve that indicate that the mean value is not at the same place for men and for women. If it's the case, is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all (and if it has no impact at all, why people who defend that it has no impact will also be worried about "the image of the men" when it comes to talking about violence done by men? Why would be one message harmless and the other dangerous?)
That's reasonable as a goal but I implore you to be clearer next time. You didn't address the evidence they gave so I couldn't tell if you understood at all or if you though other evidence was more compelling.
> I'm trying to explain that the children example means that "violence is not the result of being bigger, it's the result of the individual propensity to be violent, which itself depends a lot of the individual 'world view'".
I don't think that's good enough evidence for such a strong claim. Not at all enough to say the size factor is flat-out disproven by it.
And overall I do think world view is important, but I bet physical size is a significant factor too unless the evidence above is extra bunk.
> I find strange that, when it is a discussion that we can frame as "men vs women", these things that we immediately considered impactful in other situations are suddenly considered as totally non-impactful in this context.
I'm not saying totally non impactful but it's unclear what percentage.
> Because of that, it feels unrealistic to pretend that women will obviously be as violent if they were stronger than men and that the only thing that stops them is them being smaller.
The statistics given are not based on pretending.
> it looks like the consensus is that it is a difficult study and that we don't have a good statistical significance
That is a much better argument.
> while lesbians may be more violent because of their sociocultural message inside their own subculture (maybe? Maybe for example "in a lesbian couple, we expect to have a butch one and a dominated one") or their life experience (maybe? Maybe for example "low self-esteem of both the victim and the abuser leads to a relationship dynamic that facilitate violence").
Edited this line to make it clearer: Maybe but looking at that level of complication still makes it harder to evaluate man versus woman in any random relationship, especially those very individual life experience factors that can affect anyone.
> I'm also interested to have more information about your view on the phenomenon like the manosphere. [...] is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all
I'm not sure how much it impacts violence in particular, shrug. But whatever effect it has is divided by the relative rarity of believers.
> If it's the case, is it really realistic to just pretend it has no impact at all (and if it has no impact at all, why people who defend that it has no impact will also be worried about "the image of the men" when it comes to talking about violence done by men? Why would be one message harmless and the other dangerous?)
Listen, I haven't heard this debate before, and I'm not taking part in it, but your comparison here isn't reasonable. Asking if one message increases violence and asking if the other message hurts someone's image are completely different things. If someone says no and yes respectively there's no hypocrisy.
I did: I even quoted that part in my previous comment: this part is indeed in the first comment (the sentence starting with " Secondly, if indeed it is cultural, ..." that explains why the data does not prove the conclusion they proposed). But it does not matter, I think we cleared this.
> I don't think that's good enough evidence for such a strong claim.
The children example is not an evidence for a claim.
If you say "I only saw black cats, so all cats are black", I can answer "I'm not convinced, maybe you just saw black cats but non-black cats exist, after all, other animals, like dogs, horses, cows, ... have different color". You now say "the fact that dogs have different colors is not a proof". Of course it's not, nobody pretended it was. I just explain why the initial claim is not convincing. I'm not the one making any claim, I'm just saying that this claim is just a guess and that there are different models that explain the situation as accurately (or maybe even more accurately, as they are also compatible with other behaviors, while the presented model still need to explain why some mechanisms exist in some situation and suddenly disappear in others).
> Maybe but looking at that level of complication still makes it harder to evaluate man versus woman in any random relationship
And so is the reality: it is hard to evaluate man vs woman in any random relationship. Is your point that it is not the case? Or that we should reject models that imply that just because you prefer models more convenient? "Sure, quantum mechanism is interesting, but it makes things more complicated, so let's just pretend it is incorrect"
> But whatever effect it has is divided by the relative rarity of believers.
That is not at all what I say. I explain it in the ellipsis you removed from your quote. I'm saying that the extreme of the distribution shows that we cannot simply assume that the mean is at the same place. For example, women lives older than men, and you can also see it by looking at the very old persons: they are extremely rare, but yet, women are more common.
I don't say at all that violence against women is due to manosphere, the same way I'm not saying that if you ignore people older than 100 years, you will not see any life-expectancy difference between men and women.
What I was saying is that, culturally, "men behaving towards women in ways that may lead to violence" is more assimilated as normal in our society than "women behaving towards men in the same ways". The manosphere is the extreme, as is "people older than 115 year old", but the fact that the manosphere is only about "men towards women" and that there no significant equivalent "women towards men" shows that the average assimilation of default behaviors are different.
> but your comparison here isn't reasonable
I'm not comparing the two.
What I don't understand is that on one hand, the claim is that violence is mainly due to a "mechanical fixed parameter" such as the size of the person and that societal messaging has no significant impact. But that on the other hand, these people are also saying that it is very bad that we hurt the image of men, because societal message has consequence.
Well the actual argument wasn't nearly as extreme as "only black fur", and a better (but still messy) analogy would be you citing one other animal and we don't have good stats for any other kinds of animal either. That's part of why I'm saying the child example isn't very good at affecting convincedness.
Also you used the word "proves", I feel like if you say X proves Y then it's not weird for me to call that a "claim". I don't think "I'm not the one making any claim" is valid here; you're responding to the original claim with arguments that include your own claims.
> there are different models that explain the situation as accurately
I'd say that so far none of the models here reach "very convincing" for all the data at hand. They're all big maybes.
> I'm saying that the extreme of the distribution shows that we cannot simply assume that the mean is at the same place.
Well even with a completely isolated size factor, the means are different. I don't think anyone was saying that.
And sure the distributions might have different shapes. There's a lot of analysis here that hasn't been done.
> What I don't understand is that on one hand, the claim is that violence is mainly due to a "mechanical fixed parameter" such as the size of the person and that societal messaging has no significant impact.
That's too binary. One thing can be the main effect while another is still quite significant. Like 75/25 just to toss out a number.
For the rest, it feels like you are moving the goalpost. The initial discussion was about the fact that if there is an impact of the societal messaging, it is smart to acknowledge that (and I insisted that it should still be done carefully). If now you are saying 75/25, then you are still saying that the societal messaging has an impact. Therefore I still think it's smart to acknowledge it.
(I understand the objection that it may be too dangerous, but unfortunately you did not go into this direction. I come back on that on my last paragraph.)
Why this impression? Your initial main argument was initially resting on "lesbian couples have the same amount of violence", but this argument does not make sense if it is 75/25: if there is a 25% effect, what does observing the same rate means? If you observe exactly the same rate, does it mean that we have a societal impact that somehow canceled itself, or does it means that in fact the "natural rate of violence from women" is less than men (the exact thing you pretend this data proves impossible), but that the societal impact increases it up to reach the same value? If indeed you believe in the 75/25, then the "same rate amongst lesbians" cannot prove anything. And on top of that, now, you also need to justify why it is 75/25 and not 85/15 or 65/35, and the whole argument seems to be "it's my gut feeling" (not that it is bad in itself, but then you cannot use that as basis to pretend that the lesbian data proves something).
I can be wrong, but because of that, it feels to me that you were not really agreeing to 75/25 at the beginning of the discussion (otherwise you would not have used the "lesbian rate" argument as you had), but now that the discussion advanced, you are making some concessions but still try to find some reasons why the conclusion you prefer is still valid. If my impression is correct, it means that instead of looking at the arguments first and reaching the conclusion based on the arguments, you start with the conclusion that you prefer, and build arguments in order to defend this conclusion.
(and I understand that you instinctively prefer the conclusion where we avoid acknowledging that there is something specific to men, it's not a comfortable prospect)
I've mentioned that we could have discussed around the danger of acknowledging. Unfortunately, if now we start discussing that, it will just reinforce my feeling that you jump to another thread now that one ran its course because you want to defend the conclusion you like.
So, yeah, I guess there is not much more to add here.
> The places I've used "prove" are in totally different contexts that the context in which you pretended I was claiming some proof.
I'm pointing at the specific sentence that has the word prove in it, and using the word prove to mean the same thing. If you think it's a different context you don't understand what I'm saying.
> if there is a 25% effect, what does observing the same rate means
I dunno man you were the one claiming the lesbian rate is not actually the same, that was the biggest reason for the concession, you can't now rugpull me and tell me to explain the concession without the reason for it.
And that's also why I don't need to justify the specific number. The specific number is based on whatever the statistics say.
> If my impression is correct, it means that instead of looking at the arguments first and reaching the conclusion based on the arguments, you start with the conclusion that you prefer, and build arguments in order to defend this conclusion.
I didn't even make the initial argument. I'm going completely based on the evidence cited above. This is not about what I want to believe. I would have guessed something very different. So your instinctual preference assumption is deeply misplaced.
The primary motives are to get back at a partner for emotionally hurting them, because of stress or jealousy, to express anger and other feelings that they could not put into words or communicate, and to get their partner’s attention.
The highest rates are found in high school and college, and the majority of partner violence is bidirectional. (A meta study illustrating this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380231193440)
The idea that women are unable of violent behavior, or immune to wanting to take revenge for being emotional hurt or stressed, seems utterly unlikely. Especially young adults who might lack the tools and experience to avoid falling into violent responses.
To quote a different finding: Eight studies directly compared men and women in the power/control motive and subjected their findings to statistical analyses. Three reported no significant gender differences and one had mixed findings. One paper found that women were more motivated to perpetrate violence as a result of power/control than were men, and three found that men were more motivated; however, gender differences were weak
Asking if "men risk as much as women" is a very different question however. If a woman throws a knife at a man, and a man hits a woman in the face, who carry the highest risk? Statically, the fist is going to do significant more damage on average than the knife, as throwing a knife (especially a non-throwing knife), hitting the target, and creating damage is fairly unlikely for a non-proficient attacker. If the attacks was recorded on camera/witnessed, one would be an attack with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill, and the other would be physical assault.
The point is that partner violence is a complex problem, which only simple aspect being that both women and men are humans.
> Black people are the most likely to experience domestic violence—either male-to-female or female-to-male—followed by Hispanic people and White people.2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national intimate partner and sexual violence survey: 2010-2012 state report.
> Asian people are the least likely to experience intimate partner violence.[1]
[1] https://www.verywellmind.com/domestic-violence-varies-by-eth...
Doesn't look correct.
18k men are murdered. But women are murdered by their partners at a higher rate.
Is suicide not counted in any way? A significant other or their loss will have a significant impact on mental health.
> Partner violence appears to account for ~34% of violence against women[2] (but vs. 6% for men)
And this is sort of the point of the comment higher up: when you cut the stat this way, it seems like men are wildly dangerous creeps. But it is a statistic comparing one group to another group. We need to instead look at the absolute rate of partner violence to decide if men are on the whole violent murders or so, and there, the overall risk is low.
[1]: https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-intentional-homicide-victims
[2]: https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
[3]: (I've assumed a round population of 340M for the US, with 50/50 gender, just an approximation.)
Not exactly. The statistics didn't specify the gender identity of the perpetuator, just the relationship to the victim and the gender identity of the victim.
Edit: 100% are murder victims
https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
I have no idea if their number is correct for that either.
But... you're trying to correct their statistics?
I agree with you that in the context, your stats maybe make more sense. But if you're going to correct someone, you generally should recognize what they were trying to communicate in the first place.
humans in general act like psychos, the danger comes more from the size differential than propensity to act like a jerk.
You bring up fact based analyses. Let's see what they have to say.
> Over two hundred studies found that men and women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly equivalent rates, depending on where the samples are drawn from, and what level of violence is identified. (Dutton and Nicholls, 2005).
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog...
2020 USA Per Capita Count of Mortality Event: Assault(Homicide), Female: 0.00139%
https://datacommons.org/tools/visualization#visType%3Dtimeli...
If such a service exists and isn’t being too effective, shouldn’t that be worked on?
My guess is that there’s more to the reasons for why Tea is popular but the safety argument is largely being used to defend it
I think this is called "the police"
Sure any individual discussion about an individual might justifiably refer to that person as "crazy" or "ghetto trash". But the nature of online spaces, and the nature of the public discourse that tends to bring these phrases and discussions into the public eye very quickly starts painting people with broad brushes.
People also feel attacked because often times discussions tend to confuse useful rhetorical devices for conveying a point with justification for a behavior that has harmful impacts on the broader group. For example, it was pretty common to here the "bowl of M&Ms where one M&M is poisoned" analogy in the height of the "Me Too" movement. It's a useful rhetorical device for explaining why someone would fell cautious about a strange man, and why they wouldn't start from a position of trust. But it's also a terrible way of generally treating men in your life, and a terrible broad philosophy for organizations and governments to follow.
And we know this rhetorical device makes bad policy and at large is harmful to innocent people because another time in recent history when that analogy was really popular was immediately after the Sept 11 attacks when talking about Muslims in general and immigrants from Muslim countries. Surely no one would find it strange that Muslims might dislike and feel personally attacked by "people talking about crimes and terrorism done by other Muslims" in the same way that many online spaces talk about "sexual abuse/harassment done by other men". Surely we wouldn't be surprised if people felt attacked or disliked an app for sharing anonymous and private information about suspicious Muslims right? Or let's say someone noticed that black people are statistically 2x as likely relative to their population to be the offender of a violent crime[1]. You'd reasonably expect people to be bothered by an app that excluded black people from signing up and was entirely about strangers providing un-verified experiences with black people under the premise of keeping people safe.
Ultimately, people are bad at statistics and really bad at understanding the degree to which a small minority of individuals can affect a large majority of people by virtue of repeat offending. So it can be true both that lots of people have completely valid awful experiences with members of a given broad group, and that members of that group feel unfairly maligned when discussion about those experiences paints with broad, unqualified strokes.
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
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.
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.
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.
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.