Bumble have announced that they will be banning users who use the platform to repeatedly body-shame other people, so hopefully that means less dudes deriding women as “fat” on their profiles.
According to Bumble’s 2020 Making Moves Report, which surveyed Aussie women aged 18 to 45, two out of three women said that they had felt shamed or had been verbally shamed for their appearance.
The dating app have updated their terms and conditions to make it clear that unsolicited and derogatory comments about someone’s appearance, body shape, size or health are absolutely not on, get in the bin.
That includes anything that appears to be fatphobic, ableist, racist, colourist, homophobic or transphobic. They’ve defined body-shaming as including fat-shaming, health-shaming, criticising skin or hair, thin shaming, unsolicited opinions and mocking another person’s physical features.
The Guardian reports that an algorithm will flag terms that are judged as derogatory based on a person’s appearance, including fatphobic, racist and homophobic language. Moderators will then determine what action needs to be taken.
The app has explicitly said that body-shaming on the platform constitutes both sending people messages critical of their body or health or writing that a certain body type is unacceptable or undesirable in your bio.
People who engage in body-shaming behaviour can be reported by another user using the “block and report,” “unmatch and report” or “hide and report” functions. They will then receive a warning for inappropriate behaviour. And repeated occurrences or especially heinous comments will earn dickheads a full ban, punting them off the dating app for good.
Earlier this month, Bumble surveyed over 1400 users about the impact of body-shaming. They found that 45% of respondents had receive an unsolicited comment about their body either in person or online from someone they dated.
Bumble Asia Pacific Associate Director, Lucille McCart, said: “We have always been clear on our mission to create a kinder, more respectful, and equitable space on the internet.”
She added: “We believe in being explicit when it comes to the kind of behaviour that is not welcome on our platforms and we’ve made it clear that body shaming is not acceptable on Bumble.”
When Bumble launched, it was vocally against misogynist, abusive and inappropriate behaviour. In 2017, the app made an effort to crack down on hate speech, asking users to “block and report” racist users, including those who feature hate symbols in their profiles, so they could be banned by moderators. And in 2019, the dating app added a feature that uses AI to detect and blur unsolicited nude images.
