BuzzFeed has interviewed several sex workers who have had their Tinder profiles taken down, despite them not using the dating app for commercial purposes.
They claim that they use Tinder to find a personal relationship, but once they update their bio or job description their accounts get blocked.
One woman called Clementine told BuzzFeed: “I changed my bio to put [escorting] was my job because I want to weed out people who wouldn’t want to date me because of my job.
“I tried to log in and got an error message of numbers – I looked it up on the internet and found it’s the error message you get if you’ve violated the terms of use.”
She told Tinder that it was clear on her profile that she wasn’t looking for customers but they still refused to overturn the decision.
Another woman called Kiki also explained to BuzzFeed that she was using Tinder to find someone to date. However, once she mentioned to a man in a private message that she was a sex worker her account was blocked the next day.
Tinder’s Community Guidelines state: “Promoting or advocating for commercial sexual services – is strictly prohibited and will result in your account being banned from Tinder.”
It’s possible that the dating app is stamping down on these accounts to try to stay in line with the new SESTA-FOSTA legislation. As of April 2018, acts were passed to introduce tougher sanctions for online companies or websites that were facilitating human trafficking.
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