KOLKATA: Women-first dating app Bumble has launched a new initiative, Stand for Safety, as part of its mission to create a safer, kinder and more respectful internet.
In partnership with Red Dot Foundation's flagship public safety platform Safecity, Bumble is releasing a safety guide to empower women in India to identify, prevent and combat rising digital abuse; a furtherance of its commitment to a zero-tolerance policy for hate, aggression or bullying of any kind.
“Through Bumble’s Stands for Safety initiative, we hope to equip and empower women in India with crucial information to understand and recognise, prevent and fight digital abuse. We are happy to collaborate with Safecity who has been doing incredible work on creating safer spaces for women worldwide. We will continue to demonstrate our commitment to creating safer, healthy relationships on our platform and in our communities,” Bumble VP global strategy & operations VP Priti Joshi.
A recent nationwide survey by Bumble found 83 per cent of women surveyed in India experience online harassment of some kind, and one in three women experience it weekly. A further 70 per cent of women believe that cyberbullying increased since lockdown was announced in 2020. Over half (59 per cent) of women surveyed said they feel unsafe and just under half (48 per cent) feel angry.
Red Dot Foundation founder ElsaMarie D’Silva commented, “Many women are silenced and intimidated in online spaces due to harassment and bullying directed towards them. Today's environment requires everyone to be comfortable and knowledgeable when accessing and utilising digital spaces for various aspects of life. We hope our safety guide will help them navigate these spaces safely and confidently.”
The Bumble community in India can access the safety guide within the app under its recently launched Safety + wellbeing centre, a resource hub built to help our global community to provide them with a safe and healthy dating experience.
Bumble is committed to fostering a safe and inclusive space for its community to connect for healthy and equitable relationships. As a geographic-specific feature for Bumble community in India, a woman can choose to use only the first initial of her name to create her Bumble Date profile and can share her full name with connections when she feels ready and comfortable. Bumble has a robust block and report feature within the app, and has made it easy for its community to block and report anyone who makes them uncomfortable on our app, or anyone who's behaviour goes against the community guidelines.
The social networking app also has a photo verification feature to help prevent catfishing within the app. Another Bumble feature that leverages AI, Private Detector is able to capture, blur and alert users that they've been sent an unsolicited nude image making it the user’s choice to either delete, view or report the image. Bumble recently updated its terms and conditions to explicitly ban any unsolicited and derogatory comments made about someone’s appearance, body shape, size or health, and became one of the first social networking apps to ban body shaming.
The app uses automated safeguards to detect comments and images that go against its guidelines and terms and conditions, which can then be escalated to a human moderator to review.
