Bumble will now ban users who body shame anyone on the dating app

Popular dating app Bumble has adopted a new policy that strictly punishes body shaming – the act of insulting someone on the basis of their physical appearance. Users will be able to block and report profiles for body-shaming and Bumble will also go through profiles to see if any user has been indulging in body-shaming language. Bumble also says it will use automated safeguards to detect comments and images that go against its guidelines and terms and conditions. If found guilty, they will receive a warning for inappropriate behaviour and repeated offense can get them banned from the platform. [caption id=“attachment_9249541” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Bumble uses “automated safeguards” to detect such comments and images that go against its terms and conditions.[/caption] The company is in the process of issuing guidelines to its moderators regarding their approach to body shaming and the moderators will also have the ability to share resources that are intended to help the reported individual learn how to change their behaviour to be less harmful to others in the future. Explaining how the system will work, the release said that Bumble uses “automated safeguards” to detect such comments and images that go against its terms and conditions. Once the AI-detected reports are accumulated, some chosen ones are forwarded to a human moderator to review. It is a move by the company to ban unsolicited and derogatory comments that can be deemed to be racist, fat-phobic, colourist, homophobic or transphobic. “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,” said Priti Joshi, VP of Strategy at Bumble. She assured that thorough investigation of the received reports will be carried out but the team will “not hesitate to permanently remove someone who consistently goes against [their] guidelines”. Bumble is also reviewing its photo moderation policy. In 2016, the company banned shirtless bathroom mirror selfies and swimsuit and bra photos taken indoors. The company is in the process of reviewing and updating its photo guidelines. In 2019, Bumble introduced Private Detector, a feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically detect and blur unsolicited nude images. The feature then alerts the recipient who can choose to view, delete, or report the image.