The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South 111. Rajan (n 1). 103. This followed an eighteen-month investigation by the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and the Markup. See Emily Elena Dugdale and Hanisha Harjani, ‘Rape under Wraps: How Tinder, Hinge and Their Corporate Owner Chose Profits over Safety’ The Guardian (13 February 2025) <https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/tinder-hinge-match-investigation> accessed 7 August 2025. 104. Salter, M., Tyson, D., Woodlock, D.,’Swipe wrong: How sex offenders target single parents on dating apps to exploit their children’ in Searchlight 2025 – Childlight’s Flagship Report ( Childlight – Global Child Safety Institute 2025) <https://www.childlight.org/searchlight/study-d-swipe-wrong-how-sex-offenders-target-single-parents-on-dating-apps-to-exploit-their-children> accessed 11 October 2025. 105. Singh and Sirur (n 6); Singh Rahul Sunilkumar, ‘Majority of Indian Adults Ignorant about Consent in Relationship: Tinder Survey’ Hindustan Times (5 September 2022) <https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/indian-adults-ignorant-about-consent-in-relationship-says-tinder-survey-101662369660962. html> accessed 8 July 2025. 106. Women navigating dating apps in India often express concerns about the authenticity of information men provide, including age, income, and educational background See Lingutla A, Kumar V (2022) Evolution of Online Dating: Analysis of Dating Preferences, User Psychology and Pain Points in Context to Indian Market. Int Res J Modernization Eng Technol Sci 4(11):784–795< https:// doi.org/10.56726/IRJMETS31248>. 107. Lingutla and Kumar (n 106). 108. Anita Gurumurthy, Amrita Vasudevan and Nandini Chami, ‘Born Digital, Born Free? A Socio-Legal Study on Young Women’s Experiences of Online Violence in South India’ (IT for Change 2019). 109. See Arvind Ojha, ‘Delhi Woman Accuses Bumble Date of Rape, Case Filed’ India Today (New Delhi, 26 October 2023) <https://www.indiatoday.in/ cities/delhi/story/woman-alleges-rape-by-bumble-date-delhi-police-registercase-2453908-2023-10-26> accessed 2 August 2025; Aakash Ghosh, ‘Swipe Right for Trouble: Dating Apps New Playground for Criminals?’ Hindustan Times (12 April 2025) <https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/lucknow-news/swiperight-for-trouble-dating-apps-new-playground-for-criminals-101744398505973. html> accessed 3 September 2025. 110. Vignesh Radhakrishnan and Rebecca Rose Varghese, ‘No sexual violence survivor contacted a lawyer, only 4.7% took police help in 2019-21’ The Hindu (16 May 2022) <https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-no-sexual-violence-survivorcontacted-a-lawyer-only-47-took-police-help-in-2019-21/article65419734.ece> accessed 11 October 2025. 68 Platform Accountability in Online Dating 112. Rajan (n 1). 113. See, for instance, Aisle’s safety section nestled in its Terms of Use, which makes it clear that users bear the “sole responsibility for taking all appropriate safety precautions.” The section then outlines user responsibility to not post “any defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, obscene, profane, offensive, sexually oriented, threatening, harassing, racially offensive, or illegal material.” The safety section notably does not outline the platform’s own safety policies. It does not elaborate on reporting/complaint mechanisms available to the user and the process followed by the platform on receiving such complaints. It also does not provide information on the platform’s own content moderation initiatives. 114. See for instance, ‘Crisis Text Line’ <https://policies.tinder.com/safety-center/ tools/crisis-text-line/us/en/#:~:text=Text%20TINDER%20to%20741741%20 from,about%20any%20type%20of%20crisis.> . 115. See for instance, Bloom Trauma Support Program <https://bumble.com/ en-in/help/bloom-for-sexual-assault-survivors--online-trauma-support-program-now-available> accessed 11 October 2025. 116. See Rajan (n 1). 117. See Contact Us <https://www.quackquack.in/v2/help/contactus.php> accessed 11 October 2025. 118. See Catherine RK O’Brien and others, ‘Online Dating Platform Safeguards and Self-Protection: How Dating Platforms Characterise, Respond to, and Safeguard Against Harms’, Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM 2025) <https:// dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3719825> accessed 27 August 2025. 119. For instance, Bumble allows users to report multiple facets of interaction on their dating platform. This includes content on a user’s profile (both images and profile text) which may be hateful, abusive or sexually explicit. This also includes user behaviour through messaging or offline interactions which involve sexual harassment, physical violence, sexual assault and stalking. 120. See Terms of Use <https://www.aisle.co/termsofuse.html> accessed 11 October 2025. 121. See Code of Conduct <https://www.quackquack.in/codeofconduct/> accessed 11 October 2025. 122. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 (Intermediary Guidelines 2021) <https://www.meity. gov.in/static/uploads/2024/02/Information-Technology-Intermediary-Guide- Platform Accountability in Online Dating 69