Bumble, a widely popular dating app, has disabled the feature that lets users search for dates according to political viewpoint. This comes after users took advantage of this feature to find and report rioters who stormed Capitol Hill.

Bumble Users Deliberately Match With Capitol Rioters

Following the pro-Trump protests at Capitol Hill, Bumble users reported finding a number of potential dates who bragged about attending the Washington D.C. riots on the app.

Related: Reddit Removes Popular Trump-Related Subreddit

Users were able to locate protest attendees by using Bumble's politics filter. This feature lets users sort matches by apolitical, moderate, liberal, and conservative views.

On January 7, 2021, Alia Awadallah, the co-chair of the Foreign Policy for America NextGen Initiative, sent out a Tweet pointing out the prevalence of potential rioters on dating apps in D.C.

Another user, Allison Norris, replied to Awadallah's Tweet, noting that her friend has switched "her preference on Bumble to Conservative." Norris also stated that her friend matched with alleged rioters and that she plans on "sending them to the FBI."

This sparked a trend of Bumble users filtering matches by political viewpoint, which Bumble responded to by temporarily disabling the feature. In a reply to a Tweet, Bumble stated that it has turned off its politics filter "to prevent misuse."

The platform then went on to say that it "prohibit[s] any content that promotes terrorism or racial hatred," and that it has "already removed any users that have been confirmed as participants in the attack of the US Capitol."

In a report on Mashable, Bumble made a longer statement, explaining the steps that Bumble took on the day of the protests:

On January 6, we immediately ensured that our hate speech scanning and protocols addressed the attack on the U.S. Capitol and began removing any insurrection-related content from our platform.

Bumble also said that it "will take appropriate steps with law enforcement" if it finds "anything that would suggest someone has or is in the process of committing a potentially criminal act."

There's no word on how long Bumble's temporary shutdown of the politics filter will last. In the meantime, Bumble also said that it will be using AI technology to find and remove content that "promotes the insurrection." Any users who repeatedly post "extreme content" will face a ban from the platform.

Is Bumble's Response Appropriate?

Some may argue that by shutting off its politics filter, Bumble is protecting those who attended the riots. But on the other hand, users did seem to be abusing this feature.

Perhaps it would've been better if Bumble took action on this content earlier, instead of letting users take matters into their own hands.