The...Tinderverse?: Opportunities and Challenges for User Safety in Extended Reality (XR) Dating Apps

Abstract: Dating apps such as Tinder have announced plans for a dating metaverse: the incorporation of XR technologies into the online dating process to augment interactions between potential sexual partners across virtual and physical worlds. While the dating metaverse is still in conceptual stages we can forecast significant harms that it may expose daters to given prior research into the frequency and severity of sexual harms facilitated by dating apps as well as harms within social VR environments. In this workshop paper we envision how XR could enrich virtual-to-physical interaction between potential sexual partners and outline harms that it will likely perpetuate as well. We then introduce our ongoing research to preempt such harms: a participatory design study with sexual violence experts and demographics at disproportionate risk of sexual violence to produce mitigative solutions to sexual violence perpetuated by XR-enabled dating apps.