Team Media Case Study
Part 1: Business Analysis
Describe a media product, service, or presence and trace its ultimate ownership.
Part 2: Ethical Analysis
Assess the media product, service, or presence according to your ethics code.
1A) Tinder.
1B) September 12, 2012.
1C) Free basic app with in-app purchase options available for additional features.
1D) IAC, the InterActiveCorp.
1E) https://www.gotinder.com
1F) 555 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011 United States.
1G) Barry Diller (Senior Executive), Joey Levin (CEO of IAC), Greg Blatt (Chairman of The Match Group), and Sam Yagan (CEO of The Match Group).
1H) IAC is an American media and Internet company that also owns Match.com, OkCupid, and The Princeton Review, among other businesses.
1I) Forbes Magazine said Tinder is predicted to make $75 million in 2015.
1J) Sources:
USA Today, Match.com, Tinder company headed for IPO.
Forbes.com/Tech, Tinder Swipes Right to Revenue will add Premium Service in November
Hollywoodreporter.com/news, Barry Diller’s IAC in Match IPO, Names New CEO
Tinder.com/About
2A) We identified many ethical problems with the app Tinder during this media case study. Ethical dilemmas are defined as two or more ethical values conflicting. The ethical issues we would like to address are honesty and fidelity.
Honesty is something that an individual must choose that they want as a moral value in their life. Tinder users must choose if they will have honesty as a moral values on their profiles. This moral value goes for any user on any social media. As an example of honesty on the internet we chose an article from the Guardian, written by Emma Jane, that identifies some of the things people lie about on social media/the internet. According to her findings, “People are usually 20% less rich than they say they are; the more attractive a photo, the more likely it is to be dated; and both men and women exaggerate their heights.” These numbers were collected by the OkCupid dating site.
Honesty and fidelity are closely related. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines honesty and fidelity as, “fairness and straightforwardness of conduct,” and, “the quality of being faithful to your husband, wife, or sexual partner or loyal to a country, organization, etc,” respectively.
Tinder creates an ideal experience for individuals growing up in a reward-driven society. According to Andrew Colman, a psychologist and game theory expert at the University of Leicester, human relationships are “inherently game-like.” A 2009 study done by the University of Warwick shows that the majority of men use a form of game theory in mate selection; comparing pros and cons of each mate and move before advancing. This game-like approach to dating and interpersonal relationships depersonalizes potential mates and spouses leading to higher rates of divorce. According to a study performed by GlobalWebIndex, more than four out of ten people who use Tinder are already married. The swipe-happy and convenient nature of the mobile app leads to a propensity for marital infidelities.
While not only the integrity of Tinder is coming under fire, the app is proving to be more and more dangerous to its female users. The New Daily reports that sex-crime filings in connection to the app are occurring across the globe. A 28-year-old woman from New Zealand told New South Wales police that she was sexually assaulted in Sydney after meeting her perpetrator through the dating app. The man organized a meeting where the woman was then drugged and taken back to his home where the man and a group of friends engaged in nonconsensual sexual intercourse. Warriena Wright, a 26-year-old woman also living in New Zealand at the time, went on a date with a Tinder match during a visit to the Gold Coast. Her date, Gable Tostee, allegedly engaged in sexual activity with Wright before turning violent and throwing her from the 14th floor, high-rise balcony of the Avalon Apartments located in Surfers Paradise, (The New Daily).
The ethical dilemma that faces Tinder is an age-old question that can be repurposed for numerous different products; is the app to blame for the moral ambiguity of its users? There are many honest newlyweds who have Tinder to thank for swiping right on Mr. Right. In early 2013, Jenny Shaab and Ben Marder were both early-adopters of the dating application. Just over a year and a half after showing a mutual interest by swiping right on each other, Shaab and Marder were married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tinder promotes the #swipedright hashtag on their website to encourage users to share their love stories over social media. A Tinder spokesperson told Tech Insider that while they don’t record hard numbers of successful Tinder love stories, the spokesperson claimed that they received, “hundreds of stories each month” (Tech Insider) from couples who attributed their recent weddings or engagements to the dating app.
This brings us back to the dilemma. While honest users don’t contribute to the growing incidences of Tinder-related sex crimes, by continuing to use and support the app, honest users are still perpetuating use of Tinder by both moral and immoral parties alike. There are measures Tinder can take as a company to reduce the violent sex crimes, but Tinder can’t make the decision for married couples to remain faithful. Fidelity is a burden of choice that only the individual can shoulder. There are, however, ways that Tinder can encourage and support honest matchmaking. The key is to set in place a dating structure that not only bridges the gap between two individuals, which Tinder does very well but to also fulfill the emotional needs of the parties involved. A tall order, no doubt, but not inconceivable. Tinder falls short in that respect by only fulfilling the reward-based needs of the individual. Users gain a gratifying sense of achievement through matching with other users. Since Tinder is a dating app, this encourages the temporary nature of the relationships between users because Tinder continues to reward the user with more options. It is difficult to implant the idea into users that the true reward of dating is through connection and self-actualization, which sits atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory. As a group, our goal now is to develop a guideline for Tinder that supports the cultivation of relationships, instead of one-night stands. That, as well as security protocols to flag and weed out the sexual predators on Tinder, to hold them accountable for their transgressions.
2B) We decided that our team ethical process is as follows (derived from Ralph Potter’s Box, Mark McElreath’s Box and Sissela Bok’s Model in the Some Decision Making Models PDF).
- Define the problem. What are the two or more conflicting moral values/problems in the situation? Which one of the values appeals first to my conscience? Does this value make me feel guilty, or confident?
- Individual motivation to act.
- Be accountable.
- The pursuit of personal excellence in character.
- Choose the best value/ethical decision for the situation from the steps above and implement it.
We chose to define the problem as the first step because in any decision making process there is a problem that needs to be solved. If there is a problem then you must define what it is. In this case study we identified two of Tinder’s problems, which are honesty and fidelity. If Tinder could control honesty it would reduce some of the problems related to infidelity. We suggest Tinder limit the number of swipes per day, and that Tinder links to the person’s other social media accounts so that people can be further identified as the person that they say they are. Though this may be a hard thing to track, taking small steps towards fixing a problem is better than doing nothing at all.
The individual motivation to act was our second step that we based off of the Some Decision Making Models PDF from Mark McElreath’s Box. As a group we decided that Tinder is made up of individual users who each have their own motivations as to why they are using the app and it can be hard to determine people’s motivations while using the app. Tinder can’t detect people’s motivations when they become a member, but after agreeing to their terms and conditions they could also have an ethics page that people must agree to become users as well. This can help resolve and improve the individual motivation to act because the users would need to agree to abide by certain ethics such as being trustworthy, and honest about how they are displaying themselves.
Accountability was a very necessary value for us because there is an appalling lack of accountability on Tinder. There are users who deliberately deceive you, according the Jessica Morley interview. Morley has had Tinder dates that she went on where the person she matched was completely different than the person who showed up for the date. Our solution to this problem is the same as the individual motivation to act. We suggest Tinder creates an ethics guideline that people must read and agree to so that they can become a member.
We decided to include the pursuit of personal experience in character because people who are going on the app, Tinder, are looking for relationships. The best course of action to hold people accountable for themselves is to set up a database that flags suspicious actions on Tinder. Suspicious actions can include anything from inhuman swiping, which is swiping that is too fast or too frequent to be anything but a computer program, to monitoring fraudulent account origins. We suggest that after a person gets 10+ flags then Tinder has the right to run a background check and shut down his/her account. This can help resolve and improve this media situation by reducing a number of untrustworthy people on Tinder.
After conducting our research about Tinder’s ethical problems, we believe that the steps in our ethical process and the solutions we came up with for each step will help Tinder filter their users so that the Tinder app can be an ethical dating site.
Bibliography
Bertoni, Steven. “Exclusive: Sean Rad Out As Tinder CEO. Inside The Crazy Saga”, Forbes. Forbes Mag., 4 Nov. 2015. Web. 4 Nov. 2015
Bertoni, Steven. “Tinder Swipes Right To Revenue, Will Add Premium Service In November”, Forbes. Forbes Mag., 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014
Boy, Nathan. “Match.com, Tinder company headed for IPO,” USA Today. 25 June 2015. Web.
Comm 3505. “Comm 3505- Ethics- Some Decision-Making Models.” Canvas. 1-2. PDF File/Classroom Handout.
Cummings, Jozen. “Why You Should Delete Tinder Immediately”, New York Post. New York Post Mag., 17 Aug. 2015. Web. 17 Aug. 2015
Guthrie, Susannah. “Rape, Murder, and Stalkers: The Real Risks of Tinder”, The New Daily. The New Daily Mag. 9 Oct. 2014
Hakala, Kate. “This Is Why Men Outnumber Women Two-to-One on Tinder” Mic. Connections Mic. Mag. 18 Feb. 2015
Jane, Emma. “Hey online dating liars! If you fib on Tinder, you’re only hurting yourself.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. 12 March 2015. Web. 30 Nov 2015.
Jo Sales, Nancy. “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse”, Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair Mag., 31 Aug. 2015. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.
McLeod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” Simply Psychology. 2014. Web.
Morley, Jessica. Email interview. 5 Dec 2015.
Renfro, Kim. “This Couple Got Married After After Swiping Right On Tinder: The App Isn’t Just About Hooking Up”, Tech Insider. Tech Insider Mag. 20 Aug. 2015.
Soltys, Douglas. “The ethics of app use.” Mobilesyrup. 6 August 2015. Web. 30 Nov 2015.
Szalai, Georg. “Barry Diller’s IAC Plans in Match Group IPO, Names New CEO.” The Hollywood Reporter. 25 June 2015.Web.
Tinder. n.p. n.d. Web. 30 Nov 2015.