A woman said that she was banned from Tinder after another user saw a photo of her posing next to a dead deer and reported it to administrators.
The Vermont woman, Nichole Magoon, said that she tried to use Tinder while on vacation in San Francisco but found she couldn’t.
She said that she had a picture on her profile next to a dead deer, which she killed to eat.
“I cropped it so there were no weapons, no blood– my family, we are not trophy hunters, we hunt for food. We respect the animal, we respect the outdoors, we eat every part of the deer that we can and only take shots when we feel it’s going to be a good shot and it’s going to take the animal as quickly and painlessly as possible,” Magoon told ABC 7.
The person who reported her to Tinder even got in contact with her employer, Magoon said.
A woman named Nichole was banned from Tinder ???? & believes some were offended by this photo of her and a deer ???? she had hunted for food. Should images like this be banned from dating apps ????? 5/6pm ???? pic.twitter.com/jpdldf0qTu
— Dion Lim (@DionLimTV) February 22, 2019
“An individual had emailed my employer with screenshots of my profile saying some not nice things,” Magoon said.
The email was obtained by Local 22. In it, the user stated: “Really is this the best a marketing strategist can do to find love online? [expletive]. No wonder why she’s on Tinder … not illegal, but classless for sure.”
The user was identified by Nichole and when contacted by Local 22, he admitted that he reported her to Tinder and sent the email to her company.
“While my personal feelings of hunting fall on one side of the issue, my main complaint being that it just doesn’t belong on a public dating site and all I did was report it toTinder as inappropriate,” the user said. “That’s got to be considered a bad move as you are now not just representing yourself, but also your Company as well and thus the reason I felt prudent to let the Company know.”
A dating-app disaster: Photo gets Vermont woman banned from Tinder https://t.co/jGLffxYD0e
— WWLP-22News (@WWLP22News) February 15, 2019
Magoon noted that a number of the men on Tinder use hunting photos and said it’s a double standard for her to get in trouble for a picture when they don’t.
“They responded back saying I violated their terms of service and their community guidelines and don’t have an appeals process, so I was permanently banned,” she said. “I turned to social media and sent them a tweet saying, ‘Hey Tinder I’m banned can someone explain this to me.’ I had actually done a Google search of men with deer on Tinder and I got examples of profiles that came up so I sent that to them along with the tweet.”
“It’s really about this double standard that exists. It’s discrimination I have experience with as a female in a male-dominated sport for a long time, which is why it’s so important to me to bring light and speak out against this,” she added to ABC.
Tinder declined to answer some questions about what happened and issued a statement that said in part: We have a team dedicated to investigating each report.”
I choose to be vocal about this issue because not only does this #doublestandard happen to women often, but even more so with women in the outdoors. I’ve experienced it my entire life being involved in outdoor sports.
— Nichole Magoon (@nicholemagoon) February 7, 2019
My niece is almost 2 and she’s already shown interest in the outdoors, in the deer & turkeys we’ve shot. She loves venison. One day she may want to participate in this sport. I NEVER want her to feel like she can’t just because she’s a girl. I choose to set an example NOW.
— Nichole Magoon (@nicholemagoon) February 7, 2019
Tinder said that Nichole’s profile was reported multiple times. “The matter has been resolved” and she can use Tinder again, the company said.
But Dr. Elaine Young, professor of Digital and Social Media Marketing at Champlain College, told Local 22 that Tinder seemed to be reacting hastily to reports without an investigation.
“What it seems like they’re doing is shutting things down first and asking questions later,” Young said, noting that a number of major social media companies have been going about things in the same manner.
“The Terms of Service might say ‘offensive content might be taken down’ and if the Terms of Service say ‘offensive content,’ then what’s offensive to you isn’t what’s offensive to me,” Young said.
“A lot of experts in the space are starting to talk about this more and more, the big go-to for everything doesn’t really work … you can have all sorts of stuff that you have to actually mediate with human eyes, but the question is are [these platforms] doing that?”
