Online dating platforms play a significant role in contemporary dating practices. While these platforms expand dating opportunities, they also expose users to harms. Through a platform-based document review, we analyse formal and informal documentation related to platform behaviours, to examine how the five most popular dating platforms in the UK characterise, address, and safeguard against harms. Our findings reveal the challenges of balancing platform accountability and user responsibility for safety, particularly as the goal of these platforms is for users to meet in person. Platforms utilise proactive moderation tools and educational resources to enhance safety, yet many of these resources shift the burden of safety onto users. Moreover, we highlight the paradox of selfprotection tools that both mitigate and enable harm, as well as identify inconsistencies in safeguarding provisions, for different geographic regions and marginalised groups.
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O'Brien et al. (2025) studied this question.
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