Recording: THW require all dating apps and matchmaking platforms whose purpose is “finding true love / a long-term partner” to mandatorily disclose users’ “romantic history”—including number of past relationships, duration of each, reasons for breakup, and whether they have ever cheated.

This is a policy motion. Behind this motion, there must be a status that the government side wants to change. From the motion it’s easy to see that currently these dating platforms do not mandatorily require the users to disclose these information. Now if the government wants these to be disclosed, we need to see what impact will land on which stakeholders and what kind of problems the government tries to solve.

Stakeholders

Apparently, the first group of stakeholders is the dating platforms, as the policies land on them directly. Then it’s the users on these platforms.

Impact

Personally speaking, I think the impact mainly land on the users, what they will do, what they will do to each other, it’s also about how the platform will behave to cope with the policy.

For new users, the disclosure of these info will force their dating history to be transparent to whoever on the same platform. But however the platform manages to validate the fidelity of these data, will the users try to lie on them? Will users risk being judged about their dating history? Being judged by their cheating history? If someone broke up because of cheating, but now wants to look for a lifetime partner, would that person still be able to do so if his profile shows “Once Cheated”? If that person wants to hide it, or is ashamed of this, would he be honest to the platform of this piece of history?

But anyway, if two persons wants to be together for a life-long time, it’s hard for them not to talk about each other’s history and some private information. It’s about timing. I think it is reasonable for people to talk about these after they are familiar and feel safe with each other. That’s when they would feel safe to reveal their history, especially less decent ones.

Moreover, it forces users to expose these information to strangers, how is the government or the platforms sure that no strangers would be mean to people with disgraceful history? If anyone was offended by people on their dating history, and in the worst cases some users were traumatized, who should be responsible? For government to support that proposal, these questions should be explained. After all, there are information that people won’t even tell their families, why should they trust the platform instead?

As I said before it’s the timing issue, it’s about when these private information gets exchanged. This is a bit similar to organic dating vs arranged dating. In the former case you get to know a person naturally and slowly. If they have a bad history, usually it takes you a lot of time to discover. In the latter case you know these information beforehand. I have to say that when these information gets exchanged is crucial, cuz you might deny a person if you know a bad history of him/her before dating, but might accept that piece of history after knowing him/her well, knowing there are things much more complicated, and knowing that you actually love him/her pretty much.

On the other hand, how would the platforms be impacted? Would they have less and less users because not everyone would want to share their past? Would the average quality of users on the platforms be higher as they all want to honest and find better partners, and thus won’t lie on their dating history?

Conclusion

Personally I would not support this motion as it puts personal private information at risk, and may potentially cause some trauma to individuals. Every person surely has the right not to disclose anything they do not want to, and for me true love is not like a bargain on the market, you only get to know your partner step by step to know him/her well and figure out if they were the one.