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Continuing on with The Motte's theme of the week, the Australian Federal Government has given the online dating industry a year to implement a 'voluntary' code of conduct in the face of 'online sexual violence' or presumably face regulation.
This ultimatum seems to be motivated by “An investigation by the Australian Institute of Criminology last year found three-quarters of online daters had been subject to some kind of online sexual violence in the past five years.”
Finding the referenced report 'Dating App Facilitated Sexual Violence' (their term, not mine) seems to include amongst other acts:
- Pressured the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule
- Continued to contact the respondent even after they told them they were not interested in having a relationship with them
- Pressured the respondent verbally to perform unwanted sexual acts (eg making promises, lying, repeatedly asking or insisting etc)
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit message
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit photo or video of themselves
- Pressured the respondent to meet them in person when they did not want to
This would include dick pics or non-consensual sexually explicit language sent through a dating app, along with other mundane dating activity. The march to broaden the definition of sexual violence to include 'making women uncomfortable' continues.Australia, is usually a follower of countries like Canada and the UK when it comes to these sorts of policies, but it does occasionally become the first mover when there is the chance of getting a cheap political win (and to seem like it is doing something in the face of more serious issues such as the housing crisis).
The linked news article is kind of buried down the state news media's front page and references the federal government's
karensocial services minister who has previously worked on 'cyber safety' committees. There is a fair chance this is a complete nothing burger that will blow over and is just the govt making noises rather than actually intending to follow through, but time will tell.Here's my tongue-in-cheek (but only just) counter:
How about every woman who signs up for a dating site has to have every person she matches with screened by a designated male 'chaperone' who will also have access to a random sampling of the conversations she's having and if she feels threatened he is allowed to step in and review and take over the conversation. For enforcement, if the male deems the other person's behavior objectionable enough he can request to receive their physical address and may physically beat them (nonlethally) unless they apologize.
I think this sorts all the incentives out and behavior on net improves immediately.
To get at my own position: it is amusing how government is basically reinventing, in much shittier form, the roles that fathers and brothers used to take on in terms of protecting their female relatives from aggressive and uninhibited male attention.
It is possible to maim someone for life while causing injuries that are very unlikely to be life threatening.
An easily avoided risk if you just apologize and refrain from the behavior in the future.
More directly, the reason I am not particularly put off by this risk is that the whole point is we want to filter the worst actors from the dating pool so as to improve the experience for everyone.
Either the threat of possible violence scares them away, or they get beaten to the point they are permanently maimed and thus are less of a threat overall.
Fine. Maybe they can get a large monetary reward to compensate the suffering, then ban them from dating apps for life.
How often do you think such a maiming would ACTUALLY occur under normal conditions?
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