What Counts as Harassment on Tinder?

Tinder's Community Guidelines say harassment, threats, bullying and intimidation are not allowed. The same goes for doxing, sextortion, blackmail and anything done on purpose to cause harm. The guidelines also bar hate based on traits such as race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or body type. Tinder describes a zero-tolerance policy on harassment. Its guidelines also give a simple rule for anyone who does not fit what you want: do not like them, or unmatch and move on.

Most of the list needs no explaining. Threats are threats, and blackmail is blackmail. A few of the terms are worth spelling out, because men sometimes do them without knowing the name.

Doxing means sharing someone's private details, such as where she lives or works, without her say. Sextortion means threatening to share intimate images unless someone pays or sends more. Intimidation covers anything meant to make a person afraid, even when no actual threat is typed out.

The hate rule is broad on purpose. It covers race, religion, sexual orientation and disability, and it also covers body type, which is where a lot of men get caught.

Very few men set out to harass anybody. The trouble usually starts with a sting. She stopped answering, or she unmatched after one exchange, and the man wants her to know how that felt.

That impulse produces most of what gets reported. It looks like a string of follow-ups after she has gone quiet, each one sharper than the last. It looks like an insult sent after she says she is not interested, a crude sexual line nobody asked for, or a remark about her weight when she does not reply.

Most of the men who send those lines would never say any of it to a woman's face. The screen makes it feel smaller than it is. On her side, it arrives as a stranger saying something cruel, and she has no reason to assume you did not mean it.

This is the moment that decides it. A woman who tells you she is not interested has done the polite thing. The only reply that works is a short, friendly one, or none at all.

"No worries, good luck" costs you nothing. "You weren't that hot anyway" is exactly the kind of line the guidelines describe as done to cause harm. It is also the kind that gets screenshotted, shared with her friends and reported.

Some men think a remark about a woman's size, her race or her religion is fair game as long as it is framed as a preference. Tinder's guidelines take the opposite view. If someone does not fit what you are looking for, the answer is not to tell her why. It is not to like her in the first place, or to unmatch and move on.

Your preferences are yours to have. Announcing them to a woman as the reason she is not good enough is the part Tinder treats as hate.

Asking once is flirting. Asking again after she has said no is pressure, and pressure is what intimidation grows from.

This matters most with images. Asking for explicit photos after she has declined moves you toward the territory the guidelines name. Saying anything that sounds like you might share what she has already sent puts you inside it, with sextortion and blackmail at the far end. Never joke about sharing something a woman sent you. There is no version of that joke that lands.

Meeting works the same way. Suggesting a drink is normal, and suggesting it twice is fine if the first time went unanswered. Turning up where she said she works, or asking again and again why she will not give you an evening, is the kind of pressure that makes a woman feel watched.

Tinder's own advice is the best advice here. If a woman is not for you, do not like her. If you matched and it is not working, unmatch and move on.

Nothing about that is weak. A man who can leave a conversation without needing the last word is showing exactly the self-control women look for. He also gets his evening back for the next conversation, which is where his next date is going to come from.

Harassment is not only a question of rules. It is bad for your results on the app.

a dating coach lists user reports for racist, sexist or insulting behavior among the common causes of permanent bans. He has also pointed out that when women complain about a man and unmatch him, the app levels him down, because it wants its users happy.

He is not against edgy humor. His caveat is that going so far that women feel offended hurts you twice: once with her, and again with the app. Teasing that makes her laugh is fine. Anything that makes her feel small or unsafe is where the line sits, and it is a line you can always see if you picture her reading the message on her way home.