Spilling the Tea
Unfiltered online dating advice without all the sugar
Story by Franny Vollert
Published Feb. 13, 2026
Photo courtesy of Tina Okovit from Pexels.
Two months before “Tea Dating Advice” was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store on Oct. 21 for violating user privacy, Mahle Dunham downloaded it. She took a photo of herself, with the app requiring her to verify her identity as a woman. It took her more than a week to get accepted onto the platform.
Weeks earlier, she had been seeing someone who, she found out, faced sexual assault allegations. She ghosted him, and later saw numerous anonymous users reiterating the same claims on the app. Dunham said that seeing other app users report the same allegations was affirming and helped reassure her that she hadn’t simply cut someone off for no reason. This instance didn’t seem to faze her. When she switched gears to tell her second story, however, the attitude turned more somber.
Later, she was involved with someone who had opened up to her about his past struggles with addiction. He was posted on Tea as well, with multiple comments matching the stories he had told her. When she showed him the information circulating on the app, he was shocked and hurt. He had been sober for some time, and, Dunham said, he felt like his past was still haunting him when he saw what was being said about him online. “It kind of took away his autonomy to tell his story,” she said.
Dunham’s story highlights a concern many users have about the ethical implications of a platform like Tea. On one hand, certain information can help protect women from physically or mentally abusive men. On the other hand, as Dunham says, many of the app’s comments feel like gossip.
Tea was launched in 2023, following founder Sean Cook's efforts to create a dating safety platform for women, inspired by the experiences of his mother and other women in his life. Gaining momentum during the summer of 2025, Tea sparked social media conversations about gender dynamics and led to a surge in downloads. Dunham, for one, discovered the app on TikTok.
According to TechCrunch, Tea amassed 6.1 million downloads and $5 million in revenue before its removal.
The app currently functions for those who downloaded it before the removal, but certain features in the downloaded version will soon be unavailable. In a recent announcement sent to users, Tea claimed that it is “required to take down the features that allowed sharing experiences about specific men.” They say a web app version of Tea will be available soon, preserving the individual sharing feature.
Before, once they had been approved to use the app, women could post photos of men, asking others for “tea” on them. Comments ranged from genuine warnings: “Stay away from this man, he sexually assaulted my friend,” to just plain gossip: “He’s a Tinder wizard,” or “He likes feet.”
So, where’s the line?
VeyAnna Bolden isn’t sure. She initially downloaded the app because a few of her friends wanted to see if anything was being said about them. Bolden and her friends began scrolling through the app to find people they knew. “We would go in the comment sections, and there’s just crazy stuff being written about people,” she said, adding that anonymity is heavily valued by younger users. “You can talk a lot when your name is not involved in anything.”
Contrary to Dunham’s experience, Bolden, who downloaded Tea shortly before it was banned, said her verification process took just minutes. When scrolling through a post with more than 50 comments, Bolden said, it’s hard to discern what’s true and what’s not. “Some things I knew were true,” she said. “But again, there’s just random stuff and crazy stories being put out there. You really got to take everything with a grain of salt.”
Online discussions on Reddit emphasize the division of attitudes toward the implications of the app’s content. In an r/AskWomen thread, one user estimated that among the 50-some posts they looked at upon downloading the app, only one or two were actual warnings. “The rest seemed to be complaints about the person’s personal life, like if they were an alcoholic, etc,” they wrote. In r/AskMen, one commenter wrote, “They say it’s for women’s safety, but the things they do or say on there don’t seem like they’re for women’s safety. More just for fun.”
Many men have attempted to remove posts allegedly spewing inaccurate information about themselves or their friends through reviews on the Apple App Store, according to multiple Reddit threads. Men have also been using a site called SueTea to try to remove the posts. “I don’t want my reputation to be ruined because of made-up things by a bunch of salty girls online,” one commenter said.
Robert, a 22-year-old man from Tacoma, who requested his last name not be used, said he’s put off by the exclusivity of the app. For him, it would make much more sense to have a platform on which anyone, regardless of gender, can find information about potential dates or partners. Robert was informed by a former partner that he had been posted on the app, and after a failed attempt to log in and see what was being said about him, he didn’t try to get the post taken down. Whatever information is out there — which is still a mystery to him — has the same integrity as a hacked social media account, he said.
“I’m not gonna let that profile about me on the internet define me,” Robert said. From his perspective, Tea undermines the social experience that comes from interacting with people face-to-face, and genuinely getting to know someone requires more than simply creating an online profile with the hope of finding information about them.
Apart from his strong personal feelings about the exclusivity of Tea, Robert said the post hasn’t greatly impacted his social life. “Maybe emotionally, mentally, it kinda messed with me knowing I’m on an app like that,” he said.
Another big concern about the platform is user privacy. On July 25, 2025, selfies, photo IDs and other images from posts on the app were accessed during a data leak. In a statement released the week after, Tea claimed to be launching a “full investigation with assistance from external cybersecurity experts.”
A rival app called TeaOnHer launched shortly after Tea, offering men the opportunity to share photos and experiences with women in the same way. However, in August, the app faced user privacy concerns of its own, leading to its removal from the Apple App Store and Google Play on the same day as Tea.
Apple cited violations of its App Review Guidelines for the removal. One guideline says apps with user-generated content must also have reporting and blocking features, while another says apps can’t share personal information without the individual’s permission.
Rosalind Kichler is an assistant teaching professor of sociology at the University of Washington, specializing in gender, sexuality and women’s studies. She initially heard about Tea after the data leak in July, which exposed both personal information and direct messages between users containing deeply detailed and personal stories.
Despite the larger discourse around the app’s safety, Kichler recognized the motivation behind the creation of a platform like Tea. Ultimately, the platforms perpetuate the idea of women supporting each other through shared experiences of heterosexuality. She added that it’s reasonable and understandable for women to want a space to talk about the extraordinary violence that can be done to them in the world of dating and sex.
An estimated one in five women is a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime. When it comes to drug-facilitated sexual violence, studies show at least a 98.3% rate of male perpetrators.
It doesn’t stop there.
A 2024 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 41% of women experienced some form of sexual violence or stalking from an intimate partner, compared to 26% of men.
Kichler said the line between incompatibility and someone simply being a bad person becomes blurry on internet forums like Tea. There can be a tendency to unfairly label others after having a bad experience with them.
Relationships are often complicated, and what both Robert and Kichler emphasize is that those complications don’t always make themselves clear through a screen.
When it comes to reputational harm, a concern voiced by both Robert and men online attempting to get posts about themselves off the app, Kichler thinks it’s important to weigh those concerns against the damage of assault or violence. “People being unwilling to date you is not the same as a traumatic experience that will live with you for the rest of your life,” Kichler said.