Bumble launches ‘Stand for Safety’ initiative with women safety guide to combat online abuse

Dating app Bumble has introduced a new ‘Stand for Safety’ initiative, which includes a safety guide for women to keep safe from online abuse. This has been done in collaboration with Safecity, a Red Dot Foundation-owned public safety platform. Bumble allows women to make the first contact with matched male users. The initiative will help women identify, prevent, and fight online abuse. 'Stand for Safety' primarily takes forward the zero-tolerance policy for hate, aggression or bullying.[caption id="attachment_9458021" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Bumble also updated its terms and conditions with an aim to ban body-shaming.[/caption]This comes after a recent survey conducted by Bumble, which suggested that 83 percent of women in India are subjected to online harassment. One out of 3 women experiences it weekly. Additionally, it was found that 70 percent of women feel that online bullying has increased during the coronavirus lockdown period, another negative of the pandemic.Priti Joshi, VP of Global Strategy and Operations at Bumble, in a press release, said, “Through Bumble’s Stands for Safety initiative, we hope to equip and empower women in India with crucial information to understand and recognise, prevent and fight digital abuse. We are happy to collaborate with Safecity who has been doing incredible work on creating safer spaces for women worldwide. We will continue to demonstrate our commitment to creating safer, healthy relationships on our platform and in our communities.”Bumble ensures there is a safe environment by allowing women in India to add only the first initial of their names and later change it to the full name once they get comfortable.Other safety features include the ability to block and report someone easily, a photo verification feature to ensure no one impersonates someone,  and the AI-based Private Detector to notify users of possible nudes being sent to them.Bumble also updated its terms and conditions with an aim to ban body-shaming.