# Incident I00064: Tinder nightmares: the promise and peril of political bots

* **Summary:** > In the days leading up to the UK’s general election, youths looking for love online encountered a whole new kind of Tinder nightmare. A group of young activists built a Tinder chatbot to co-opt profiles and persuade swing voters to support Labour. The bot accounts sent 30,000-40,000 messages to targeted 18-25 year olds in battleground constituencies like Dudley North, which Labour ended up winning by only 22 votes.

* **incident type**: incident

* **Year started:** 2017

* **Countries:** UK , UK

* **Found via:** 

* **Date added:** 2024-03-12


| Reference(s) |
| --------- |
| [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tinder-political-bots-jeremy-corbyn-labour](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tinder-political-bots-jeremy-corbyn-labour) |

 

| Technique | Description given for this incident |
| --------- | ------------------------- |
| [T0104.002 Dating App](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0104.002.md) | IT00000214 > In the days leading up to the UK’s [2017] general election, youths looking for love online encountered a whole new kind of Tinder nightmare. A group of young activists built a Tinder chatbot to co-opt profiles and persuade swing voters to support Labour. The bot accounts sent 30,000-40,000 messages to targeted 18-25 year olds in battleground constituencies like Dudley North, which Labour ended up winning by only 22 votes.

> Tinder is a dating app where users swipe right to indicate attraction and interest in a potential partner. If both people swipe right on each other’s profile, a dialogue box becomes available for them to privately chat. After meeting their crowdfunding goal of only £500, the team built a tool which took over and operated the accounts of recruited Tinder-users. By upgrading the profiles to Tinder Premium, the team was able to place bots in any contested constituency across the UK. Once planted, the bots swiped right on all users in the attempt to get the largest number of matches and inquire into their voting intentions.

This incident matches _T0104.002: Dating App,_ as users of Tinder were targeted in an attempt to persuade users to vote for a particular party in the upcoming election, rather than for the purpose of connecting those who were authentically interested in dating each other. |


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