'The Tinder Swindler': which party should be more responsible in online dating?

The users finding love? Or the dating apps charged with ensuring that is all they get.

In the newest Netflix true-crime documentary, three women narrate their harrowing experience with a professional con man they encountered on a dating app. While it is easy to point fingers in a cyber-fraud case, 'The Tinder Swindler' uncovers a new question for exploration. In the words of Emma Brockes from The Guardian, "The first surprise of The Tinder Swindler, Netflix's hit film and the only documentary to have topped its global most-watched list, is that anyone is still using Tinder".

Love is essential for human existence, and over time corporations have capitalised on this innate desire, taking advantage of it for financial and stock profits. They create platforms for individuals across diverse demographics to find 'love'. Although this seems to be a fair trade that will end in a happily ever fairytale, in some cases, it's the opposite. The romantic experience ends abruptly in daunting scenarios that see users of these apps gnash their teeth and cry their eyes out in regret as they suffer the horrible consequences of foul play. Meanwhile, the company establishment goes unphased; it's business as usual.

In this win or lose it all scene of online dating, the latter is the case for Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm, and Ayleen Charlotte Koeleman — three of the many women who say they fell victim to the Tinder trickster, Simon Leviev, an attractive Israeli man, who poses as a billionaire's son to a diamond Mogul. The false image, persona and eccentric lifestyle Simon Leviev, an alias for Shimon Hayut portrays on Tinder lures these three women in their thirties seeking emotional connections into something more sinister and cruel that will cause them to lose thousands of dollars.

"This was an emotional con," Natalie Remøe Hansen, one of the investigative journalists, comments during an interview within the documentary's runtime. The tinder swindler does not just demand an outrageous amount of money. First, he builds an intimate relationship with his victims, then he lavishes thousands of dollars, taking them to five-star hotels, dinners, and exquisite vacations to cajole his current victim into thinking he is more than capable of refunding the huge sum of money he will later ask to borrow due to security threats from his 'enemies'.

It is difficult to wrap your head around what you are watching for a moment. Still, it is harder to believe, countless women and men fall victim to emotional manipulations, financial dilemmas, and tragic tales while seeking love on these dating apps in real life.

While these dating apps may claim to have no responsibility for peoples' actions on their platforms, the unending scams built on online romance demonstrates that love sites constitute a significant target for internet fraudsters; As that is where people, especially women, are most vulnerable and susceptible to sugar-coated lies. Therefore it inevitably begs the question, which party should be more responsible in online dating? The users finding love? Or the dating apps charged with ensuring that is all they get. If it is the users, as Tinder and other dating apps clearly state in their lengthy terms and conditions, how does one become responsible with an emotion as explosive as love?. But then, if we challenge dating apps and demand better to protect its users against fraud, what do we say to the banks that these transactions pass through and every other system involved?.

No matter how far we dance around this subject, at the end of the day, the responsibility inevitably falls on the users, the choices they make, and the risks they are willing to take to live out a happily ever fantasy or the complete opposite.

But, as the progressive society we claim to be, are we okay with this.